Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor on blockchain, inclusion, unions and the future of crowdfunding • TechCrunch

For most CEOs, the first few weeks or months are spent learning the ropes, scrutinizing the finances and meeting shareholders. More often than not, press interviews are reserved for a later date. Everette Taylor, on the other hand, is jumping in with both feet. It hasn’t been a whole week since Kickstarter appointed the former Artsy CMO to the chief role, and from the sounds of it, he hasn’t wasted a moment.

Fresh off an appearance at Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Summit, he sat down for a chat in his Detroit Airbnb, only slightly worse for wear from his travels. The conversation comes in the middle of a listening tour of sorts, where Taylor says he’s engaged both Kickstarter staff and users about the things the service does well, and the things it could do better.

It’s an important step, as he takes on the role in the wake of turbulent times for the crowdfunding service. The past few years have been tough for Kickstarter, with layoffs, rigidity around unions, and some bad publicity related to blockchain plans. Taylor discusses all of this, and where the service – and crowdfunding in general – is headed.

How has the last week been?

It has been enlightening, to say the least. One of the things I knew about Kickstarter before I got here was that the company obviously had such incredible brand awareness. I thought it was really a strength. What I haven’t been surprised by, but really inspired by, is how passionate the community is, good or bad. This past week I was really able to get so much feedback, positive and negative, from our community and learn so many of the challenges that Kickstarter faces and our users in our community really want to see us succeed. Even if they’re upset that we don’t have this product feature, or that we’re doing this or that, they’re really that heavily invested.

On the negative side of things, what’s the most common feedback you’ve gotten so far?

The most common feedback is about our blockchain plans. I think there is a lot of misinformation out there. People think we’re turning Kickstarter into a web3 blockchain company. We have started a protocol as a separate unit. We are exploring the possibilities that are there in the blockchain to alleviate some of the challenges we face as a centralized crowdfunding company. That’s it. We are under no obligation to move Kickstarter to the blockchain or do anything specific there.

Is there a sense that the project itself has changed or changed as a result of the feedback from the users?

I do not think so. I think our intentions were always genuine and positive. We came to this from the point of supporting people, creators and backers – we wanted people to have a better experience and also wanted to see creators succeed more. […] This decentralized game is really just aimed at improving and helping to solve some of the headaches and problems we have in crowdfunding. But that does not mean that we are obliged to do so. We just want to explore it and see what’s out there that we can do.

What is the elevator for decentralization?

I’m definitely still learning, but imagine a world where you’re not limited to one platform if you’re parenting. That’s the beauty. That’s the beauty of it. If Indiegogo is on the protocol, if Kickstarter is on the protocol, everybody can benefit from each other.

What would you have done differently regarding the initial rollout of blockchain news?

I think it’s involving our community first and getting feedback from our community. It’s very important for a company to listen to your community, get feedback. I think we probably would have understood the ramifications of making that announcement better.

We only had good intentions, but we didn’t communicate very well. We could have communicated it better and engaged our community in some of the feedback about what we were working on. Now we have a Kickstarter Advisory Council. I’m actually going to meet them tomorrow.

What is the role of the Advisory Council?

These are our eyes and ears on the ground. These are the people who actively use Kickstarter as creators and backers. They are heavily involved in society. A lot of these people actually make a living from Kickstarter, so these people are heavily invested. They use the product, they know what they want to see and what they don’t want to see. They know what is needed. They know the complaints of our user base. Being able to get that feedback from that group to our strategy to help us prioritize is how I look at the group.

Kickstarter’s union efforts have been a big news story for the past couple of years. The last number I saw was that about 60% of the employees are now unionized. There was some initial pushback to this effort. [Former CEO Aziz Hasan] called it “inherently adversarial” in a memo. What are your feelings about the Kickstarter Union and how do you intend to work with them?

I just met the union reps last week, it was amazing. They really care that much about Kickstarter. They give their free time committed to providing a better experience for not only themselves, but their colleagues and also the future people working on Kickstarter. I find that incredibly inspiring. Here’s the thing: these are things I want to do anyway. These are the things I want to do to support the members of our team. The fact that it is in [Collective Bargaining Agreement] and in writing it is great. But these are things I want to make sure we support our team with anyway.

So it’s safe to say that you plan to work as directly with the union as possible going forward.

One thousand percent. The head of our union, I’ll probably hang out with him in Brooklyn soon, maybe play a few games. We’ll see what happens. It’s not union and Kickstarter. This is our team. I don’t see it as a union versus Kickstarter. These are the people I am going to war with.

Image credit: Kickstarter

There were layoffs – about 40%. Is Kickstarter in a better place financially than it was when they went down?

Kickstarter is a very healthy business from a financial perspective and very profitable. At the time of the decision, there was much uncertainty. I can’t even imagine being in Aziz’s shoes and trying to predict whether people will create product projects during the pandemic? I think [the reorg] Kickstarter did two things. Number one, it gave us a little more financial flexibility in terms of headcount. And number two, it gave us strategic thinking about what do we really need? All these tech companies are now laying off tons of people. Kickstarter, no problem. And I think it’s because after the layoffs, we’ve strategically hired and built a team that we need instead of having a more bloated team. I plan to continue to grow and hire incredible people here.

So no layoffs for the foreseeable future?

No layoffs in the foreseeable future.

Every time I mentioned crowdfunding, or Kickstarter specifically, someone will tell me a story about a time they got burned by a campaign. Some of these people go back and do it again. Some of them don’t. Ultimately, can you win back the latter?

Absolutely. Here’s the thing: If you’re a person who wants to support people or support things you’re passionate about, that doesn’t change. I plan to make changes to our experience and help people have better experiences from the creator side and back end of the platform. Once these changes are made, trust me, I will scream these changes to the rooftops. And I want to make sure that people come back and have better experiences. It is one of my biggest priorities.

What can Kickstarter do to do a better job of really helping to highlight the smaller creators and smaller projects?

I really think about the lifecycle experience of a Kickstarter backer. If you are someone who has shown a history of supporting music projects, or you have shown a history of supporting people from Tacoma, Washington – if you show that you have intentions of wanting to support a certain thing, we should be telling you about these things. We should do a better job of engaging our users and telling them about the things they’re going to be most interested in on the platform. When they enter the platform, they get push notifications, or they get emails.

What is the future of crowdfunding?

When it came to Artsy, the art world was still largely very exclusive. Many people from different walks of life did not feel that the art world or buying art was an option for them. I think the same is true for crowdfunding. As incredible a job as Kickstarter has done, it’s still a niche space. What I want the future of crowdfunding to be is that anyone who has an idea—I don’t care about your socioeconomic background, race, or sexuality. I do not care. You have a platform that levels the playing field, and anyone who has an idea, anyone with a creative idea, or a project or a company or a brand or something they want to start, they can do it through a platform like Kickstarter, or any of our competitors or other players out there. I think the future of crowdfunding if we do this right is that we provide a platform for anyone to make their dreams come true. Anyone who has an idea, they feel they have an option to actually make it a reality.

When I talk about the future of crowdfunding, I think about people where I come from. I grew up in Southside Richmond. I didn’t grow up in the best neighborhood. A lot of people that I grew up with didn’t have the resources, or the money, or the direction or the guidance to be successful or able to do the things they wanted to do. We all have dreams. The difference is that the people with the resources and the money to actually make those dreams come true are usually the ones who are actually able to see those dreams and bring them to reality. At Artsy, I wanted to see more black collectors or collectors of color, female collectors, I wanted to see more artists on our platform thrive. When I got there, the majority of artists on the platform who were successful were white men. And when I left, the majority of the most successful artists were people of color – I think it was 70% people of color who were the most successful on the platform.

How could you influence this change at Artsy? And what are your plans to bring some of that to Kickstarter?

By seeing them and making people feel seen. They’re out there, they just want to be engaged, they want to feel seen, they want to feel heard. There are so many amazing creators of color from diverse backgrounds who just don’t feel seen and heard. My biggest thing I want to take away from Artsy is to make sure they feel heard, that they feel engaged, that they feel important. You do that, and you make sure you build with them in mind, when you do marketing campaigns, when you do product innovations. You have everyone in mind. I know it sounds so simple, but it’s really the intention that you bring to building a company and making sure that everyone is included, and you have an inclusive mindset when you do that.