Yancey Strickler

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Yancey Strickler
Sportsfile (Web Summit) (22761765181).jpg
BornNovember 4, 1978
Alma mater William & Mary
Occupation(s)Writer and Entrepreneur
Known forCo-founded Kickstarter, The Creative Independent, Metalabel, Artist Corporations
Website Official website OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Yancey Strickler (born November 4, 1978) is an American author, entrepreneur, and former music critic. He co-founded Kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects. [1]

Contents

Biography

Strickler was born in rural Virginia. [2] While attending Giles High School he became interested in journalism and earned an internship with The Roanoke Times New River Current. [3] He attended College of William & Mary where he majored in English and Literary and Cultural Studies. [4] After graduating from William and Mary, he moved to New York City where he worked as a music journalist for publications including Spin , The Village Voice, and the website eMusic. [5]

Projects

In 2009, he co-founded Kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects. [6] He served as its CEO from 2014 through 2017. In 2015, he co-founded The Creative Independent, a source of emotional and practical wisdom for creative people. [7]

In 2021, he cofounded Metalabel, a platform that helps creative people release and sell work together in small groups. [8] Strickler wrote that the project was inspired by indie record labels and projects like The Royal Society where groups of individuals came together around a shared purpose. [9] The project has functioned as a creative label itself, releasing zines, books, and manifestos by the group, as well as an internet platform used by Brian Eno, Shantell Martin, The Creative Independent, and others to release their work. [10]

In 2025, he introduced Artist Corporations, or A-Corps, a new corporate structure intended to help artists, creators, and creative groups more easily formulate legal entities, access funding and health insurance, and create equity and ownership for their practices and work. [11] The idea was first introduced at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, in April 2025. [12]

Writing

In 2019, he wrote This Could Be Our Future, a Penguin Random House book about building a society that looks beyond profit as its core organizing principle. [13] The book also describes a decision-making framework that Yancey invented called Bentoism, which segments self-interest into four-dimensions: Now Me, Future Me, Now Us, and Future Us. [14]

In 2019, he published "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet", an essay originally sent to a newsletter list that went viral.[ citation needed ] The piece observed that as the internet became a more dangerous place, people were shifting into dark forests — "non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified" spaces like group chats, podcasts, and newsletters — where they could communicate safely without pressure. [15]

In 2024, Strickler turned the essay into a book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet, that included pieces from Venkatesh Rao, Maggie Appleton, Joshua Citarella, Caroline Busta, Lil Internet, and Leith Benkhedda, who together formed a new publishing group, the Dark Forest Collective. [16] The group published a second book in 2025, Antimemetics by Nadia Asparahouva, for which Strickler served as editor.

References

  1. "Kickstarter Focuses Its Mission on Altruism Over Profit". New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  2. "How to Make Decisions That Reflect Your Values". GQ . Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  3. "Project need a kickstart". The Roanoke Times . Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  4. "The CNBC Next List". CNBC . Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  5. "How Kickstarter's Yancey Strickler Made the Tough Decision to Quit His Day Job". Inc. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  6. "Kickstarter Focuses Its Mission on Altruism Over Profit". New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  7. "Introducing the Creative Independent". Yancey Strickler. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  8. "Is Metalabel, From the Former CEO of Kickstarter, the Cure for the Ills of the Creator Economy?". ArtNet. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  9. "Introducing Metalabel". Yancey Strickler. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  10. "About Metalabel". Metalabel. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  11. "Artist Corporations". Artist Corporations. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  12. "Forget Hustle Culture. Behold the Artist Corporation". TED. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  13. "This Could Be Our Future Review: Building the High Road". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  14. "Bentoism.org". Yancey Strickler. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  15. "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet". Yancey Strickler. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  16. "The Economics of Self-Publishing a Book". Yancey Strickler. Retrieved 23 August 2025.