Why Crowdfunding Can Be a Smarter First Step Before Pitching Venture Capital

I think the breakthrough with, you know, the Oculus, the Pelotons, and the Oura Rings of the world is that they felt like first of its kind. Like they really felt like first to market. Like nothing else was out there, and I think it really stood out. We see, you know, tons of founders that have maybe pitched VCs, you know, they've gotten five rejections from venture capitalists just this week, but they're building a cool company, they want money. What would you say to them um to encourage them to look at alternative sources of funding? Yeah, I think ownership is a beautiful thing. Mhm. You know, creative independence is a beautiful thing. You know, I've seen so many founders get kicked out of their companies or lose control of their companies. A lot of people

don't understand what it truly means to take venture capital. That was Everett Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter. In this episode, we're leaving the world of venture capital and discussing crowdfunding. Kickstarter has helped to launch creative projects like Oculus, Peloton, and Oura. Unlike venture capital, founders on Kickstarter can raise money without giving up equity while simultaneously finding their earliest customers and testing whether people actually want what they're building. And Everett argues that for some founders, crowdfunding shouldn't just be a backup plan when VCs say no, but it can actually give you leverage when you eventually do decide to raise. And before we get into it, one quick

note. This is our last episode of the season, but don't worry, we'll be back in November. In the meantime, I'm Isabelle Johannessen, and you're listening to Built Mode. Hi Everett, how's it going? I'm good. I'm in Hawaii right now, so I cannot complain. Lucky you. Um well, thanks for joining us on Built Mode. I'm very excited to chat with you about all things Kickstarter and crowdfunding, but before we get into all that, I'd love to talk about your background specifically. So, you are a founder yourself, having built and sold multiple companies, but you didn't have a traditional fundraising journey. So, was that a deliberate choice or

circumstance and how did that shape how you think about capital? It's funny, you know, for me I come from Richmond, Virginia, so far away from Silicon Valley. So, when I started my first company, I didn't know what a Silicon Valley was. I didn't know what a venture capitalist was. I didn't know what a SaaS business or subscription business or ARR or any of that stuff meant. And so, I was very non-traditional. Like I started my first company and built my first company by throwing parties. Like I threw parties to make money to fund the software that I was developing. So, I've always had a non-traditional path. You know, I sold my first company at 21 for a lot less money than I should have and you know, I then moved to the

West Coast and I was between kind of like Southern LA to Silicon Valley. And you know, when I was building my companies, I think coming from Richmond, Virginia, coming from a background that I came from, I always was more so building companies that wasn't focused on venture capital. And I give people the advice all the time when you're looking for VC money, like they're looking for outsized exits. And I was building like very small seven to eight-figure profitable companies. And so, I always focused and optimized for profitability early rather than the big idea. And it's probably one of my biggest regrets not going after the big idea and going after some of that venture capital. But throwing a you know, splashy launch

party is usually a good idea. So, I'm glad to hear you started with an event space marketing campaign. But let's talk about the fact that you sold your company and then it was resold for much more a few months later. What did that teach you about understanding your own value and how do you think that lesson can apply to founders while they're thinking about you know, taking outside capital? Yeah, so this was in 2011. This is pre-chat GPT. This is pre a lot of the resources that founders would have today. And so, I didn't really know how to value my company, nor did I have the expertise in what I actually had

built and how it could have been applied at scale, right? And so, I think it's really important for founders to take a step back, do a lot of market research, understand like the value in what they're building. Also thinking about how the technology and the things that you're building could be applied at scale, right? And that's how people are thinking about acquisition and exits, etc., etc. And I wasn't really thinking about it that way. I built something cool. It was great for a local events. I was not thinking about building it on a national or even international scale, like say an Eventbrite. And so, for me, I learned that you need to understand the value of what you've built. You need

to understand the competitors and what else is being built out there. And then also, you need to know if you're getting taken advantage of not or not. You need to look up other companies similar to yours. You need to look up, you know, what valuations are for similar companies of your revenue or scale or the type of technology that you've built. Um and that's something that I didn't know or understand at the time. I just saw a check with a lot of zeros that I had never seen before, and I was like, let's do this. I can understand the temptation. I think today we see a lot of, you know, the opposite problem of founders vying for these ridiculously high valuations. That has a whole 'nother slew of challenges that comes after that. But

speaking of successful companies, so let's switch gears. Today, you are the CEO of Kickstarter, which is absolutely a household name at this point. Let's talk about that. So, tell me about Kickstarter and how you as a founder ended up being the CEO of Kickstarter. Well, that's a great question. I'll try to make this as quick as possible. So, you know, my career really spaned um across building my own companies, but also being a marketing executive. So, I've worked for a lot of different brands like Sticker Mule as their CMO, Etsy, the largest marketplace for buying and selling art as their CMO, but at the same time throughout the years I was also building, like I said before, these like profitable

kind of smaller software or like service-based companies, agency-based companies. And I think the combination of the success that I saw as a founder and then also being a creator myself, you know, building an audience of over a million people across different platforms on social media. So, being a creator myself and kind of being a founder, you know, not kind of but being a founder myself, knowing what it is to run a small business, how to develop products and get it out into the world. And then on the other side, you know, I like to think that I became one of the best consumer CMOs or you know, B2C CMOs out there in the world.

Um, and so taking that expertise of being a founder and then also reinvigorating brands at a time where Kickstarter was stagnating. You know, when I came in they were down 20% year-over-year revenue. Um, you know, they weren't the darlings of Silicon Valley the way they were years prior. And so I think my expertise in marketing and brand and product and innovation alongside my own experience as a founder and creator made me an interesting candidate, especially for all the success that I had at Etsy in the marketplace there. Hm. Very interesting journey and I can absolutely see how you were the pick for that role was kind of beginning to

reinvent themselves. Let's give a little bit of an overview of the different types of crowdfunding to our listeners cuz there are different this takes different shapes and forms. So, there's donation-based, equity-based, reward-based. For a founder deciding which path might make sense for them, what is the difference in the framework for choosing? Yeah, so you know, Kickstarter is reward-based crowdfunding. I'll save that for last. So, donation-based crowdfunding, you're probably most people listening to this is probably most familiar with GoFundMe. I wouldn't necessarily suggest this for founders. Donation-based crowdfunding tends to work a lot better, unfortunately, when bad things are happening like, you know, someone passed

away, a tragedy happened, etc., etc. Like, that's where most of the money is made in donation-based crowdfunding. The problem with donation-based crowdfunding is that people are just giving out of the kindness of their hearts. They're not giving any you know, they're not getting anything for it. And so, it's really harder to scale that as a founder or entrepreneur to raise the capital that you truly need because like, you're building some new app, like who's going to really be that empathetic about that from a donation-based standpoint. Then, you have equity-based platforms like a Republic, etc., etc. And that is you are giving equity away for, you know, funding on the platform, right? So,

you're not giving necessarily physical goods or anything like that, but you're actually giving pieces of your company away to raise money on these platforms. People are giving money because they want to be an investor in your company, which has its pros and cons, right? Um and uh that is really viable, I'd say, a lot of times also for people who are building like software products and things that don't have really tangible things that they can give to people. The third one is reward-based crowdfunding, Kickstarter. And reward-based crowdfunding works in a way where you are giving something away for that capital, right? So, it's non-dilutive, so you're not giving any equity away, but people expect something

often times with Kickstarter. So, the best product market fit for a Kickstarter is actually physical-based goods. So, some of the most successful companies on Kickstarter like the Oculuses and the Aura Rings and the Pelotons, they were successful cuz people were able to get the physical reward or the hardware or the thing that people wanted. So, the people that are listening that are hardware founders, there's no better platform than Kickstarter to get that, you know, find that product market fit, build that audience, um and raise capital for what you're doing. But, the cool thing about Kickstarter is that, you know, unlike VC where, you know, you need to build like a 1 billion, 2 billion, 10 billion

dollar company, with Kickstarter, it could be a lifestyle business, it could be a small business, to multi-billion dollar businesses, as well as cultural businesses. So, you know, if you're a filmmaker, if you're making music, if you're, you know, you know, you know, uh making a book, you're an author, publishing is huge for us. So, we have a widespread with uh widespread variety of things that people can build on the platform and reward-based crowdfunding makes it pretty unique without diluting your equity in the company. If you enjoy the conversations we have on Build Mode, then come join us for in-person conversations at TechCrunch Disrupt, happening October 13th to 15th here in San Francisco. Use code buildmode25

for 25% off tickets. We hope to see all of you builders there. Interesting. And so, I mean, you know, I think Kickstarter has absolutely become a household name and is almost a verb at this point, right? We're going to maybe not, but we're going to make a Kickstarter. It's it's the definition of that Oh, no, it is a verb. Which is great. That's the goal of most companies. So, but I want to touch on this equity crowdfunding for a minute because that has become more of a topic in the recent years. How do you view equity crowdfunding as a competitor, as a partner? I mean, how does that kind of play into Kickstarter's strategy?

I mean, I don't really see uh I mean, we're much bigger than the equity uh platforms. I don't really see them as competition. I think we have a very unique value proposition in terms of being non-dilutive. Like, also, you know, we don't have the SEC all in our business. Like, it's a very complex when you're going out there um and raising money in that way because you have to give all your financials, you have to give away a lot of informa- A lot of founders don't realize that. When you're doing equity-based crowdfunding, there's a lot of compliance and governance things that you have to do to go out there and you might have to reveal more out there to the public than you're you really are you're really willing to do. It's almost

like taking a company public, right? In terms of like offering um offering these shares. So, I don't think a lot of people realize that. With Kickstarter, we feel very confident because of our moat and our moat is our We have millions of people using our platform, and we have people that are on our platform every day looking for new things in the niches that they love, right? And the other platforms like a Republic and others, they don't have Like, you don't go on GoFundMe or Republic like, "Ooh, what can I back today?" Typically, you're being brought in by someone where as Kickstarter, we have millions of people that are just coming to the app and the website constantly that are looking for the those things. So, to us, we feel

like we're in a much stronger position in terms of our audience, and that audience is growing swiftly. We're having literally the best years of all time in company history. And so, I think that's what really separates us. That's right. It's like, when you're on the other platforms, you have to bring people to you. Kickstarter, yes, you have to bring some of the people to you, but we also have a large audience that we bring for people. And then also like, who really wants to give, you know, pieces of their company away? You know, it's only for a certain set of founders. Yeah, absolutely. And I can completely understand the difference for from the founder perspective. But, let's talk about this audience for a moment, too,

because, you know, I think the type of person who, you know, is savvy with startup investing would be very, you know, inspired or be interested in a crowd equity funding situation, but I think the Kickstarter model is more applicable to the mass consumer who wants to get a piece of some of these companies and is easier to digest and understand and feels less risky in many ways. But with that, I want to touch on this idea that, you know, is Kickstarter only for B2C companies or is there an avenue for B2B companies to be successful on Kickstarter as well? Yeah, I think there is an avenue for B2B, but you have to understand that like you have to there has to be something creative or engaging about what you're doing on the B2B side for

people to want to, you know, essentially invest into your idea because they're not getting equity, right? Like what can you creatively do on the B2B side to give out rewards or make people feel engaged. So, on a B2B side, you probably have to be solving a problem that people care about like or something that engages people, but I wouldn't say normally B2B is probably the best use case uh for Kickstarter, but you can use it, but those don't typically be the multi-million dollar raises. Like the the multi-million dollar raises of 10, 20, 30, 40 million plus dollars on the platform typically are B2C products. Yeah, makes sense. So, now what about the difference between, you know, a founder who is building a music album or

I guess maybe you wouldn't call that building, but creating a music album versus a founder who's building a hardware device both on Kickstarter, but solving very different funding problems. So, for the tech founder who could theoretically go and raise a seed round on Sand Hill Road, what is Kickstarter giving them that venture capital can't or won't? Oh, a lot of things. Number one, it gives you early adopters, right? Like VCs can't give you early adopters. They can't give you a huge audience. Design and technology is our largest category on Kickstarter. We grew 70% last year just in the design and

technology space, right? So, we have millions and millions of people on the platform that are early adopters of technology. There is nowhere else on the internet that you can get access to that level of audience and be able to raise 20, 30, 40 million dollars for that. So, you're getting early adopters, you're getting the capital to build out the hardware and do the things, you're getting the first advocates for your business um or your product, you're getting the first evangelists, the people who are going to give you feedback, the people that are going to really be that word of mouth that you need, and you get all of that and you have a proof point. So, say, you know, instead of going out for

a seed of 2, 3, 4, 5 million, if you raise a couple million on Kickstarter, you're in a way better position when you go out to raise money, right? Because if you're a hardware founder and you're going out and you're like, "Hey, I don't have any capital or any proof points," then hey, they might be taking a big slice of your company just for a couple million dollars. But if you're like, "Hey, actually, I've already sold 2, 3, 4 million dollars worth of products on Kickstarter. I've proved out the product market fit," then you are in a position of advantage, and you have leverage when you go out there to raise capital.

Yeah, absolutely. [snorts] And as you mentioned earlier, the Oculus, Oura Ring, Peloton, there's so many, you know, amazing examples of how Kickstarter really helped those companies raise funds before then going to raise millions in venture capital. And I guess that is really one of the arguments for crowdfunding cuz, you know, VCs are often taking bets on teams and markets um before the products ever exist, whereas Kickstarters back, you know, products that they can see and touch. I'm curious how, you know, to build a hardware product, a robot, a ring, like that takes a lot of capital to even get that far. So, what does a founder need to even launch their Kickstarter campaign?

Yeah, so really it's like you got to have an idea and you got to have a prototype. So, you do need the upfront investment to actually have built a prototype, right? As long as you have a working prototype for whatever it is that you're doing, we are fine. The rest of that can be raised on Kickstarter. So, the beauty of Kickstarter is, hey, some of these hardware products especially is very capital intensive. And so, you can get the money upfront by by getting those products funded by all of the people that are on Kickstarter. But so, you know, in the venture capital ecosystem, there is there has been at least a little bit of a stigma that crowdfunding was for founders who

couldn't raise VC money. I'm curious from your perspective if you've seen that change or if it quietly is still a stigma that you think exists today. Isabelle, no more of that, right? Like things are changing. Kickstarter is a very different platform over the past several years. You have large multinational corporations like Anker and L'Oreal and others that are dropping products. You have celebrities. You have people with large audiences, big content creators. It is now not seen as this place where, hey, I don't have the money or I can't do it, but wow, Kickstarter has millions of people that I can tap

into that is, you know, different from my own audience. I mean, some of these projects are getting 70, 80% of funding or more from people they don't even they've never met or had access to that just come organically from our platform. So, even if you are a big creator, you're famous, you have money, etc., why wouldn't you want to tap into that audience? So, you're seeing that shift and change in brand perception and you see it on the platform every day with all the million you know, the mini million-dollar-plus projects on the platform. Yeah, I mean Kickstarter has funded hundreds of thousands of projects of founders who maybe didn't fit the VC mold to begin with. VC mold is getting more and more narrow and yet more and

more people than ever are building companies. I'm curious how the AI boom, the AI wave has affected the type of projects that you're seeing on Kickstarter. Yeah, so in two ways. And one is kind of a negative way, not negative, but kind of a bad thing that turns into a positive thing. So on one side of the world, we're seeing massive layoffs across the tech industry. We're seeing people, some of the most brilliant engineers, marketing minds, consumer thinkers, etc., etc., strategists be out of work, right? And they have to turn to entrepreneurship, right? A big reason for that is some of the AI things that are happening, right? But what

that's doing is almost forcing people into entrepreneurship, forcing people into becoming creators. And now you're seeing all of these people that are like, "Hey, I'm out of work. There's this dream or aspiration that I've always wanted to pursue. Let's do that now." And those people are coming to Kickstarter. On the flip side, in terms of AI, it's easier to create a company or do things more than ever, right? And so we're seeing more people that feel like they can actually create and start something on Kickstarter with the ability to use AI and have AI to help them support them. And then the big thing is AI-powered hardware. So

AI-powered hardware is a category that is exploding on Kickstarter, right? And so to see that happen and see people raising millions and millions of dollars for AI-powered hardware tools, it's been really cool to watch. Well, yeah, I mean AI-powered hardware tools is also the hottest rage in the VC ecosystem. So, I guess I'm curious what a journey looks like for a founder who, you know, maybe is vibe coding something in their basement and comes up with something cool, launches it on Kickstarter, and really wants to scale it. So, at some point they may need venture funding to really be able to take it to the next level. How much of that are you seeing? Are you seeing

VCs scout off of Kickstarter? Are you seeing these companies kind of follow that trajectory? Or many of them kind of staying in that, you know, like you said earlier, hundred thousand, couple hundred thousand dollar, you know, profit range and kind of stopping there? No, no, people are scaling. I mean, we have companies that are becoming multi-multi-million-dollar companies off of the platform. People that are using it as a way to get in front of VCs or having a proof point of their products. You know, like that shows, like when you can raise 10, 20 million dollars and sell like that's not just raising 10 to 20 million dollars. That's selling 10 to 20 million dollars of product. Like that is a huge signal to I think venture capitalist that this is something that's

worth being invested in. Now, everyone doesn't have the aspirations to become the multi-billion-dollar company, but we are seeing the pipeline of people doing this and then getting the investment and really, really scaling. And one of the things that we've done at Kickstarter is, you know, I say all the time I don't want us to be seen as just a crowdfunding company because now we're giving people the tools before they launch and after they launch, shipping, taxes. We have late pledges now, which is like e-commerce after your campaign, all these things to continue to be able to run your business and be successful post a Kickstarter. And so, we're seeing people, and you know, we have Shopify

integrations and all those things that are helping people, you know, move to the next level. But the one thing that is happening, too, not to be too verbose, is that some people are like, "Holy crap, we're building a really fast-growing audience and we're profitable already. Do we need venture capital? You know, because they're able to be able to go up into the right so fast, but it really depends on the company. No, and I think that's fantastic because as I was saying earlier, too, the venture capital, you know, the archetype of the founder that's being funded is getting more and more narrow. And so, what we want to do is also shine a light

on some of these alternative sources of funding and ways to get your company off the ground. And I think absolutely crowdfunding is something that more founders should seriously consider. So, what are your maybe top three tips for a founder who maybe hadn't considered crowdfunding before, wants to start a Kickstarter, um but has aspirations to scale, right? What are some of the elements of the campaign that you think are critical? Yeah, I think number one is like, you know, before you even launch a Kickstarter, making sure that you have some signal of product market fit. Like, going out there, asking people, you know, really understanding the problem

that you want to solve. Because once you get to Kickstarter, you're on the main stage, you're out there, right? Like, also that comes with things. People are seeing what you're building publicly, right? And so, you want to make sure that you've built some type of foundation um from a product market fit perspective. You feel like you've asked the right questions. Like, is this something that is a problem for people, truly a problem? Like, is this a must-have solution or service for people? Like, these are the things that you need to be asking yourself because once you go out there publicly, you know, you're really going to see. So, you know, don't, you know,

make sure that you got the information prior to that. Um the second thing is you have to look at Kickstarter like a marketing strategy. You have to have a go-to-market plan. You have to have video, creative, all of those things. And now with AI and like Adobe Firefly and all that, it's easier than ever to like create creative, create videos, create all the things that you need for a Kickstarter, but make sure that your creative and video is on point. That is the emotional element that gets people to really want to try to back you and support you on the platform. That is really, really important. And the last thing that I would say is like you have to build trust in a short amount of

time, right? So, that is important. So, you need to make sure that you're able to answer all the questions that backers or buyers may potentially have for it. And so, your manufacturing has to be on point. Your fulfillment solutions have to be on point. All of the unsexy stuff, it has to be on point before you launch the um launch the campaign. It's interesting cuz you know, in my head and I think maybe others as well, Kickstarter was really this, you know, the earliest of stages, right? To even get that proof of concept and test your MVP. But, it sounds like there's already quite a bit of groundwork that needs to be done before you can launch a campaign. Similar to, you know, before

you go and pitch a VC. Well, these days some people are doing it with just an idea and a ridiculous but alas is there any sort of, you know, guidance or consulting for founders that maybe literally just whipped this up in their garage and don't have access to an accelerator program or something that can help them even get to those stages that you're mentioning? Yeah, I mean, we have our own customer success team. So, um if you write in the Kickstarter, you go to Kickstarter, we have uh support teams for those early stage founders and people to make sure that they're able to be successful. We have a slew of

resources that one of which that we did with a company called LaunchBoom that literally walks you through step-by-step what it's like to launch a Kickstarter campaign and what you need to do. And so, there's videos, there's resources, there's our own internal teams everything that's out there. Um even using you utilizing AI, you'd be surprised how much information AI has and can pull around how to build successful uh Kickstarter campaigns. And so all of those that are there for resources for founders. So we've talked about sort of the earliest of stages, but I also want to touch on the fact that so you've brought some bigger brands onto the platform as well alongside of these some of these

indie creators. How does that, you know, make sure that Kickstarter doesn't become just a marketing channel for companies that already have resources, but the core of Kickstarter, the brand really comes from the scrappy founder who, you know, genuinely needs it. How do you tater that line? It's funny. I'm glad you asked that, but because we literally just launched this blog post that shows in a data how, you know, every year hundreds of millions of dollars from, you know, that are being contributed to other projects when these projects launch, right? So the people that are brought and attracted to Kickstarter from these campaigns are much more likely to support another campaign, right? And so, you know, the saying, you know,

rising tides lift all boats, right? Like we're seeing that with some of these bigger companies coming onto the platform. These people are coming into Kickstarter and like are like, "Whoa, this is cool." And they're discovering other products on the platform. So we're seeing the value of these bigger campaigns and these bigger companies and how they're positively impacting other campaigns on the platform. And we're still sticking to our roots. I mean, we just launched the next wave fund with Google. And this is giving $10,000 of non-dilutive capital to founders that are launching on Kickstarter. So it's like basically free $10,000. Here's $10,000 to help you get started when you're launching on

Kickstarter because we understand the importance of the early founders and we want to put our money where our mouth is to support founders in technology and gaming and other categories to support them from launching to launch on Kickstarter as well. That's fantastic. I really love to hear that. Um do you have a favorite product or project that's launched on Kickstarter that you've backed? Listen, that's like picking your favorite child. What I will say is me personally, I love cultural projects. So I love film, I love art projects, I love music. Those are the things that I love the most and like I try to give the most

love to. And so if you look, I've backed over I think 700 projects on Kickstarter over the past few years and so, you know, a lot of them slew on the um are on the kind of film, art, and music side. Yes, I back gaming and technology and all those projects, but like I'm a culture guy. I love art, I love music, I love fashion, I love art, and those are the types of projects that I tend to back. Yeah, I mean, of course, yeah, on this podcast we're not diving too much into the cultural stuff, but I can only imagine what Kickstarter is unlocking for some of the creative industries that are also having their own financing

challenges. It's interesting that it can solve a problem for so many different types of founders across industries. I want to go back to some of these major success stories in tech that Kickstarter has had with Peloton, Oculus, Oura Ring. I mean, you know, some of those are the biggest acquisitions and biggest household name tech products of our, you know, of our generation. What do you think they did differently to stand out so much on Kickstarter that the rest of the world, you know, caught on in the way they did? I think a few things. Number one is that like they had something truly innovative and stand out, right? Like there's a lot of copycats out there. There's a lot like you see, you know, we see it all

the time with certain technologies that people are like, oh, this person had success and so we're going to do a similar company and a similar company, similar company. I think the breakthrough with, you know, the Oculus, the Pelotons, and the Oura Rings of the world is that they felt like first of its kind. Like they really felt like first to market. Like nothing else was out there and I think it really stood out. I think number two is the founders themselves and the talent that the founders had and the ambition and the relentlessness the founders of those organizations have had. I think that is really something that is breaks through uh a lot of the noise. And I think the last piece of this is the their plans after, right? were ready to go after, right? They

got investors or they had the right marketing plans and go-to-market strategy after the success of those Kickstarters. And I think that is really key. It's like Kickstarter is the tip of the iceberg, right? Like in terms of really building and scaling a company and product. And so I think those founders were really ready to go. I can absolutely see that. And you know, again, to kind of wrap this up, we see, you know, tons of founders that have maybe pitched VCs, you know, they've gotten five rejections from venture capitalists just this week, but they're building a cool company, they want money. Of course, you know, maybe they're launching a consumer AI app, whatever it may be. They hadn't

considered Kickstarter as um a potential source of funding. What is really your pitch to them and what you would tell them in order to, you know, democratize access to funding? Cuz these days if you're not a Stanford dropout, you haven't exited a company, you don't have the network of Silicon Valley, it's it's very difficult to get that seed money. And I say seed money not just as a venture capital term, but like the seed money to start your business wherever it comes from. What would you say to them um to encourage them to look at alternative sources of funding? Yeah, I think ownership is a beautiful thing. You know, creative independence is a beautiful thing. You know, I've

seen so many founders get kicked out of their companies or lose control of their companies. A lot of people don't understand what it truly means to take venture capital. Like there's a slew of all types of governance issues. It becomes like Game of Thrones on your own board, right? There's a lot of things that comes with building venture capital or taking venture capital. And I would say that Kickstarter, we really represent creative ownership. We want people to be independent if it makes sense for them. We want people to have ownership. We want people to have freedom. We want people to be successful, right? And so, if you're a founder out there that truly believes in your idea and,

you know, people may not believe in you or, you know, you want to really be able to scale and tap into an audience of millions of people and you truly believe in what you're building, I think Kickstarter, there's no better place for that in the world. And we are so like driven, right? We're a public benefit corporation. We don't maximize for profits. We maximize for impact. So, we are truly here to help and support you be the best person and be the best founder and be the best company that you can be. And, you know, Kickstarter is open for business. So, we're here to help you.

All right. Now even I want to start a company after that inspirational speech. That is fantastic. I have had so much fun talking to you and I think there's a lot of really valuable nuggets of information in here for aspiring founders and early founders. Thank you so much for chatting with us and thanks for joining Build Mode. Thanks, Isabelle. Build Mode is a TechCrunch podcast. Each episode is produced and edited by Maggie Nigh and hosted by me, Isabelle Johanneson.

Our art and design is also by Maggie Nigh. A big thanks to Morgan Little who leads our audience development, the Foundry and Cheddar video teams, and most of all to you, the builders and everyone else in the wider startup community. We'll see you back here next time.