Inside Kickstarter: Co-Founder Yancey Strickler on Building the Crowdfunding Giant

Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, and the founder of Metalabel, a platform for releasing collective work. He’s also the author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World.

I’m thrilled to share our recent conversation in this episode. Yancey started out as a music journalist before applying his talents to helping the world share its creative pursuits. For him, creativity and humanity are implicitly connected, and so he’s been a forerunner in thinking about how to build companies that bring good things into the world and are also successful without devolving into extractive behaviors.

Not that any of this is simple. As Yancey says, “Everything is harder than you think. To do anything well is so hard. [But] if you put in the work, you don't need to fear it.”

We talked about the founding and growth of Kickstarter, which has been profitable since it’s 14th month, the power of humility, past mistakes and future hopes, why he started Metalabel, and more including: 

• The innumerable inventions that make up our world 

• Crisis hopping in Kickstarter’s early days

• The challenges of funding speculative projects

• Being one of the first Public Benefit Corps

• Creativity and self-knowledge

• Company building as an art

• Collective creativity

• The Bento Method 

—

Brought to you by:

Mercury – The art of simplified finances. ⁠⁠Learn more⁠⁠.

DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. ⁠⁠Sign up⁠⁠.

Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader. ⁠⁠Learn more⁠⁠.

—

Where to find Yancey Strickler:

• X: https://x.com/ystrickler

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yancey-strickler-486b4557/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ystrickler/

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: ⁠⁠https://ericries.carrd.co/⁠⁠ 

• Podcast: ⁠⁠https://ericriesshow.com/⁠⁠ 

• X: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/ericries⁠⁠ 

• LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/⁠⁠ 

• YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow⁠⁠ 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:36) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(04:44) The invention of the high five.

(07:22) Our world is the product of innumerable inventions

(08:22) The story of Kickstarter

(13:48) The difference between a fad and a trend

(15:50) The early days, and difficulties, at Kickstarter

(17:24) How Kickstarter introduced standards

(18:58) The a-ha moment: “Kickstarter is not a store”

(20:42) The need for company sacrifice

(22:06) The tension between risk and failure

(24:16) Kickstarter’s early days and how Yancey became CEO

(27:12) Mistakes, burnout, and stepping down.

(30:05) Yancey without Kickstarter

(31:45) Disentangling from the old and starting anew

(35:21) Public Benefit Corps and why Kickstarter was among the first ones

(39:19) The challenges of running a good company that makes a profit

(42:07) Crowdfunding and creativity

(46:31) The future of creative work

(47:12) MetaLabel

(48:48) The curator role

(50:26) Moving from solo to cooperative work

(52:04) The Leaders Guide on Kickstarter

(54:30) Doing work for yourself, in a community of peers

(57:29) Self-knowledge as an entrepreneurial asset

(59:35) Organization building as an artistic discipline

(1:04:30) Humility, fearlessness, and hard work

(1:06:25) The Royal Society

(1:10:04) Rejecting the extractive model

(1:14:50) Succession planning and deprioritizing financial maximization

(1:19:52) A new version of the hockey stick graph

(1:21:20) The Bento Method: women vs. men

(1:26:48) The Golden Ratio

(1:30:18) The Dark Forest

(1:33:27) How the internet has redefined individuality 

(1:36:49) Online institutions of the 21st century

—

Production and marketing by ⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.