The In Crowd

When he's wholly in his head, Jerry Paffendorf's brows tell the action: "And what-ifs" are arched in wonderment — "wait but thens," are comically furrowed. And when he's only half in his head, all 6 feet, 7 inches of Jerry become West Coast relaxed. He rolls his own cigarettes, using them to animate the arsenal of voices he uses when storytelling. You could think of Paffendorf as a modern and more charming one-man rendition of Revenge of the Nerds, written for the stage and performed impromptu at a public park, but also streaming online somewhere. 

Paffendorf has the mind of a hacker, and while he lacks a true programmer's technical savvy he has the vision and enthusiasm to recruit others to handle the coding. He's delved into the possibilities of digital avatar integration across virtual platforms (if that sounds abstruse, we'll explain later), and he's always trying to innovate the more playful aspects of sharing information online. 

It was those interests and proclivities that put Paffendorf on the forefront of using a recent approach to online fundraising (crowdfunding, as it's called in general) and its first and most successful website (Kickstarter) for his DIY brand of art activism. And at least in part because of Paffendorf, Detroit has become one of the leading cities for the utilization of Kickstarter for community and arts projects. If Kickstarter is a new national network, Detroit is one of its pulsating nodes. 

To get an idea of Paffendorf, consider his last, big, pre-Detroit project. In Brooklyn, with software engineer Christian Westbrook and tech writer Mark Wallace, he founded Wello Horld, a company later described as a "real-time social Web, where you can see, be and do anything, with anyone, anywhere online." Wello Hurld had the potential to make any website a real-time communal experience. 

"As you're taught to do, we went around and knocked on the doors of a few venture capitalist firms," he says. "One day, we met with a group who was just an absolute gorilla in the valley. They had a huge fund, a good reputation, and had a couple real successes. It's the kind of situation creatives dream of being in — big money to make your cool idea happen outside your head." 

The aforementioned ape was Red Point Ventures, a VC outfit from the valley whose portfolio includes investments in companies you know, such as Ask.com, Cloud.com, Alltell (recently purchased by Verizon), Myspace and Netflix. 

If Wello Horld was going to be the next big thing, Red Point seemed like the group capable of making it happen. 

"Fun," says Paffendorf, visibly invigorated by the very word, brows arching. "That's all, man. I'm telling ya, it was about fun. We just wanted to make it more fun to be online with your friends. How does fun go wrong?" 

In retrospect, he says, his move to San Francisco might have been "the writing on the wall." And a year and a half in, things were getting bad. 

> Email Travis R. Wright