Yancey Strickler

Hey, Patty, thanks for having me on.

My name is Yancy Strickler.

I grew up on a farm in Southwest Virginia.

My father was a country singer.

My mom is a secretary.

And I was initially a writer, and I was one of the first writers for Pitchfork.

I wrote for the Village Voice about music for many years.

and started a tiny record label here in New York, putting out bands I saw at shows in Brooklyn.

And around that time, also co-founded Kickstarter with Perry Chen and Charles Adler, Kickstarter which launched in 2009.

I eventually became CEO of Kickstarter, created the Creative Independent, which is a wonderful resource for wisdom and emotional truth, still running today.

TCI is the best.

Honestly, of everything I've done, TCI is genuinely, I think, the thing I feel most proud of.

It's so pure and wonderful.

I've written three books.

This Could Be Our Future, which is an economics philosophy book, On the Creative Life, which is a creative practices book that I did with Josh Citarella, and then a book called The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet with a bunch of great people.

And in the past few years, I've been focused on a project called Meta Label, which is we're a studio of a small group of people who release projects that help creative people cooperate.

That's always the focus.

How do we make it easier to do things together?

And through that, we've released books and zines and podcasts, as well as software, different kinds of tools, in-person events, and now a law.

And through all these projects, I'm just a writer, creative person in my heart that's just driven by curiosity and always trying to figure something out by doing it.