Philip J. Kaplan is a 25-year-old computer programmer, creator of fuckedcompany.com, and uber-geek.
After an 11-month stint as a 21-year-old consultant with stodgy Booz Allen Hamilton, Kaplan moved to New York to find work as a programmer-and to try to fulfill his dream of becoming a famous heavy metal rock star drummer. He then worked for almost a year at Think New Ideas, a hip new webshop founded by his childhood hero MTV VJ Adam Curry, but left when he found out that those stock options weren't showing up afterall. In May, 2000, on Memorial Day Weekend, Kaplan started his own consultancy, PK Interactive as well as fuckedcompany.com. He emailed the web address to six friends, took off on a planned trip to Rio, and came back to 20,000 new registered users, press interviews, and just a few "cease and desist" letters.
Now attracting over 3.5 million unique readers per month and a flurry of press attention, fuckedcompany.com has turned Kaplan into a hero amongst millions of fellow "dilberts" throughout the world — and into a nemesis to dot-com executives and venture capitalists. Kaplan appears regularly on CNN and CNBC, and has been profiled on "Nightline", "60 Minutes", "The Early Show," MTV, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy, Esquire, Reuters, and Associated Press, and hundreds of other magazines, newspapers, journals, television programs, and documentaries.Many journalists depend on fuckedcompany.com regularly for its scoops, stories, and insights, and 70,000 people read Kaplan's email newsletter, "The FC.Sporadic."
Despite all the attention, Kaplan, known online simply as "Pud," remains a somewhat anonymous geek, cynical, hermetic, and self-deprecating. Incorporating personal antidotes into his short, punchy blurbs about the industry, Kaplan projects a culture that is all-too-familiar amongst his fellow "plebes."
Kaplan grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland and now lives in New York City.