For science!
Hi I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson and this is "Rising Stars."
We are talking today with Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter.
and it's responsible for enabling 100,000 projects
to have raised more than $2 billion.
- That's correct
- What were you thinking?
How did this happen?
How did you just extract $2 billion from people's pockets and redistribute it?
— Yeah, no
It has surprised us.
I mean, the the idea for Kickstarter came from my partner Perry Chen, in 2001.
He wanted to throw a concert in New Orleans.
He did not have that money,
but had the thought of,
what if I could put the idea for the concert online,
people put up a credit card,
if the show sells out everyone's credit card is charged and the show happens.
If nobody cares, nobody pays. Nothing happens.
Then he and I met here in New York City, in 2005.
He was an artist and a waiter.
I was a rock critic for the Village Voice. We met at the restaurant where he worked.
He shared this idea he had with me.
So, we decided to start working on it.
If a project raises its funding, if they raise their $100,000.
We'd take 5% of what they raised.
If they don't, we take nothing.
Simple as that.
It's about 40% of projects reached their goal.
The average project raises $6,000, or so.
But the most, a project has raised is $22 million.
The smallest is probably $50.
But probably, you know, the meat and potatoes,
Kickstarter project is someone raising $15,000 to fund a documentary
or to make an album.
But in areas like hardware or games,
where there are massive fan communities,
those are projects where you'll see 100,000 people backing.
Whereas, for an album it will be more like 100 people backing.
It's quite utopian.
I remember for many years going around
pitching investors or whoever, with this idea.
We had nothing built. We just had some mock-ups of what the site would look like.
Yeah, people really didn't get it.
There's not a lot of enthusiasm, not a lot of enthusiasm.
— What's your favorite project that didn't get funded?
Oh, that didn't get funded. Wow.
Early on, there was a police sketch artist,
who launched a project.
Who wanted to draw a sketch of you and your friends, and had this concept of
combining faces until creating the aggregate face of you and your entire social circle.
But, as like a police sketch drawing as if you're a wanted murderer.
This is what police sketch artists think about.
— This is the amalgamated face of you and your friends
Yeah, exactly.
— Whoa
Yeah, most projects that are funded, are over-funded
and often, significantly so.
Oh, okay. Wait. Wait.
So if you put a "I need this much," people then keep giving money,
because they want a piece of the action,
— Yeah —
That just grows the scale of the project
— Yeah, we don't put a limit.
We had debated whether to put a limit.
We just thought,
'Well, we don't have to because why would anyone support over the amount?'
This person says they need $8,000. People give $8,000.
I think our third week, we had a project blow past its goal on its first day.
It was the first time we had to design the site around the idea,
of things exceeding a 100%.
We didn't anticipate the level of generosity that would be there.
— You must be one of the most hopeful people in society.
Absolutely.
— Because you see the best of everyone
Absolutely, probably the project that was the most special to me,
was one, very early on.
A woman named, Emily Richmond, who is in her early 20s.
wanted to sail around the world, by herself.
So, I paid $15 in exchange,
I would get a polaroid sent from her trip.
It was all it said.
In a year and half later, I get a strange envelope in the mail.
I open it up, I unfold this map.
Written on the map, is a letter where she describes sitting on
this island in the South Pacific.
At the end, she took the Polaroid tucked it in
and mailed it to me, from Papua New Guinea.
It's not just the thing, it's a connection to the person.
It's an experience and it's knowing that,
"yeah, here's a young woman just sailing around the world because that's what's in her heart."
There are some household brands, today, that you Kickstarted.
Oculus Rift
— Yeah
"Make a pledge and help us change gaming forever."
— Yeah
You had something to do with that.
Yeah, Oculus started on Kickstarter
so did Cards Against Humanity.
In the last 7 years, there has been an Oscar-nominated Kickstarter-funded movie.
7 years, straight.
This model of funding things has a very long history.
We think of the first Kickstarter project as being in
the 17th century, when Alexander Pope translated 'The Illiad' from Greek to English,
for the first time.
To do that he got monetary support from 700 subscribers,
who in exchange got their name in the front of the first edition
and a copy of the book when it was done, four years later.
This is a Kickstarter project. This is how "The Iliad" as we still read it today, was created.
This is how, traditionally, mankind has produced culture,
or reached for the stars, literally and figuratively
— I'm persistently enchanted. Every time I see a community
of people wanting to put up their own micro satellite.
— Yeah
They just want a piece of the action
There's been hundreds of those.
Hundreds. We've had it for anywhere from
kindergarteners through scientists from JPL.
— Jet Propulsion Lab
Yeah, working to put things into orbit or out of orbit.
One of the core concepts of Kickstarter was to create a universe,
a whole other economy where things could exist
just because people were excited.
A lot of ideas contort themselves to fit a profit motive,
to fit the demands of the market.
But what does the world look like, if ideas can exist in their purest form,
due to people's passion, enthusiasm?
That seemed like a world worth trying to create.
— I just realized typically, at least, in my field.
We would apply for a grant from NASA or the National Science Foundation,
both of which are tax-based agencies.
— Yeah
If you voluntarily allocate your money, you're a much stronger participant.
The money you're not otherwise spending on yourself.
Yeah. Well there's examples of I know people like asking
for extra money to be given to NASA on their tax form, at the end of the year.
But unfortunately doesn't work that way.
Wouldn't be interesting if it did?
If you allocated money according to your own wishes rather than what Congress wishes.
I think the country would look very different
— For sure
Some of the NASA naysayers, they'll say,
'Why are we spending money up there and not down here?'
'How much money do you think we're spending up there?'
— Yeah
"Oh... 5%, 10%?"
No, and then I tell them,
"It's .5% of their tax dollars."
If you colored in a stripe on a dollar,
1/2 of of 1 percent of that dollar,
doesn't even get you into the ink,
if you color it in.
So, it's one thing to fund kindergarteners and it's a very different thing to say,
"Alright. I want to crowdsource a mission to Mars."
— Yeah
That's a whole other scale.
— Yeah
Is that within the reach of the generosity the public?
— Yeah
You think, you can lay down $100 billion?
I mean probably not me, personally.
— Yeah. I know, but it's ...
But humanity? Yeah.
You know, this is the exact sort of project,
that would actually do quite well.
If you think about the Statue of Liberty,
was funded in a method, like Kickstarter.
The French,
— I didn't know that
built the statue, but there was nowhere in New York that put it.
So, the New York Herald Tribune
got New Yorkers to each put up $5 a piece, to fund the
pedestal that the Statue of Liberty stands on.
Oh. The French didn't give us the pedestal.
We got a statue, "Alright, guys what are we gonna to do?"
— "Where is this going put this?" Yeah.
So, New Yorkers did that then,
putting up $150,000 to have a place of Statue of Liberty.
That's $150,000 in like 1870 dollars
I think that there are ways that this system
could aggregate that level support.
— Lets talk fast numbers
We have 300 million people,
— Yeah
in the country.
If everyone gave a $1, that's $300 million.
If everyone gave $10, that's $3 billion.
Well, you know.
The people can put up $50 million and then Buffett and Bezos and Gates and all.
They can take care of the rest or something.
But this could be the greatest collective action, by man.
Other than, awaiting the next really cool project to be funded.
What's in your future?
We became a public benefit corporation.
It's basically somewhere, exactly between being
a for-profit company and a not-for-profit, where you are legally required to
produce a positive good for society and you draft a charter saying,
what you are to be held accountable for.
You know, we declare a commitment to artists and creative people
working in less commercial areas.
We donate 5% of our after-tax profits,
to arts and music education programs and
to organizations fighting to end systemic inequality.
We pledge to never use legal
but esoteric tax avoidance strategies,
and we basically just tried to carve out
of what do we think it means to be a company in the 21st century.
One that is conscious. One that is 'woke'
in that, you know, has a sense of belonging to a greater society.
And doesn't want to extract from that society,
but wants to build upon it.
— What kind of a company are you?
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Well, we've ...
— You want to build from ever society instead of extract from it? (Laughs)
You know, we think that ...
— What the hell is wrong with you
This is not a hippie granola thing.
We think this is the future.
We think that this is what all companies
eventually, will aspire to be.
Yeah, it's awesome.
It's a lot of fun.
So you're giving creative people
a conduit to visibility and success,
so that they can participate in enhancing civilization,
rather than being subject
to the judgment of others, who know not what they criticize.
— Yeah. Love it. Yes, please.
Okay
— Let's do it
Dude, excellent.