When I started MyCity, I was at home, in a small room, trying to answer one question: what should this logo stand for?
At that time I was in a situation many people know. When you come from a background where people do not really know who you are, they fill in the gaps for you. They project. They decide who you can be and who you cannot, and they underestimate you before you have said a word.
Designed in Photoshop, built to be read twice
I designed the logo in Photoshop, slowly, thinking about what I wanted it to say. I have always been fascinated by hiding messages inside things, in the tone of a design and in what it quietly says. So I decided to hide mine in plain sight.
The three white bars are candlesticks, and the last one is an engulfing candle: the chart pattern where one candle fully covers the one before it, a sign that the trend is turning. Next to them, a dynamic human figure reaches upward, toward the top. There is one more message in it. The way the figure’s hand is formed carries a sign-language gesture, there for the people who look closely.
Why I hid that I was a trader
I did not want anyone to know I was a trader. When you have worked on a trading floor, with a Reuters Xtra 3000 on the desk, something changes in how you think, almost overnight. And something changes in how people see you once they find out where you worked. I wanted my idea to be judged for what it was, not for a label. So I kept it quiet for a very long time, and I let the candlesticks say what I would not.
Why I stopped explaining myself
There is another reason I stayed quiet. When someone decides who I am, I do not try to correct them. For me, correcting people is exhausting. I would play the whole scene out in my head: finding the words, convincing them, answering their questions, defending myself. Every time I shared something, the questions that came back seemed built to disprove who I was, and I did not want to spend my energy arguing for my own identity.
The one that came up most was this. When I told people I was a trader, they looked at me and asked, in one way or another: if you are a trader, why does your life not look like one?
The answer is that I chose a different path. The research I was doing, on how to build better cities and how to end poverty, was the bigger question for me. It meant putting trading aside instead of chasing the luxurious version of a trader’s life, so I could start on that work. The life people expected to see was never the goal.
Satoshi Nakamoto put it better than I could, in a Bitcointalk post in 2010:
“If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.”
Satoshi Nakamoto · Bitcointalk, July 2010
That is where I stand too. I will keep building, and the work can answer the questions.
Looking back from the top
The goal was simple. One day, when people look back, they would not realize where I already was: on the top. When you work in finance and become a trader, you see the world from above, and you are always moving toward it. The logo said that before anyone could see it.
That is also why I am telling this now. Writing this post, and being open about being a trader after keeping it quiet for so long, was intentional. I watched how people behaved back then, and I knew there would be a day when they would see the same story differently.
On big ideas and the people around us
When you share a big idea, you are never just making conversation. Directly or indirectly, you hope the other person will be part of it. And when they are not, when they show negativity right at the start, you notice. We are human beings, and we have a funny way of answering back. Mine was to keep building, quietly, until the work could speak for me.
The handles behind the logo
The logo was not the only thing I left quietly in public. Around the same time I claimed three handles on Twitter: @skylord in March 2008, @MyCity that December, and @EMCBusiness in June 2009. Each one marks a different chapter, and a lesson I only understood years later. If you are curious why a trader kept leaving small markers like these, the full story is next.
Read the story behind the handles
So that is the story of the logo. If you ever feel underestimated, remember that you do not have to argue your way out of it. You can leave a mark that time will explain for you.
