Speaker 1: What's his way up at Angela. He on a Wealth Wednesday.
Speaker 1: So Stacy Tisday is here.
Speaker 2: Happy Wealth Wednesdays, everybody, And it is week two of
Speaker 2: Wealth Wednesdays, celebrating Black Business Month. And we have yet
Speaker 2: another slacker for you today. We have Everett Taylor and
Speaker 2: he is the CEO of Kickstarter, and we are just
Speaker 2: so incredibly thrilled to have you here and just knowing
Speaker 2: about who you were anyway and knowing your backstory, I
Speaker 2: just have to tell people you started what your mom
Speaker 2: reached out to a classified ad when you were fourteen
Speaker 2: years old?
Speaker 3: Fourteen? Wow, you did you well researched?
Speaker 2: Oh I know you better than you.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen, we got our own AI right here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were fourteen years old?
Speaker 3: I was fourteen? Yeah, what happened? Yeah? I was.
Speaker 4: I was running the streets doing things that I shouldn't
Speaker 4: have been doing.
Speaker 5: And imagine that, Yes, she applied for you.
Speaker 3: She knows. She called them up.
Speaker 4: It was like, my son needs the interview here, and
Speaker 4: they gave me an interview.
Speaker 3: I was fourteen years old, They didn't.
Speaker 4: It was for a very junior marketing role for a
Speaker 4: nonprofit called Eastern National. And yeah, they didn't even realize
Speaker 4: I was fourteen, And at the end of the interview,
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, he was like, can you start
Speaker 4: Monday at like nine am?
Speaker 3: And I was like I can't.
Speaker 4: I got school and he thought I was a college
Speaker 4: sup And I was like, no, I'm a freshman in
Speaker 4: high school. But they gave me an opportunity still to
Speaker 4: go with that job. And that job changed my life
Speaker 4: because it introduced me to marketing. And I tell a
Speaker 4: lot of people when it comes to wealth creation, figuring
Speaker 4: out what your gift is, what your skill is, what
Speaker 4: is the thing that you do better than everybody else?
Speaker 4: And to me, it was like you know Ray Charles
Speaker 4: on the Keys. To me when I started doing marketing, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was like just such a natural thing. So that
Speaker 4: completely changed my life trajectory because it got me out
Speaker 4: of the hood. It got me out of Southside Richmond,
Speaker 4: and I went into a space with people that were
Speaker 4: college educated. I was meeting people from all around the world,
Speaker 4: and so that completely changed the trajectory of my life.
Speaker 3: Being able to get the opportunity to shout out to
Speaker 3: my mom.
Speaker 1: I have to say to your point of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who when you're younger. Just one thing
Speaker 1: like that can change everything. There's so many people that
Speaker 1: are great at like hustling, but that turned into a
Speaker 1: different type of hustle. Is what can actually make you flourish.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it is just being around the right people
Speaker 1: because you could be brilliant and so smart, but if
Speaker 1: that's not used in the right way, then who knows
Speaker 1: what can happen?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we're celebrating Black Business Month and now you're
Speaker 2: the CEO of Kickstarter, but we're not going to get
Speaker 2: there yet because you're a serial serial entrepreneur and to
Speaker 2: continue that journey or don't want to dwell on this,
Speaker 2: but you had some real challenges and I know you
Speaker 2: experienced homelessness in high school, but at nineteen you're like,
Speaker 2: I know what I'm going to do and you started
Speaker 2: your own company. How do how did you have belief
Speaker 2: all the things that you experience is where did the
Speaker 2: belief that you could do that come from?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: I hate talking about this a little bit because some
Speaker 4: things are just God given, you know, and some things
Speaker 4: you're just built for it, you know, And like it's
Speaker 4: you can put yourself in the same circumstances as someone else,
Speaker 4: but you might have this unwavering belief in yourself. For me,
Speaker 4: I was always super confident. I was always even when
Speaker 4: I was young, you know, I was super confident in myself.
Speaker 4: I had this mindset of I'm gonna do better. I'm
Speaker 4: going to do something different. You know, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to just be stuck here doing the same things that
Speaker 4: everyone else did. And so for me, I've always had
Speaker 4: this incredible sense of awareness about my abilities but also
Speaker 4: confidence in what I could do. And so even at
Speaker 4: a young age, I was like, no, I'm going to
Speaker 4: do something else. And when I was nineteen, you know,
Speaker 4: I was working a minimum wate job at Joanne Fabrics Fabrics,
Speaker 4: and it was terrible because I would literally go go
Speaker 4: there and just the gas money and then grabbing some lunch.
Speaker 4: I'm like, did I even make any money today?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 4: And so, you know, during my freshman year of college,
Speaker 4: I dropped out. After my freshman year, you know, I
Speaker 4: threw parties and I enjoyed doing parties and events, and
Speaker 4: so I was like, Hey, let me try to start
Speaker 4: doing my own parties here in Richmond. And then you know,
Speaker 4: I learned how to code a little bit. During my
Speaker 4: freshman year. I went to Virginia Tech and a couple
Speaker 4: of my buddies. We all built a platform called easy Events,
Speaker 4: which was a ticketing platform.
Speaker 3: It was no event right already existed, and I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I didn't know event bright existed.
Speaker 4: And you know, we can have conversations of knowing the
Speaker 4: value of what you've built because I didn't know at
Speaker 4: the time. But yeah, we built that, and yeah, we
Speaker 4: sold the company a couple of years later.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you when you started Easy Events, right,
Speaker 1: did y'all have the sense to be like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to do a business plan.
Speaker 5: Or what is it? Just let's do it and figure
Speaker 5: it out.
Speaker 4: You know what's crazy is that I really fumbled my
Speaker 4: bag on this one. So I started doing events right,
Speaker 4: and I didn't have an LC. I was doing everything
Speaker 4: cash whatever. And then what I realized was, you know,
Speaker 4: people were starting to sell like this is like two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine, so people were actually starting to sell
Speaker 4: event tickets online.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I need to build that myself.
Speaker 4: And so I hit up a couple homies that I
Speaker 4: went to school with and they helped me build the platform.
Speaker 4: And then one of the fathers of one of my
Speaker 4: co founders, like established the LC for us and did
Speaker 4: all that, but I didn't know what I was I
Speaker 4: didn't know what I was doing and what was so crazy.
Speaker 4: They helped me build it, and then after that I
Speaker 4: continue to run a business without them, But when I
Speaker 4: sold it, because of the way that the LC was built,
Speaker 4: they each of us owned thirty three percent of the company.
Speaker 4: So despite me building the company, I only got to
Speaker 4: get thirty three percent of the proceeds. And that's because
Speaker 4: I didn't know anything about equity and ownership and things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: That's a good lesson right there, year, So don't be
Speaker 2: so hard on yourself not to build bring up something
Speaker 2: else painful. But it was sold after that for like
Speaker 2: a lot more.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, man, she's on it.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was sold for a lot more because I
Speaker 4: didn't know about the event bright of the world and
Speaker 4: the other ticketing platforms in the world. And the person
Speaker 4: that bought it from us was also a serial entrepreneur investor.
Speaker 4: He knew where he was going to flip it right after,
Speaker 4: and so I had to learn a really really valuable lesson.
Speaker 4: Not only did I learn a lesson of like ownership,
Speaker 4: and equity. Not only did I learn the lesson of
Speaker 4: taxes and capital gains, but you know, and the other
Speaker 4: lesson I learned was like being well researched and knowing
Speaker 4: what you've built and knowing the value of what you've
Speaker 4: built because people will take advantage of you. And I
Speaker 4: told myself once that happened, I would never be taking
Speaker 4: advantage of That's a.
Speaker 5: Good lesson to have learned early on.
Speaker 3: Though.
Speaker 1: I want to say, because you were so young when
Speaker 1: you did that, that's valuable.
Speaker 5: It's like paying for education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the part that you ended up having to give up,
Speaker 1: but then you went on to education, but to become,
Speaker 1: like she said, a serial entrepreneur and you launched other businesses.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, so I went and when I learned about
Speaker 4: that company selling for what it's so for, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: I need to go to Silicon Valley. I need to
Speaker 4: be in California. And I went to go work with
Speaker 4: a guy named Sean Ellis who like led growth at
Speaker 4: like dropped box in event right. That's how he knew
Speaker 4: about me because it was vent Bright, and you know,
Speaker 4: he was like this really well known guy in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 4: and so I learned under him. And while I was
Speaker 4: learning the ropes of Silicon Valley leading marketing for him,
Speaker 4: I started building my own companies. And so I started
Speaker 4: with my first marketing firm, and then we built a
Speaker 4: company together, and then like over the course of the
Speaker 4: next few years, I built several, you know, million dollar
Speaker 4: plus companies.
Speaker 3: I think I did four of them for the age
Speaker 3: of twenty seven.
Speaker 4: But the difference between me and like my like kind
Speaker 4: of white counterparts out there in the world was that
Speaker 4: I felt like I had to build profitable businesses right away.
Speaker 5: You couldn't get investors.
Speaker 4: I couldn't get investors, And so the way that I
Speaker 4: was thinking about building my companies was like companies that
Speaker 4: I could go and make money from, like right away,
Speaker 4: right day one, right where I saw like my white counterparts,
Speaker 4: you know, I remember like Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, Like they
Speaker 4: had no they didn't know how they were going to monetize,
Speaker 4: and they would have these big ideas that turned into
Speaker 4: these multi billion dollar companies that we used to work.
Speaker 2: We still do with fintech companies. Yeah, and some of
Speaker 2: these founders, I'm like, people just give you money that
Speaker 2: you just said oh, I want to do this. It's crazy.
Speaker 4: And the funding environment wasn't like that for people that
Speaker 4: look like us, and it still isn't in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways. But you know, for me, I felt like
Speaker 4: a lot of my creativity was was was dampened because
Speaker 4: I didn't feel like I could go out there with
Speaker 4: the big idea and raise a bunch of capital and
Speaker 4: things like that. So I stuck to trying to build
Speaker 4: well for myself by building profitable companies that you know,
Speaker 4: had high ebadah, and I could go and be able
Speaker 4: to pay myself and take care of my family and
Speaker 4: make investments.
Speaker 2: So interesting is you put? You know, you got the
Speaker 2: marketing bug at fourteen, and you've built all these different
Speaker 2: types of companies. So it hasn't been marketing, you know,
Speaker 2: I just staying in marketing. At what point did you realize, okay, mate,
Speaker 2: I might be good at marketing, but I'm just really
Speaker 2: good at building businesses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. I think I do.
Speaker 4: Okay, I think, uh once you've done it a couple
Speaker 4: of times. So, you know, I started my first company,
Speaker 4: sold it. I became head of marketing for a startup
Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley, that sold right, I you know, started
Speaker 4: a couple of companies that you know, did seven figures
Speaker 4: in revenue, and like I was like, wow, everything that
Speaker 4: I'm doing is actually becoming successful. And I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I think I'm pretty I'm pretty good at this, and
Speaker 4: that gave me more. I was already confident in myself.
Speaker 4: But once you have the repetition and you do it
Speaker 4: over and over and over again, you just learn so
Speaker 4: many lessons throughout and you cut out the mistakes and
Speaker 4: you just become more efficient, You become more dangerous at it,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. You really become a really
Speaker 4: great entrepreneur as you're learning. And for me, I was
Speaker 4: just always super customer obsessed and I just identify different
Speaker 4: opportunities and I knew how to reach target audiences and
Speaker 4: build things and scale things, and yeah, the rest was history.
Speaker 2: Something seems different. I've been working a lot all summer
Speaker 2: with entrepreneurs on creating the mindset for scaling. It's very
Speaker 2: different than growing black entrepreneurs. And they don't sell their company.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things. Like they never think, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm building something to make something bigger. And I know
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ownership need in our community. But
Speaker 2: I think that's one lesson people have to learn a
Speaker 2: scaling mindset. But you don't seem to have a problem
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's interesting. It's it depends on what you're what you
Speaker 4: want and what you're looking for. A lot of people
Speaker 4: don't realize this, and Angreli, you probably know this. Like
Speaker 4: when you go raise capital and you have you know, investors,
Speaker 4: and you have a board, and you know, you split
Speaker 4: that ownership, Like the board decides how much you get paid, right,
Speaker 4: the board decides if you get a bonus when you
Speaker 4: own one hundred percent of your Like, so you could
Speaker 4: have one hundred million dollar company and be doing two
Speaker 4: hundred twenty million in profit, and the board is like, oh,
Speaker 4: you have a half a million dollar salary because we're
Speaker 4: trying to scale this up to being a multi billion
Speaker 4: dollar company. That's what they invested in you for. They
Speaker 4: wanted the outsize impact where you can build a five
Speaker 4: to ten million dollar business, right that is, say profitable
Speaker 4: three four five million dollars a year and pay yourself
Speaker 4: to three million dollars a year and it's a much
Speaker 4: smaller business than that big business within So it really
Speaker 4: depends on what you want. Do you want to build
Speaker 4: a business where you're gonna like create a really great
Speaker 4: lifestyle business or you know, create you know, like not
Speaker 4: that outside wealth, or are you going to go for it?
Speaker 4: And if you go for it, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 4: to raise a lot of capital and you know you're
Speaker 4: gonna have to exit, meaning you're gonna have to sell
Speaker 4: the company. You're gonna have to take the company public,
Speaker 4: and then that's when you get the money that.
Speaker 3: You really want.
Speaker 5: You may even be forced out.
Speaker 3: You might be forced out.
Speaker 5: You never know what can happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to ask you, with all of this entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: you deciding to take this position as CEO Kickstarter, how
Speaker 1: did that happen?
Speaker 3: Who?
Speaker 4: I'll try to make a long story short. So I was,
Speaker 4: so I've always had this balance of being an executive
Speaker 4: and a founder, right, And I think it kind of
Speaker 4: comes from, you know, that place of understanding that a
Speaker 4: business could go sideways at any time and you could
Speaker 4: always lose a job. And so I've always had this
Speaker 4: like really beautiful balance of doing both. And then I
Speaker 4: got to a point where where I really wanted to
Speaker 4: learn and I wanted.
Speaker 3: To really be at businesses at scale.
Speaker 4: And I took a job as a chief marketing officer
Speaker 4: at Artsy and Artsy is the biggest online platform for
Speaker 4: art and so I sat there and I really learned.
Speaker 4: And I still have my other companies, but I was
Speaker 4: really focused on learning. And when I was there, I
Speaker 4: reported into a CEO named Mike Steibe, and he really
Speaker 4: taught me the ropes of what it meant to be
Speaker 4: a CEO of like a billion dollar global type of company.
Speaker 2: Right, you have to back up because you told him
Speaker 2: you wanted his job.
Speaker 4: I did tell him, Yeah, I did, because what I
Speaker 4: what I realized was two things. One was that I
Speaker 4: had built some really incredible companies, seven to eight figure companies,
Speaker 4: but I hadn't really built anything at scale. So I
Speaker 4: really wanted to learn that. The other thing is, for
Speaker 4: those who don't know what a CMO is, as chief
Speaker 4: marketing officer, you have a very limited trajectory as a
Speaker 4: CMO in terms of compensation and opportunities. The people that
Speaker 4: really get compensated the best are CEOs, Right, So you
Speaker 4: can hit a wall as a CMO.
Speaker 1: That's what boz of Us Saint John always talks about.
Speaker 1: When she was a CMO at so many different companies.
Speaker 1: It's because it's not something that's meant to be like
Speaker 1: a long term position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it can be.
Speaker 4: It can be, but if you want that, if you
Speaker 4: want that. But it's a really tough role to be
Speaker 4: in and I and I really wanted to do a
Speaker 4: lot more than just be the head.
Speaker 3: Of marketing or a CMO.
Speaker 4: And so I told my CEO at the time that
Speaker 4: I wanted his job.
Speaker 2: How does somebody respond to.
Speaker 4: That, Well, listen, I was killing it too, so you know.
Speaker 4: And I told him when he left when he left,
Speaker 4: and he did eventually left and ran another multi billion
Speaker 4: dollar company. But I told him that I wanted the
Speaker 4: role whenever he left, So prepare me to be a CEO,
Speaker 4: because being a CEO of a small seven to eight
Speaker 4: figure company is not the same of being at a
Speaker 4: global tech company, right, So he really taught me that.
Speaker 4: And then I also told myself, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: take another CMO role. So I'm getting hit up for
Speaker 4: CMO roles from some of the biggest companies in the world.
Speaker 3: Which I can't say. Yeah, and I was.
Speaker 4: Turning them down, turning them down, turning them I mean
Speaker 4: incredible roles, and I meet this woman who was just like, hey,
Speaker 4: I want to pick your brain and I was like, sure,
Speaker 4: like black women, I want to support you, and had
Speaker 4: no idea who she was. At the end of our meeting,
Speaker 4: she said, actually write for the Financial Times, and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh wow. She was like, I want to
Speaker 4: write a story on you. And now this story kept
Speaker 4: getting delayed and delayed and delayed, and then finally we
Speaker 4: did it and it came out. Now, if it came
Speaker 4: out when it was supposed to, I would not be
Speaker 4: the CEO of Kickstarter.
Speaker 3: But that delay ended up happening right.
Speaker 4: When they were looking for a new CEO at Kickstarter,
Speaker 4: and one of the board members ended up picking up
Speaker 4: The Financial Times that day that I was in it.
Speaker 4: And then obviously I went through a long process, six
Speaker 4: seven month process to become the CEO of Kickstarter. And
Speaker 4: I was a very unorthodox candidate because I was thirty
Speaker 4: two at the time. You know, I hadn't run a
Speaker 4: company of that scale. But they really took a shot
Speaker 4: on me and a chance on me, and.
Speaker 3: It worked out.
Speaker 1: So at that point, Kickstarter was having some issues right
Speaker 1: before they hired you. So what was that like and
Speaker 1: because we want to talk about how you managed to
Speaker 1: turn that around as an unorthodox CEO.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean listen.
Speaker 4: I was listening to this panel down in Boca recently
Speaker 4: a few months ago. It was with a few block
Speaker 4: CEOs because it's not a lot of us, and they
Speaker 4: were talking about when there is a CEO opportunity given
Speaker 4: to us, it's not gonna be a good job.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be a mess.
Speaker 5: You got to put a fire, it's.
Speaker 3: Gonna it's gonna be a mess.
Speaker 4: So for me, you know, when I came in, you know,
Speaker 4: revenue was in steep decline. The culture was not where
Speaker 4: I needed to be. There was a lack of ambition,
Speaker 4: like when you've been number one for so long, like
Speaker 4: it's really really hard to get people fired up and
Speaker 4: be like change you know, change agents. And so for
Speaker 4: me coming in, I was like, guys, like I had
Speaker 4: this entrepreneurial my mentality of like hey, whatever you thought
Speaker 4: was working before, like I don't care, like we're going
Speaker 4: to do something new. We're looking at this like a
Speaker 4: blank canvas, Like we're not just because we've been number
Speaker 4: one for so long, our growth has stalled and if
Speaker 4: we continue to do this if you're not grown, you're dying, right,
Speaker 4: if you're not evolving as a business. You saw it
Speaker 4: a lot during COVID. These people businesses went like this
Speaker 4: and they didn't evolve, and now where are they now?
Speaker 4: And so for me, I just wanted to come in
Speaker 4: there with a new energy, a new level of ambition,
Speaker 4: new creative strategy. I was thirty three, I was young,
Speaker 4: I was in the culture I still am, and so
Speaker 4: I just wanted to bring a new mentality to Kickstarter.
Speaker 2: I you know, I had an entrepreneur background. Gave you
Speaker 2: a different wins.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred and ten percent, And just all of
Speaker 4: my experiences being a young black man, experiencing the things
Speaker 4: that I've experienced, being a creator myself, being a creative
Speaker 4: person myself, knowing what it was like not to be
Speaker 4: able to have funding for the things that you wanted
Speaker 4: to do. But also shift the perception of Kickstarter because
Speaker 4: we're not gofund me, we're not donations, We're not hey,
Speaker 4: this is a charity.
Speaker 1: Like No, you'd be reluctant because of how it looks.
Speaker 1: And I want to ask it being a young thirty
Speaker 1: two to thirty three year old black man coming in there,
Speaker 1: as the CEO and wanting to shake things up?
Speaker 5: How do people take to that.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna look at my my PR person right now.
Speaker 5: I'm just caring.
Speaker 1: Is you know, coming in there and doing something, and
Speaker 1: people can be resistant, they can push against that.
Speaker 5: Your age, you.
Speaker 1: Know, your race, all of those things.
Speaker 4: I would say this while trying to be as respectful
Speaker 4: as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're not. Everyone was happy for me. Listen, listen, listen, listen.
Speaker 4: They promised, they promised that they were going to bring
Speaker 4: in a super experienced CEO, and and they brought me
Speaker 4: so I could see. And then everyone that's reporting into
Speaker 4: me is much older than me, you know, and things
Speaker 4: like that. So yeah, it's a different But listen, I
Speaker 4: became an executive when I was for a company that
Speaker 4: wasn't my own.
Speaker 3: I became a CMO when I was twenty five. I've
Speaker 3: been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 4: That don't FaZe me. Like you could feel whatever feelings
Speaker 4: you want. I'll fire you if you don't want to
Speaker 4: be here. But like, I'm here to make something happen.
Speaker 4: I'm here to grow this company, I mean business. Like
Speaker 4: you quickly realize, like my ears right here, she knows
Speaker 4: like I do not mess around, like I am about growth,
Speaker 4: I'm about bringing change, and they quickly realized.
Speaker 3: Even the people that doubted me, they quickly.
Speaker 4: Realize, oh, I'm built different and you see the results
Speaker 4: years later.
Speaker 2: So one of the many things you do different is
Speaker 2: this four day work week.
Speaker 3: Yes, I like that.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 2: And we were talking about one of the reasons you're
Speaker 2: here is to teach entrepreneurs during Black Business Month to
Speaker 2: give them motivate them to scale. And one of the
Speaker 2: things about scaling is setting that impossible goal with that
Speaker 2: impossible deadline. So you see what's essential. And I know
Speaker 2: the kind of the concept behind the four day work
Speaker 2: week is the same. People are like that means time off,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean that to you at all.
Speaker 4: No, I want to be very clear, where's where's my
Speaker 4: camera is right here? I don't love the four day
Speaker 4: work week. I just want to be very very clear,
Speaker 4: like for me personally, that is not how I work,
Speaker 4: That's not how I do. I have a level of
Speaker 4: passion and intensity that cannot be contained to four days.
Speaker 4: With that being said, when I came to Kickstarter, they
Speaker 4: were already trialing the four day work week, and I
Speaker 4: tell people, if you're going to trial a four day
Speaker 4: work week, you got a four day work week, because.
Speaker 3: Like once you let the genie out of the bottle,
Speaker 3: trying to no more virtual.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not so for me. I'm not personally a
Speaker 4: fan of it. But what I am a fan of
Speaker 4: is providing balance for the people that work for me, right,
Speaker 4: and to have really fulfilled lives.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And so what the four day work week has done
Speaker 4: has given people time back to invest into their creativity,
Speaker 4: into their family, into the things they love, and you know,
Speaker 4: you hope that they come back refresh and energize to
Speaker 4: come back to work. It also has has led to
Speaker 4: us to be, you know, ruthless when it comes to prioritization.
Speaker 3: You've got to be super.
Speaker 4: Efficient, right and now, listen, it's very very intense to
Speaker 4: do and like to do that over time, to try
Speaker 4: to continue to get the same amount of stuff done
Speaker 4: and in four days and five days.
Speaker 3: It's really really hard.
Speaker 4: If you're a customer support person, you can only do
Speaker 4: so many customer support tickets in four days versus five days.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just like, you know, that's really really hard.
Speaker 5: He run a coffee shop, you know, you gotta be
Speaker 5: at work.
Speaker 3: You gotta be at work. You know, if you need coffee.
Speaker 4: You know, if he just closed, he closed one day
Speaker 4: out a week, your revenue is going to be affected
Speaker 4: by that. But what we do, what I tried to
Speaker 4: do is just bring a higher level of performance that
Speaker 4: we could perform better in four days than we were
Speaker 4: at five days. But what I would say is if
Speaker 4: I put that same level of performance and prioritization of
Speaker 4: five days.
Speaker 3: Who knows what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we don't. We'll never know.
Speaker 3: We'll never know. We'll never know because it's not it's
Speaker 3: not changing.
Speaker 4: Like I know how much the people at kickstart to
Speaker 4: really value the four day work week and how it's
Speaker 4: changed their lives, and I really do care about it.
Speaker 1: And the numbers have reflected growth. And listen, I know
Speaker 1: he's only got a few minutes left. So in lieu
Speaker 1: of that, I got to make sure we get to
Speaker 1: this one million dollar culture funds.
Speaker 5: So can we please talk about I want your job.
Speaker 3: I want your job, I'll tell you.
Speaker 5: So can you talk about this one million dollar fund?
Speaker 1: Because I want people to understand who is eligible for
Speaker 1: this right the arts and expression and all of that,
Speaker 1: but also this is not like a million dollars to
Speaker 1: one person. This is a fund that is spread across
Speaker 1: multiple creators.
Speaker 4: Yes, so we launched this campaign called the Power Belief.
Speaker 4: If you're in New York City, you'll see in Time
Speaker 4: Score and all around the city. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that I felt with launching this campaign is like,
Speaker 4: if we're asking people to have the belief in people
Speaker 4: on our platform to buy their products and support their dreams,
Speaker 4: then we should be doing the same. And so that's
Speaker 4: where the Culture Fund came about as a one million
Speaker 4: dollar fund to support the first This is just the
Speaker 4: first million dollars, so this is going to be a
Speaker 4: multi year, multimillion dollar initiative. But the first fund is
Speaker 4: committed to artists, so the arts, filmmakers, so film musicians,
Speaker 4: and music and fashion, fashion designers and so these are
Speaker 4: some of the categories that I've personally seen a lot
Speaker 4: of creatives struggling with right now finding success in these areas,
Speaker 4: and so we want to make sure that we are
Speaker 4: able to give an allocate capital to these people because
Speaker 4: even just five, ten, twenty thousand dollars can completely change,
Speaker 4: you know, the trajectory for somebody. And so that's why
Speaker 4: we're really passionate about this. And again this is just
Speaker 4: the first trunch, so there's going to be more to come.
Speaker 4: And the caveat is that they have to launch a
Speaker 4: Kickstarter project so you can get the money. If you're
Speaker 4: launching a Kickstarter project in any of these categories.
Speaker 5: And kicks out of will not have any equity in
Speaker 5: your company.
Speaker 3: Zero equities zero zero, yes zero.
Speaker 4: That's the beautiful thing about Kickstarter is that it really
Speaker 4: empowers people to launch new things, launch new creative things.
Speaker 3: New products, whatever.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of the people that we love, the
Speaker 4: Spike Lee's, the e Arrays, the thlcs, all these people
Speaker 4: have launched Kickstarter projects or a Ring Peloton, all these
Speaker 4: companies that people use every day have launched on Kickstarter.
Speaker 4: And so we want to continue to empower people to
Speaker 4: do this and live out their dreams, especially in this
Speaker 4: economy and especially with the way that the infrastructure is
Speaker 4: collapsing around creative industries right now.
Speaker 2: Where can people find out about the fund and learn
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 4: And to go to kickstarter kickstarter dot com. There's a
Speaker 4: huge banner on kickstarter dot com with the Culture Fund.
Speaker 4: Culture Fund. Click on that and yeah, I'll give you
Speaker 4: all the details that you need.
Speaker 1: You know, this was something that as part of what
Speaker 1: you wanted to do as Kickstarter was having this resurgence
Speaker 1: making more money. Well, let's take some of that money
Speaker 1: and actually reinvest into people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Like you know, so a lot of people don't realize.
Speaker 4: People see Kickstarter, they're like, oh, big global tech company.
Speaker 4: But also we're actually a public benefit corporation, so we're
Speaker 4: still a for profit entity, but we don't maximize just
Speaker 4: for profits. We maximize for impact out there in the world,
Speaker 4: positive impact out there in the world. So this is
Speaker 4: a commitment to the work that we do by not
Speaker 4: just being like, hey, how can we just make as
Speaker 4: much money for ourselves, but how can we use that
Speaker 4: capital to change the lives of people out there.
Speaker 3: In the world.
Speaker 1: For somebody who's starting a Kickstarter, what are some things
Speaker 1: you would tell them to make sure that they are
Speaker 1: actually can market what it is that they're starting their
Speaker 1: Kickstarter for, because you also don't want to get lost
Speaker 1: in the shuffle of other people who have kickstarters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll give two big things. One is like video
Speaker 4: video video. We live in the world of video, so
Speaker 4: your video has to be on point, it has to
Speaker 4: be engaging early. It has to be clear, it has
Speaker 4: to be concise, because that's how people are looking at you.
Speaker 4: We just launch our own like TikTok like video feed
Speaker 4: as well on the app.
Speaker 3: That's an exclusive.
Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, and so video is a huge part of it.
Speaker 4: Like people aren't reading all the whole page. They want
Speaker 4: to they want to feel engaged with you, so the
Speaker 4: video is important.
Speaker 3: Number two is listen.
Speaker 4: The way that the Kickstarter algorithm works is you need
Speaker 4: to have your community kind of push it in the beginning,
Speaker 4: so then the algorithm catches it, and then all the
Speaker 4: strangers and all the people that are using Kickstarter will
Speaker 4: see your platform, I mean, your your project. And so
Speaker 4: a lot of people make the mistake that they launch
Speaker 4: a project and then they don't get their friends or
Speaker 4: family to back the project or support the project, and
Speaker 4: then it just gets lost. You really have to have
Speaker 4: a go to market strategy where you're bringing your audience
Speaker 4: and doing your marketing up front, because once you get
Speaker 4: that going, then all the millions of people that aren't
Speaker 4: Kickstarter are going to start to see your project as well.
Speaker 2: Do you coach people in that at all?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a whole outreach team, Customer Success team,
Speaker 4: all the things to help people be successful on that,
Speaker 4: and then we have tons of content out there to
Speaker 4: help people be successful and launch successfully.
Speaker 1: All right, perfect, I still want your job listen, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can talk about it.
Speaker 5: I also want to know.
Speaker 1: How you got it as your name, because you know
Speaker 1: how hard that is.
Speaker 3: It's just at ever It everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 4: Instagram, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, everywhere I have.
Speaker 3: I'm a hustler.
Speaker 5: Just get ever Itt.
Speaker 3: I'm a hustler. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Last thing for black business owners out there who have
Speaker 2: hustled and grind and grown businesses but want to scale them,
Speaker 2: what piece of advice.
Speaker 3: I would just say? What I said a little bit
Speaker 3: earlier is like be customer obsessed.
Speaker 4: Like that is that I can't stress that enough, Like
Speaker 4: talk to your customers, your potential customers, constantly begetting feedback loops.
Speaker 4: Once you get into a point where you feel like
Speaker 4: you know best, you've lost right. You have to constantly
Speaker 4: be taking the feedback with people, talking to people, finding
Speaker 4: out what you can do better, how you can improve,
Speaker 4: what things they love, what things they hate. So it's
Speaker 4: like being obsessed always, Like I'm on threads and Twitter
Speaker 4: and I'm looking at people who might be complaining again
Speaker 4: about kickstart and stuff like that, answering them directly, seeing
Speaker 4: how I can support them. I love what I do,
Speaker 4: and if you bring that level of obsession to your company,
Speaker 4: you're going to have success.
Speaker 1: And don't get offended when people are giving their feedback
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: All Right, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you, I really appreciate it. Good to see your friend.
Speaker 5: Good to see you. Every Happy Wealth Wednesdays.
Speaker 2: Everybody