hacks.

Han van Meegeren was a gifted loser. He was born in 1889 Netherlands, destined to paint. His one passion. But Han's father wanted him to be an architect. To break his will, he would make Han sit down and write a hundred times, "I know nothing, I am nothing, I am capable of nothing."

So Han proved him right.

He took the architecture classes his father forced him to. But when it came time to take his architecture exam, Han skipped it.

He would focus instead on art and drawing classes, marry his art school sweetheart, and develop his painting to the point of being accepted into The Hague, an exclusive society of writers and painters.

But Han was a gifted loser.

He was rejected by the critics of his time. They said of Han, "a gifted technician who has made a sort of composite facsimile of the Renaissance school, he has every virtue except originality"

"...he has every virtue except originality"

Rejected from a career as a painter. Han felt like a loser.

But Han was still gifted.

He set out to prove the critics wrong and right. Just as he'd done with his father.

He hermitted away in the south of France for 6 years, perfecting a technique no one had ever seen. He studied the paint mixing and painting techniques of 300 years earlier. Specifically, of another Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. Considered the greatest Dutch painter, of famous works like the Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Han figured out not only how to paint with the exact style of Vermeer, but a unique chemical process to crack and bake paintings to age them to match the look and feel of 300 year old art work.

He emerged from the french countryside with a stack of canvases indistinguishable from the rare original Vermeers.

He quickly built a small empire selling his forgeries. amassing over $30M in today's dollars, and a 12-room palatial estate.

Han's gift was paying off.

But Han, was a loser.

And in 1942, he sold one of his forgeries to Hermann Göring, one of the highest ranked officers in the Nazi Wermacht.

When this was discovered in 1945, Han was put on trial for being a Nazi collaborator and up for the death penalty for selling cultural property to the Nazis.

His only defense?

He was a loser. The art was a fake.

He had to perform a forgery live for the court.

With his method revealed, he was given a 1 year sentence for forgery.

But 12 days after sentencing he died of a heart attack.

His estate was sold to creditors.

He died a loser.

And worse, he destroyed the market for Vermeers. Many famous historians were discredited and art dealers financially ruined by Han's forgeries. The inability to distinguish a modern fake from the original collapsed the market for Vermeers.

It wasn't until another innovation decades later, isotope analysis, allowed identifying the radioactive decay and more accurate dating of artwork that the final Han forgeries were identified and the market for Vermeers restored.

Today, the GTM market is filled with gifted losers.

Technicians with every skill except originality.

They can fake the best quality approaches of a decade prior and run them at infinite scale. Leaving your buyers to sift through the forgeries.

Standing on the shoulders of those before you is a necessary part of finding your voice.

But mimicry floods the market with cheap copies. It kills the market. And your voice.

And what makes great GTM isn't mimicry, it's art.