He was not the first.

Frederick Lenz, III aka Zen Master Rama 1950-1998 or more like Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lenz

WIRED 2.01 The Code Cult of the CPU Guru http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Rama/wired

CULT OR COMPANY? http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Rama/westrptr.txt

I was thinking about a startup accelerator for cults. I think much of the process could be reused with different content to capture different segments of the market.