The Scene
Everette Taylor is an unusual CEO running an unusual company. Kickstarter, the US crowdfunding platform that burst onto the scene in 2009, is a public benefit corporation with a labor union, a work-from-wherever policy, and a four-day-week schedule. Taylor, who experienced homelessness as a child in Richmond, Virginia, and started his first company at the age of 19, has risen rapidly.
Since the former Artsy chief marketing officer was named to lead Kickstarter at 33, he has repositioned the fundraising site that gave Allbirds, Oculus, Oura, and Peloton their start in life as a key player in the creator economy, helping the people behind independent games, comic books and “romantasy” novels find a paying audience.
As Taylor adds new tools to let fans keep pledging money after the formal end of a fundraising campaign, bigger brands have been showing interest, too. Last year, L’Oréal used Kickstarter to test out an at-home hair coloring device with a community of early adopters.
So far, Kickstarter has garnered more than 100 million pledges, raising roughly $8.7 billion for almost 280,000 projects, including over $700 million last year. The private company doesn’t disclose financial details, but Taylor says it’s expecting “a very large leap” in revenue this year: “We’re in growth mode.”
Taylor will be speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit today. Here’s how he explained his company, and his leadership style, in a recent conversation.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
The View From Everette Taylor
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: What is Kickstarter today?
Everette Taylor: We’re in a very interesting place in the history of the company. For many years, Kickstarter put itself in a box in terms of what crowdfunding is and what the company could be defined as. I don’t like being put in a box, personally, and I don’t want Kickstarter to be put in a box either. So part of me coming in was just reimagining what the company could be. Originally, Kickstarter was this place that you came to, you raised some money, and we didn’t help you after. We’ve built a whole creator life cycle, from pre-launch to funding to post-campaign support.
Most large companies are trying to figure out how to become more innovative. What have you learned from sitting in this stream of innovation?
It’s not that difficult, because all I’ve done is spend time with creators and listen to them. A lot of our strategy has just come from me spending time and sitting with creators, being able to empathize with them, listen to them, [and] see the products and the changes that we needed to make as a company to really make the impact that we want.
I think sometimes CEOs can be a bit too removed from their user base. I have a data and insights team, but there’s nothing like being able to speak to creators and users themselves. So I spend a few hours a week talking to creators to have qualitative insights to match the quantitative insights that we’re constantly gathering.
Kickstarter is a rare tech company in that most people outside leadership roles are unionized. How well do you find that works?
I will say this: If any CEO really wants to become a better leader, try leading a unionized workforce. It makes you that much more empathetic towards the voices and the needs of your employee base.
We have a unionized workforce and we have a four-day week, but we’re the most productive that we’ve ever been, which probably goes against conventional wisdom. But I think by aligning a team and company with a vision that they believe in and that they’re passionate about, you see people go above and beyond when they feel invested.
How have you made a four-day week work?
My first day, I had to make the decision whether to keep the four-day workweek or not. I was pretty upset it fell in my lap. I just [thought], ‘This is freaking ridiculous. We’re not moving in the right direction as a company. We need to work harder. How can we give up 20% of our workweek?’
But I knew I couldn’t lose the company. So I instilled my principles of accountability, of velocity, of making sure that we had goals and hard deadlines and things like that.
And I realized we could be way more productive than in the 40-hour, five-day workweek structure [by telling people], ‘Hey, go reevaluate all of the meetings that you’re in.’ What we say to people is, if you don’t get what you need to get done in four days, you’d better work Friday, you’d better work Saturday, you’d better work Sunday, whatever you need to do, because you are letting down someone else.
You’re one of the younger CEOs. Do you think there’s a generational style that marks you out?
I think I am my style. Like, I don’t know any CEOs like me. When I took this job, I’d just turned 33 years old. I’m a Black man, which is rare already as a CEO. I don’t have a college degree. I didn’t come from a big city. I have had a wealth of experiences, from being homeless to making it out. And I just think those unique experiences make me uniquely me.
I think my style is very different because I didn’t have a blueprint. I’m figuring this out as I go. I kind of got thrown into the pool, and I’m just figuring it out, and I’m asking different questions and thinking about things differently, and I’ve been enjoying the ride, man.