When Yancey Strickler moved to New York, he was broke, freelancing for $50, and chasing a writing career. Little did he know, his gift for building on the internet would soon change the world of crowdfunding. A chance encounter with a friend and a half-baked idea about crowd-funded concert tickets led to the founding of Kickstarter, a platform that has raised over $7 billion for creative projects worldwide. In this episode, Yancey joins Ilana to discuss his journey from freelancing on a shoestring budget to building a billion-dollar platform and what it took to survive the hardest moments. He also explains his bold plan to help artists participate in capitalism.

Yancey Strickler is the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, the platform that raised over $7 billion for more than 200,000 creative projects. He now runs Metalabel, a studio building tools for creative cooperation.

In this episode, Ilana and Yancey will discuss:

(00:00) Introduction 

(03:11) From Music Households to Manhattan Bylines

(06:28) The Side Project That Changed Everything

(13:34) The Ladder Vouch System That Launched Kickstarter

(18:57) Why Showing Up as an Open Box Wins Every Room

(26:31) The Day Two Projects Hit a Million Dollars at Once

(33:40) The New Definition of Work in the Age of AI

(36:28) Building the Legal Blueprint for the Artist Economy

(43:09) Why the Private Internet Is Where the Real World Lives

(49:38) Q&A: How to Open Doors to New Connections

Yancey Strickler is a writer, serial entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Kickstarter, the global crowdfunding platform that has raised billions for creative projects.  He's the author of This Could Be Our Future and The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet and the co-host of the New Creative Era podcast. Before Kickstarter, Yancey was a music critic for outlets like Pitchfork and Spin. Today, he leads two bold projects: A Corp, a legislative effort to provide artists with real economic infrastructure, and DFOs, a platform reimagining the private internet. 

Connect with Yancey

Yancey’s Website: https://www.ystrickler.com

Yancey’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yancey-strickler-486b4557/ 

Yancey’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ystrickler/ 

Yancey’s X: https://x.com/ystrickler 

Resources Mentioned:

Yancey’s Books,

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World:

https://www.amazon.com/This-Could-Our-Future-Manifesto/dp/0525560823 

The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet:

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Forest-Anthology-Internet/dp/B0D14NN1DN 

On the Creative Life: Conversations Toward a New Creative Era:

https://squad.metalabel.com/onthecreativelife?ref=ystrickler.com&variantId=1 

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