Kickstarter's Co-founder on Paralyzing Fear & Staying Punk Rock

Have you ever left something that was so tied to your identity, you worried, “Who am I without it?” A job? Maybe a relationship? Although terrifying, sometimes shedding an identity is where the magic happens. Who you are and what you actually stand for becomes a little clearer. At least that was the case for Yancey Strickler.

He co-founded Kickstarter and spent five years as CEO. Now Yancey is in the midst of stepping into his own identity without the backbone of the company he created. In his new book, This Could Be Our Future, he asks us to look "beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living." Yancey tells the story of his journey from growing up on a farm, to punk rocker, to building a tech company that transformed creative communities around the world. 

Startup life is messy. It comes with a lot of highs and lows. And leaving a job that defines your identity can be paralyzing. So is staying at one when it’s clearly time to go. We are in a similar moment in tech. We’re trying to figure out our identity in what Yancey calls a “dark forest where the loudest and most extreme voices are amplified.” You could argue it’s a pretty important time to understand our own values, and what we value as a society as a whole. In this episode of First Contact, we explore what it’s like to rediscover your identity and stay true to yourself through life’s most challenging moments.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
First Contact with Lori Siegel is a production of Dot
Dot Dot Media and I Heart Radio. The moment that
I can remember where I most felt the pain and
pressure of all that was in my last year as CEO,
and I was just standing there and my wife thought
I left for work and then found me standing by

(00:20):
the door, and I like had tears in my eyes,
and She's like, what what's going on? And I'm just like,
I just can't. I can't go in there and be
that person today. Yeah, I mean, what an extraordinary thing
to just be sitting at your front door not even
being able to open it. I remember the moment so
clearly because it was like I was looking at the
door knob and I couldn't figure how to make my arm.
It's just it just it just wouldn't move. And I

(00:40):
could just feel my body was just telling me, you know,
this is this is not working for you. Have you
ever left something that was so tied to your identity
you wonder or who am I without it? A job,

(01:03):
maybe a relationship. You just heard Yancey Strickler talking about
leaving Kickstarter. He's one of the co founders and for
five years he was the CEO Oftentimes, shedding an identity
is where a lot of the magic happens. Who you
are and what you actually stand for becomes a little
more obvious. At least it has for Yancy. I've known

(01:25):
him for many years, so I'm going to throw out
a couple words to describe him quiet, thoughtful, and a
little punk rock. Now he's in the midst of stepping
into his own identity without the backbone of Kickstarter. Yancey
left Kickstarter in seventeen and immediately he started thinking a
lot about what we value as a society and how

(01:48):
those values define who we are as individuals. He wrote
a book on it. It's called This Could Be Our Future.
He calls it a manifesto. The book outlines and exercise
that's worth trying out. It's called the Bento Box, and
it's meant to keep us grounded and most importantly, true
to our identity. I want to start this podcast with

(02:08):
one of my favorite Flannery O'Connor quotes. She writes, a
story is a way to say something that can't be
said in any other way, and it takes every word
in the story to say what that meaning is. To
hear why Yancy cares about what we value. To understand
his manifesto and its meaning, I think you have to
go back to the beginning. You've got to understand his

(02:29):
story from growing up on a farm to punk rocker
to building a tech company that transformed creative communities around
the world. It took us every word to get here.
I'm Laurie Siegel and this is First Contact. Okay, so welcome.

(02:52):
The podcast is called First Contact, and what I love
to do with our guests is talk about my first
contact with our guests and you, Yancy. I found one
of our last on camera interviews, which was me at
the Kickstarter headquarters, and it was I'll go to this
one because I think it was kind of significant. I
mean all of them were significant. Interview special. Yeah, because

(03:15):
you're I should say, you're up until a couple of
years ago, the CEO of Kickstarter and like really created
I would say, like at the forefront of crowdfunding. Like
people didn't even know the word crowdfunding until you guys
came along. But I remember sitting in the Kickstarter offices
in Brooklyn. It's like an old It's like a pencil factor,
an old pencil factor. Um, And it was when you

(03:38):
guys were announcing that you were becoming a public benefit
corporation and you did that with me. We were sitting
at like it almost felt like a picnic table or something,
and it was like you were fundamentally changing the structure
of your company to say, like, we're not just going
to be about money, We're going to be about doing
public good. That's like the idea behind be corp. Right

(03:58):
that that was that moment meant Yeah, it was you know,
we'd always been a very mission oriented company and very
present in the halls and rooms of Kickstarter, but had
we never really articulated what that meant. And the tech
environment that was about hyper growth and raising a lot
of VC and there's a Silicon Valley template that we

(04:20):
just turned our back on from the beginning. Just felt
strongly that raising a lot of money would just be
a compromise. But we're still like existing in that world
while being the weirdos in that world. And then we
we learned about the PBC format, and we learned about
it after Patagonia did it. Patagonia reincorporated from a classic
CE corps to a PBC and created a dual mission

(04:43):
of financial purpose and non financial purpose. Basically, well, I
guess if I could kind of go back to like
the root of that is what you were what you
were kind of saying, which is like, well, you know,
this is like this hyper growth period. It was weird
when you guys did it, like let's just take a
step back, like it was like a weird move. I
remember sitting in the scene and news room being like,
what is this changing structure? Like, Okay, they're not going

(05:06):
to be all about profit. This is before the conversation
that like Silicon Valley companies are way too much about profit,
like are we ruining the world? Like it was before?
A lot of that, and you as an individual, Um,
we'll get into this. You've always been like a little
punk rock and a little anti establishment, but Kickstarter itself
always felt a little bit punk rock and anti establishment.

(05:28):
I would say, as as someone who's interviewed founders for
a very long time, they kind of embodied the founder,
and I think it kind of embodied like who you
are and where you come from, which was did I
really like you grew up on a farm? I did?
I did? I did grew up on a farm. I
grew up evangelical Christian, you know, I'm from the country.
I'm a country boy, but I didn't. Even as I

(05:49):
grew up in that and was a part of that,
I knew it wasn't me. Like I knew I didn't
fit in. And during high school I got selected to
go to a magnet school in Virginia. They picked like
a couple of kids from each school to go to
like a gifted school, and and that was my first
time being around other people that felt like me, and
it really changed my worldview and made me aware of

(06:11):
this larger world. Yeah. I mean I I grew up
wanting to be a writer. I had no entrepreneurial desires whatsoever.
And Kickstarter was just that it. Um. You know when
when Perry Chan, who first had the idea for Kickstarter,
you know, we started working on it together because it
was just like this fun secret project to work on.

(06:33):
This is in two thousand five, like a very different
era of the internet, Like you had to have a
room at the rack of servers somewhere to do anything,
which we were incapable of doing. Um. But it was
just really being driven by this idea that for funding
creative projects, the only projects that a movie studio or
book publisher will fund or things they think will be hits,
but most ideas are not going to be hits. They

(06:54):
just want to exist, and there was no economy existed
for those things. And so we were driven by this
idea of like non financial motives for creating creative and
artistic work, and like that was the vision for Kickstarter.
I want to go back to just because like even
in the book you read about like going to church
where people are dancing in the aisles and speaking in
tongues like I mean, like I think of like all

(07:16):
these tech founders like growing up and going to Stanford
and having kind of like a very different upbringing than you.
And I read that your dad was a water bed salesman. Yeah,
that's right. So when I was growing up, like from
the mid seventies to two thousand, my dad was a
traveling waterbed salesman and so he would go out on
the road every week. He always brought his guitar. He's
also a country singer, uh, and he would sing songs

(07:39):
and then go sell water beds. And he was doing
that in the Bible Belt in the seventies and eighties. Yeah.
Now he's like a betting salesman in the Mall in Virginia.
So like I have some words for Casper all the
podcast ads, like you know, taking down salesman and middleman.
I'm like, that's my dad and he knows a lot
about beds off. I mean my well, I guess I

(08:00):
would say, like, well, so so watching him and watching
what he did, you know, what what did that do
for you? And kind of the person you would you
would become? Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think that, um,
like my mom is a secretary to college. There's a
weird way that I'm an amalgamation of these two human beings. Mean,
they divorced when I was very young, so like I
have no concept of them together really, but I could

(08:22):
see how I'm mixed of these things, Like I'm definitely
the son of a waterbed salesman and that I know
how to do What does that even mean? You know
how to talk? You know, the waterbed salesman is gonna
be able to talk someone in anything, you know. And
then my mom is just like a wonderful smart Christian
woman who like reads books like Nobody's Business and did
the crossword every day. And I really I'm her son

(08:44):
in so many ways, you know, coming from this background
was a source of anxiety for me, for you know,
especially coming to New York after college, and like, people
here are very pedigreed and come from lots of backgrounds,
and I'm like, I'm just I feel like a country boy,
you know. And so there's like a little bit of
that culture shock. But over time, I'm going to see

(09:06):
the benefits of that, the benefits of coming from a
different place, because I think a lot of the instincts
that I have and that are part of Kickstarter. It's
this mix of like kind of Christianity and punk rock together,
you know. I the church I grew up in, like
wealth is something dangerous. The Bible talks about it's it's
easier for a camel to pass through the needle's eye
than it is for a rich man to go to heaven. Right.

(09:27):
The notion is like wealth produces selfishness, produces a less
giving kind of person. And so that was that's the
water I was grown up then, And that was just
like the table stakes that you're taught and punk rock
has similar sorts of ethos about you know, being true
to your community. And so I, uh, you know, I
got pulled into the business world through the circumstance of

(09:49):
Kickstarter and and UM. But I think it's those values
that also made us successful, just made us clearly different.
And I think let the creative community trust us. Someone
puts a project on Kickstarter, we get five percent of
what they raised, we take no ownership. Like the Peak
Design projects, the Pebble projects, they've made more money through
Kickstarter than the company has. To me, that's a great
sign of success. When you say punk rock, I mean

(10:10):
I remember for me, maybe this is why I started
covering technology back in like two thousand and nine, you guys,
kickstarted launched in two thousand and nine. I remember I
grew up in the South, but I remember being the
girl that would go to the punk rock shows alone sometimes.
I loved punk rock, UM and SKA bands and all
this kind of stuff. And there was something very punk
rock about technology back in and two thousand and eight,

(10:31):
two thousand nine, UM, that second wave of tech. It
was people who didn't fit in the lines, who didn't
believe you had to do things just because they said
you had to do them. And it really felt like
that mentality was very there. So I think I could
almost see I could kind of see the parallels between
people who were outsiders and who didn't fit really kind

(10:55):
of being attracted to this world that all of a
sudden became incredibly corporate and incredible mainstream, so much so
that we have to have these real interesting conversations now.
But back in the day, it was it was kind
of like another iteration of punk rock. It was like
the Internet was a blank slate. You know, It's like
we can rewrite and redesign everything. There's like the John
Perry Barlow like, you know, very utopian vision, and I

(11:17):
think Kickstart is an example of that mindset. I mean,
the notion of a trust based system where millions of
dollars change hands and it's like all about future ideas.
I mean, it's such an optimistic product and really like
believing in the goodness of people. And the Internet just
seemed like it's going to enable every type of model,
and instead, because of the huge influx of capital, very quickly,

(11:38):
the Internet just settled on this business model of data
driven advertising and you know, just a very small suite
of possible ways to survive that you talk about, I
mean growing up and actually literally being on the bus
and having people put gum in your hair, and like
say homophobic things too, I mean, say really terrible things
to you. Why is it that you just didn't fit?

(12:02):
I guess this is a question I asked a lot
of people that go on to do something big, the
one thread. Maybe, Like people always ask like, what's one
thing that a lot of successful people have in common?
And I'm like, well they were. They definitely kind of
like we're weirdo or didn't fit when they were younger,
Like why do you think you didn't fit? I mean
if you saw a picture of me first day of
sixth grade, maybe you would maybe you would know, like

(12:23):
I'm wearing plaid shorts and a plaid shirt and a
Fannie pack. But you know, we like, isn't your voto
now you're kind of barefoot, it's still kind of a weirdo.
It's true. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's um,
it's it's something deep. I mean I spent a lot
of years trying to get rid of it. I mean,
once I started going to public school in sixth grade,
like I really felt like an outcast. And I remember

(12:45):
every year, like New Year, you go buy clothes and
I'm just buying all the most normal things I can
like I'm trying to dress like everyone else and it
never worked. And I was just like, what, Like, I'm
wearing the same thing as him, but yet you called
me a name and like you he's cool, Like how
did it just like all the normal goals just like
looked different on you. I don't know. I think it

(13:06):
was just that people could see deeper. They could see
deeper than I wanted them to. And and then it's
like that magnet school moment where I like accept that
for the first time rather than trying to run from it.
So for most of my life, if I could have
programmed that out of me, I would have. Now I've
reached a point in my life where I'm so grateful
that I have those things, and then I've sort of

(13:26):
grown into them. Yeah, I mean a lot of anxiety,
a lot of self consciousness, and those things are still there,
but I'm you know, I have a better handle on
than THO. There A is there a moment for me?
It's Bobby. I'm not going to say his last name,
just like I remember Bobby, like I remember parents are
going through a divorce. I'm at a roller skating rink
and I was I went through an unfortunately a larger

(13:49):
phase and Bobby and him screaming like, fact girl, fact girl,
what she could do when she comes for you To
this day, I remember that and just wanting to like
curl up into a ball and just like not be there.
Is there a moment that you could remember that like
you can go back to that is just like thank you,
thank you for this. By the way, this is I
have to call my therapist after you. Yeah, no, there was.

(14:10):
It was you know, it was it was riding the
bus to school, and it was boy named Bubba who
always sat on the back of the bus, and it's
just him screaming slurs in me and one day spitting
skull on me and then throwing a can of coke
at me. And I talked to my mom about this,
about what the bus was like for me, and her
advice was to just ignore them and to pretend it's

(14:34):
not happening. And so I just sat there, not moving
while this guy's yelling at me, and um, yes, it's
the smallest I've ever felt, you know. And and that
period of life feels so eternal, you know, the idea
of ever getting outside of it, you know, just seemed
impossible and and yeah, it was really hard. I didn't know.

(14:54):
I didn't know how to deal with it. I think
I buried myself in books and UM just kept my
head down and tried to not be noticed. Um, but
that was it was very, very tough. UM. But you
did right, and you moved and you made the move
to New York City and you became Uh. We both
have the Village Voice in common. UM. I did not
work at the Village Voice, but I remember it was

(15:16):
my dream to work at the Village Voice. Weirdly, I said,
I remember coming to New York City and handing over
my resume. I walked in their hand over my resume
and I never heard anything. I'm still waiting for that call.
I don't think they're with us, so I so I'll
be waiting for a long time. But you ended up
working at the Village Voice free freelance. I freelance for them. Yeah,
I mean. My my first job was as a radio
news reporter, and I was rewriting news blurbs so that

(15:38):
they were sixty word things that a DJ would read
out on air. Um. And my editor was a big
fan of The New York Post, and so all of
our stories had have puns as their headlines. Um, and
so the only story I remember reading it wasn't it
was an article about it was j Lo. This is
like two thousand, two thousand one peak. I mean, now
it's a new peak j Low, but first peak j Low.

(16:00):
And she was saying that she regretted she had once
talked in an interview about her butt, and and she
said she regretted this because now everyone talked about her butt.
And I titled that story dairy error. And that's that's
my journalistic peak right there. But yeah, I mean I
moved here, and I yeah, I just got jobs writing

(16:20):
about culture, film, music, and I mean it was all
I ever wanted to do. And I had nine years
here freelancing, having day jobs in editorial organizations, you know,
But probably the best job out all those was still
like the job where I had to rewrite a dozen
news stories every day into sixty word blurbs. I mean what,

(16:40):
because it was such a factory that you just had
to churn out. I had to turn out six stories
by noon and another six stories by four and I
had a good editor who cut out everything that was
bad and unnecessary. And so it just teaches an economy
of writing and thinking. It teaches you what's important, you know.
It's just like that that deep end kind of work
of like all your little cute tricks, no one cares,

(17:02):
you know, here's how you do this, and it's I
think the writer I am today is still is still
because of that. We've got to take a quick break
to hear from our sponsors. But when we come back,
why the company's success freaked out Yancy and made him
question everything? You know, I don't. I don't think a

(17:41):
lot of people remember um interesting tech comes and people
kind of you know, scoff at it and everyone's like no,
and then all of a sudden, it's like we can't
remember life without it. I remember, you know, covering uber
back in the day an Airbnb. I was like, no
one is gonna order get into a stranger's car, no
one's gonna live in like a stranger's home, No one

(18:02):
is going to ask strangers to pay ask for money
on the internet. Like I think we forget that we
all shook our heads at this, and I think people
forget about this whole phase of like you had to
be crazy enough and had to have enough resilience to
just go out there and continue to be crazy enough
to to do this. Crowdfunding didn't really exist before kickstarted.
I mean there were ideas like this, but but really

(18:23):
Kickstarter was the first way that we really made this
idea of crowdfunding mainstream, right. Yeah, I mean there's like
a sort of utopian knowledge if only we could all
pitch in and do something, and you know, we normalized it,
and we we create a platform that had trust that
there was a sense of validation by someone putting a
project on the site, and it you know, just sort

(18:45):
of perpetuated itself. To take me to the specifics. What
was it like when you guys set around and you're like, Okay,
we're going to ask people to ask for money and
see what they say, Like, what were those initial reactions? Like? Yeah,
I mean, I mean Perry had had the idea and
thousand one and we met in Brooklyn where he was
working as a waiter at like a cool restaurant and

(19:05):
I was a regular there and we became buddies. And
why do we become buddies? Yeah, it was that when
people talk to each other. Yeah, it's a long ago
when people used to do that. Yeah, we just had
we just have a similar sense of humor, sensibility, just
could just feel that we we collect, we end up
we both love the same NBA team, which is how
we really started talking. And then at the time, my

(19:27):
day job was at a company music dot com, the
first like music subscription service, And because I worked at
a company that had dot com and its name, I
think that may be the most technical person and maybe
encounter that like seemed to buy into these ideas. And
so yeah, he pitched the idea to me. The first
time he pitched it to me, actually didn't like the
idea because let me take me to the So We're

(19:48):
sitting sitting in my living room and I was rash, Yeah,
back to mine, put on some music, music music. It's
probably some Ethio up in jazz crack, a couple of beers,
and I think he made me sign an NDA before
he told me yea. And yeah, he just talked about

(20:09):
this notion of like fans coming together to fund things
and like people voting for what they wanted to see
in the world. And my response was this sounds like
American idol and in like in a bad way. This
is like you know, Reuben stuttered pre and no, you know, no,
shade on Reuben, but sort of like Pete peak American idol,
and uh, I just like who needs this? Like I'm

(20:30):
I like institutions. I like gatekeepers. And Perry flipped on me,
just saying like, well, it's not about the mass stuff.
It's about like the niche stuff. It's about the sculptor
and a small town that no one living there gets
their work, but the Internet they're appreciated and like, how
does that person do something? And like that's who we
speak to. And you know that I immediately understood, just

(20:52):
like you know, I love David Lynch and if I
could give David Lynch money to do anything, I would,
So of course, you know I could see that. And
you know we were I mean, we were so sure
of ourselves early on. It's like the certainty of that
you have when you don't know a lot. And then
and then we go around telling, oh, it's wonderful if

(21:12):
only I could go back there, and then we would
go around and tell show people how much we knew
and uh, and then yeah, a lot of like you know, y'all,
what are you what are y'all thinking about? I mean,
the creative people we talked to really understood like the
The idea for the first Kickstarter project was to try

(21:33):
to save Arrested Development. This was when Arrest of Development
was getting canceled by Fox. Fans were sending bananas to
twenty century Fox studios to like say put the show
back on the air, and we're like, no, this is like,
this is the Kickstarter project. This is what kick Starters
for the fans step up. And Perry went to college
with the cousin of one of the stars of the show,

(21:53):
David Cross, the comedian David Cross, and so Perry went
and pitched David on, like, let's save arrest of Development.
Here's this thing, and David explained that clearly we didn't
know how the entertainment industry worked, because there's no way
anyone would go for this, But as an artist, he
loved the idea and he's just like, I'll invest. And
so the very first investor and conservative David Cross. Most

(22:14):
of the early angels were creative people, musicians like people
who are in labels, people who are in magazines, like
people who understood that problem. When we spoke to more
traditional investors, there was a much higher degree of skepticism,
which you heard more of like, no one's going to
give anyone money without financial upside. I mean, all any
investor would say was great, so I get points on
the movie like my backup project, I own it. Or

(22:38):
we would say no, you get a mug in your
name in the credits. Yeah, and they're like, well, who
wants that. I remember one of the very prominent VC
telling us there's already too much art in the world.
Nobody needs this. Yeah, and so it's just like we're
not moving on from that yet. What do you do
when someone says something like that to you, Well, you're
just like, this meeting isn't going well, so this is yeah.

(23:01):
I just remember there was a moment where it's just
like you sort of let that hang in the air,
and it's like, so, okay, well, uh, you know anyone
you think we should talk to? You know, you're just like,
let's try to get some value out of this. But
is that what you do? I mean, I guess because
I think for a lot of other founders, you know,
people don't understand even people like you who have had
a lot of success, like part of success is just

(23:22):
having a lot of people be like this is a
terrible idea, that's literally if I could, if I could
code into success. It's it's people telling you your idea shitty.
Did you ever kind of question yourself and and be
like I am crazy? Yeah, I haven't stopped. Um yeah,
you know you said in the book the truth is
everything is made up. What an interesting statement he said.

(23:46):
The truth is there's a little order. The status quo
persists because people continue to wake up and believe in
these ideas each day, or they're so deeply embedded we
don't recognize them as ideas anymore. And then you say,
Kickstarter happened and showed me things were way more fragile
than I was taught to believe. Not to create storytime
out of this, but I thought that was an interesting

(24:07):
statement and powerful statement. What did you mean by that? Um?
You know, I grew up thinking that the world makes sense,
that there's people in charge, that history is logical and
natural progression, and I just trusted in those things. And
when kickstarters started being successful, it it freaked me out. Um,

(24:27):
it freaked me out because I kept waiting for, like,
where's the five people with clipboards who come by our
office and like make sure that we're allowed to do
what we're doing. You know, just this notion that like
we can put out this idea that we had made
up and that people just believed in it and then
it was real and now it's just a thing was
just so strange to me, and it just made me

(24:51):
made me feel less certain about almost everything in life.
And I felt terrified by that for a while, and
then eventually I came to feel a kind of like
a superpower of that of, well, if if kicks started
works this way, then other things work this way too,
and that leads me to the conclusion that the world
is far more shapable than I've been taught to believe,

(25:14):
and that I can fear that or I can seize
the agency and that and you know, just try to
use that as like workable knowledge. And yeah, I mean
it's something like the idea that we're just following ideas
that previous people accepted. You know, it makes sense like
if someone says that to your like sure, and I
don't know why that's relevant, but sure, um. But really

(25:35):
feeling at firsthand just created a kind of before and
after moment in my life, Like there was before and
then there was yeah, and the yancy after, Like I
had to adjust to that. I had to get comfortable with,
like the notion of having a larger power than you
may be thought, and that that has some responsibility. But

(25:56):
I think it's a it's just part of what allows
the company to be unique. You know. It just doesn't
feel like we're following someone else's script because, like, you know,
I felt so alienated from the business world. Like I
as a writer who started working in companies, and I
discovered that I was good in meetings and good at
strategic thinking, and I was a good manager, and like

(26:18):
punk rock me is like just so destroyed by the
fact that I'm good at those things. Like in my
cell house, I'm good, Like my CEO likes talking to me,
and should I feel good or bad about that? And uh,
And I had to get comfortable with those sorts of things.
And but yeah, that that mix of like wanting to

(26:38):
learn the tools of how to make an organization work
or you know, having that more traditional mindset but bringing
a different value system to it. There's the best of
both worlds there that if you can bring them together,
it's powerful. Maybe punk rock you just understood human nature,
you know, maybe that's part of being punk rock is
kind of understanding the pain and joy of being human.

(26:59):
You know, it's harder to stay punk rock when you
become corporate, right did you struggle with that? No? Because
we we were our own thing, you know. I think
that's like, um, all the ways we made things hard
for ourselves. I was about to say, you guys didn't
do high growth. I'm sure that was hard with investors.
You guys didn't become like the Hockey state growth Silicon
Valley company state small. You are in Brooklyn, not Silicon Valley.

(27:22):
I mean I can imagine that was hard for you. Yeah,
I mean it's but they were, you know, weirdly like
the That stuff gets harder when you compare yourself to
external narratives of success. When you're like reading tech Crunch
or whatever every day and you're comparing yourself to like
other people that are going the other path, and you worry,

(27:43):
Oh shit, am I are we like being passed by
by everyone doing the Read Hoffman blitz Scaling, you know,
I mean there was what does that mean? I mean
reads blitz Scaling did a book about It's just like
the idea of using capital as a as a weapon.
You amass as much money as possible to block your
competitors from raising money and you just outspend them and
you get as big of monopoly as you can and

(28:05):
then you sell it to Microsoft. You know. I mean
that's like, that's that's that success model. And we were not,
you know, just weren't interested in that. And yeah, I
mean there are lots of moments where you I would
doubt that path. I mean, I remember I became CEO
of Kickstarter and my first month is CEO to other
crowdfunding companies, raised like sixty million dollars in VC money

(28:27):
my first month, and it was like the blitz scaling
idea where they're just going to outspend us and immediately
like in all the categories that we served, like they're
offering zero fee, they're offering whatever you want, just using
that money as a mote to try to eat away
at Kickstarter. And so there's this moment of like, do
we have to do the same if someone escalates, you
have to match their escalation or not. And we end

(28:50):
up deciding no, like we're on this path like the
chips are going to fall where they may, but maintaining
independence over the long term, like we just got to
weather this and and so that you know, that was
a hard call, and weirdly, allot of the pressure you
get as also from employees. You know, your employees want
you to succeed. Employees often want you to grow in
the traditional ways, both for maybe they're imagining their own

(29:11):
upside of like their stock or things like that, but
also they're just like, you know, they're more in the
trenches of facing off against competitors and they want they
want the company to be more cut throat, and we're
just like, no, that's not that's not how you're going
to succeed in the long term. So there's a lot
of moments where you're trying to hold on to this
more benevolent mission, this larger, bigger picture mission, and you're

(29:32):
just facing pressures from all sides to let go, to
bend those things. And I think leadership is about, you know,
knowing how to hold on to those while I mean,
there are moments where you do have to evolve. You know,
you can't play the same script over and over, but
still maintaining those values when everyone is telling you you're wrong,
is that's hard leadership. I don't yet, and I think

(29:56):
we can talk about it from very high level. But
when you're in it such a different story, right, do
you have any specifics you could go to where where
you think about an example of well, I mean what
the like the the external pressure. I mean I remember
the moment, like I think it was within this forty
eight hours there's these announcements of like one company raising
forty million, one raising twenty million. That was a real

(30:17):
like like am I allowed to do this job? Like
are we sure about this? Um? I don't know the
moment that I can remember where I most felt the
pain and pressure of all that was. I mean it
was in my last year as CEO, and I was
really exhausted, and there was a day where I was
going to leave my house to go to work, and

(30:39):
I like stood in my front door and I just
couldn't even lift my arm to open the door. And
I was just standing there, and my wife thought I
left for work and then found me standing by the door,
and I like had tears in my eyes, and she's like,
what what's going on? And I'm just like I just can't.
I can't go in there and be that person today,
Like I just don't know how to be the one

(30:59):
who is holding all these things. Who's still sure, Who's
still you know, has the strength and energy to project
all the things that I need to project. And the
idea of stepping into that role was just like filled
me with a level of exhaustion and I had never
felt ever before. And and that was Yeah, it was
just about living up to what I thought I sort

(31:21):
of an image I felt I needed to live up to.
And also just like just doing it for so long,
you know, just pouring so much in myself into it
for so long because I was the Kickstarter guy for
ten years, you know, every I went to events, you know,
the community guy, like always out there, always the press guy,
always telling the story and always believing it to the

(31:42):
to the deepest depths of me. And then that it
ended up just like kind of emptying me out by
the end. Yeah, I mean, what an extraordinary thing to
just be sitting at your front door not even being
able to open it, right. I remember the moment so
clearly because it was like I was looking at the
door knob and I couldn't like I couldn't figure how
to make my arm. It's just it just it just
wouldn't move. And I could just feel just my body

(32:04):
was just telling me, you know this is this is
not working for you, and you know, identity is a
funny thing. And I can say this having left a
job of ten years too. I was like, I was
Laurie from CNN who covered the anti from take Starter, right.
And so when I left, I left my job of
ten years too. And I remember leaving, writing the goodbye email,
sending it to CNN superdesk, which goes out to every

(32:26):
employee in the company, and waiting to hit thick the scent.
And I remember the amount of anxiety I had. I
had to have my boss at the time hit scent
because I just couldn't do it. I was just like
because it was just like watching my identity go, because
because it takes And I think this is probably for
anyone leaving a job. And by the way, and I say,
this is a smaller scale than you, because you are

(32:46):
the CEO and the creator of a company. When you
leave something, it's such a part of you, um, and
it does mess with your head. I can only I
can only imagine leaving behind Kickstarter, for you must have
in an extraordinary thing for your head and an extraordinary
thing for your heart. Yeah, I mean Initially, you know,

(33:08):
the plan was to stay on the board and you know,
be connected to the company in a different way. And
then as we were, you know, Perry and I were
doing the transition and all that was happening, it just
I just thought, rather than reorienting my emotional relationship to this,
like I don't know, I don't know what's in there
for me, and because the company is a PBC, like

(33:30):
my values are there, Like we did this whole thing
that's supposed to solve for like one of us being
hit by a bus, So like maybe I just get
hit by a bus. You know what, maybe maybe the
right thing for me is to just move forward. And
it was very hard to reach that place and to
like let go of that identity. But in the end,

(33:50):
the idea of half holding onto that identity seemed harder
to me than just like I just have to blow
it up. And yeah, I mean it took it took
a bit for to feel like that was had been
the right thing to do. But you know, pretty quickly
I've found that, you know, I thought that I was
gonna leave and then just like sleep for three months,

(34:12):
and instead I discovered, like the very next day, I
had more energy than I had had in years. And
I realized that I'd spent a decade filtering every thought
I had through the organization, through the brand, through like
what's best for the creators, what's best for the employees,
what does everyone else need? And that I was suddenly
in a place of hustling for myself. And that was

(34:34):
so exciting, you know, to to be yeah, to have
that freedom of movement and action where I had been
such an organizational kind of leader, and I believe like
that kind of servant leadership is the way to do things. Um. Yeah,
I was really surprised by the amount of energy I
felt hustling for myself versus trying to manage this larger
concept that I had responsibility for. How did you feel

(34:57):
your last day walking out? Great? Great? I mean there
was it was like, yeah, yeah, it was. It was
in all hands where you know, I lead always the
company and I stood in front of them, the the team,
and the board was there, Perry was there, and I said, yeah,
I'm I'm here to let you know that, yeah, this

(35:20):
is it for me, you know, and and that I've
made this decision you know, with the board and that
Kickstarter is a small independent company in a world of
giant monopolies and that we have to have an extraordinarily
high bar for success. And then I've been a I think,
a very good CEO for the company, but like the
company needs to keep raising its game and that I

(35:42):
could do this because I was certain that that was
going to happen, and I just believed so deeply and
everyone there and that like this had been the greatest
honor and pleasure of my life, and you know, people
gave me a standing ovation, and then I walked out.
You know, it was like it was very painful. I
mean that day, I'm just like what have I done?
You know, your walk and walking around Williamsburg afterwards, being

(36:03):
like what what did that really just happen? And but yeah,
it was, it was it was, it was right, and
I could immediately go back to like I went back
to that Perry being in my house showing me the
first idea as a kickstarter, and to think like this
journey started there in two thousand five and it ends
with me here saying exactly what I want to the

(36:25):
company people, giving a standing ovation, hugging all these people
I love, and then I'm just now, what's next? And
so I came to see that as like, actually, this
is a wonderful story and I should I should. I
shouldn't feel shy or weird about this, Like this is
I did my part and I feel great about it.
And it led you to to the next thing that
you're doing. Now. I did read that there is one

(36:46):
moment that you cried. There's a moment that I cried.
There is a moment that you cried. You wrote about
it on your website. It was in a Delhi Oh
yeah that was true. Sounds like you didn't about your employees,
but someone cried over an egg sandwich us yeah, saying well, listen,
I practiced my speech so many times to make you cry.
I mean that the morning I gave that talk, Um,

(37:07):
I was sitting in my house reading my speech to
my dog and crying like you wouldn't believe, crying like
you wouldn't believe. But I had to get it out
because if I cry while saying that to the company,
then it's like, what what is this? So I had
to empty myself. Yeah, a few months after that, So
that is so powerful. I mean, you have to think

(37:28):
about this, like you just practicing I can just see
you practicing a speech of saying goodbye to this thing,
to your dog and just tears. That's unbelievable. Had to
get it out. Yeah. And then three months later, four
months later, I decided to leave New York. I've been
here twenty years and just felt like I can't start
a new chapter in the same place where I've been

(37:48):
so with my family. Moved to l A and all
kinds of goodbye parties, went to you know, all my
favorite restaurants again, etcetera, etcetera. It was all lovely. I
had no emotional reaction. But my very last morning, I
went to Happiness Deli on Broom and Ludlow, which is
the deli where I've gotten an egg and cheese sandwich
almost every morning for like eighteen years. And I went

(38:09):
in there to see the guys, to see Mohammed and
ordered my egg and cheese and told him I was moving,
And like, the three guys came out from behind the
counter and each hugged me, and I'm just like, they're
holding my tinfoil bigel crying. The only time I cried
is when Mo and the guys, yeah, just sending me love,
good wishes, you know, And I I met them when
I was twenty one moving to New York, you know,

(38:30):
and so they've known me for so long they when
Kickstarter happened, they knew. When I came back to New
York a few months ago for the release of the book,
the very first thing I did when I got here
is I went to the deli to give him a
whole copy of the book. You know. So that was like, Yeah,
that was like my real New York moment. I was saying, yeah,
saying goodbye to the guys the deli. We've got to

(38:56):
take one last break to hear from our sponsors. But
when we come back, we'll get into the manifesto Yancey Road.
After he left the company, he also opens up about
his struggles with being himself online. So you left, and

(39:23):
you didn't When you left, you didn't really know you
were going to read a book, right if I, if
I read correctly, you you almost did some business process
in your head. You kind of put yourself through like
the ring are a little bit and and decided that
you would read a book. And not even just a book.
It's not a memoir, it's not a business how to
it is a manifesto, right, Um? Which which I think
is fascinating. So tell us the premise it's all about

(39:46):
really understanding value. Yeah, so yeah, I was searching for
the next thing, and you know, starting every talk I
gave around Kickstarter was about this macro environment that we
were in. Looking back, I'm like, I could tell that
I was a little bored of the job when I
only want to speak about larger forces and not the
product of the company. But I've given this. I've given

(40:09):
this talk just like explaining how the world had been
overtaken by this belief that the right choice in a
decision is whichever option makes the most money, and and
doing research, I found the moment in time where I
felt that had happened around seventy with a famous Milton
Freedman essay about maximizing shareholder value. And so I give
a talk sort of telling that story and showing how like,

(40:29):
that's the reason why there's so many movie sequels, that's
the reason why they're chains everywhere. It's a reason why
Taylor Swift used to be on the cover of every magazine,
and so like found this way to make something that's
hard to see easier to see. So I, you know,
I just kept pulling on that thread and thinking about it,
and then began this process of writing this book and
the books called this could be Our Future. And the

(40:49):
first half argues about this idea of this sort of
the primacy of financial value and sort of tracking the
history of that and showing how it's created. And then
the second half of the book argues that we are
in a moment where we are progressing to a new
value system and that the world where financial value is
the only rational form of value is ending. And I

(41:10):
call this way of seeing Bento is Um based on
the Japanese bento box. And the word bento comes from
a Japanese word meaning convenience, and because of the compartments
in lid of a bento box that lets you have
a convenient and balanced meal, not too much of any
one thing. And the bento honors the Japanese dieting philosophy
of Hadaha Chibou, which says the goal of a meal
is to be eight percent full. That way you're still

(41:31):
hungry for tomorrow. So Bento is Um is the same
idea but for our values and our decisions, and it's
using the four spaces to argue that the world of value,
the world of self interest, the world we should be creating,
encompasses all these spaces, and that the mistake we've made
over the past fifty years is believing that if we
just maximize for this one value of financial value, that

(41:52):
will just solve everything else. But the truth is that
we've learned now it doesn't work that way. So an
example I give in the book is about how Adele
does ticketing for her shows. A Dell went on tour.
When she goes into her all of her tickets sell out.
Fans have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars more
on the secondary market to get a seat. So adel
was either playing shows for rich fans or for fancy

(42:13):
weren't rich, but her spending more money than they could
afford to see her play. So Adell found a startup
in the UK that had built an algorithm that would
approximate the loyalty of her fans. It would analyze social
data and, like Spotify data, everything they could find to identify,
like here's the top thirty percent tile of Dell fans
in whatever market, and use that as a way to
invite those people to buy tickets. They could resell the

(42:34):
tickets that they wanted to. But the thesis was that
if we optimized for this like communal fairness value, this
loyalty value, that a different kind of experience will be created.
These shows were still profitable, She still like was in
the black, but they were optimizing not for a financial
value but a non financial value. And so like, you're
satisfying your financial needs, but satisfying the financial needs is

(42:56):
not the point of the enterprise. The point is something else.
Peter Drucker like business group of all business groups. He
calls this post capitalism, the idea that the capital base,
how much money you make, will no longer be what
distinguishes like who's a market leader or who's most meaningful,
but that instead we will build another set of values
on top of just like the financial platform we're all

(43:17):
standing on. And this is the moment in history where
that is happening, and so all of our dashboards are
going to be expanding over the next couple of decades.
I've asked Snuckerberg when I I've interviewed him, is is
the business model broken? Is the business model broken? This
is the question we ask every executive in Silicon Valley.
Is this the right question to ask? Should we be

(43:37):
asking an even larger question is are these companies structured
the right way? Are we doing the right value proposition?
I mean, what do you think the question is? Yeah,
I think it's like, you know, maybe it's about value
creation versus value capturing. I mean, we've assumed that creating
value means keeping it for yourself and monetizing it. I
think a shift like this happens for um consumers demanding

(44:02):
companies behave different ways, and employees wanting to work at
companies that act a certain way, and there are being
new role models and new metrics of success to work towards.
You know, there's a world in which Facebook should easily
be able to evolve in this kind of way. But
what it requires it requires them letting go of financial
performance as the most important thing. It requires them letting

(44:24):
go of like perpetual growth being the right thing. And
basically it's it's imagining a different notion of success and
success being like long term meaning and trust and seeing
that as like there's the Simonson actors wrote a book
about it, and there's the Gym Cars book about infinite
and finite games. That we think business is a finite
game that at the end of every year, we give

(44:46):
out awards of the best performing businesses and that's it.
But actually, like, no, it's an infinite game. It never
in success is survival. It's not beating your competitor. It's surviving.
It's providing. Value is providing meaning, it's sticking around. How
do you apply this there? I mean, this theory applies
so broadly to everything, right. Tech is what I know.
It's what I've lived in and breathed my whole career,

(45:07):
um and it's what's incredibly personal to me, and I
know to you, like you've had the pressure from investors,
You've seen the downside of not growing in a huge way.
You've you've dealt with it from the inside. So how
do you apply you know, this idea of really maximizing
for value the things that's going to help us as
a society. How do you apply this theory to Silicon

(45:28):
Valley right now? You know, the bento is a is
a simple compass that allows for self coherence. Like the
hardest thing I found is a CEO was even if
you thought you knew what to do, Like, how do
you stay true to that? How do you hold that
in the moment where everything is telling you every you know,
everything makes your value seem irrelevant or wrong. And it's
silly as it seems a piece of paper where those

(45:49):
things are written down, the way that you're accountable to
your staff to like make a certain kind of decision,
those are the kinds of tools that make those choices
a lot easier. Um, And so how do you how
you equip someone to make a better choice? And and
so we know it's important to think long term. We
know it's important to consider our impact on others, but
it's especially in moments of fear, moments of anxiety, it's

(46:12):
it's hard to reach for those places. And so I
think of the bento is like a loving framework that
acknowledges our weakness, that respects our weakness, and just says, hey,
you know, we we know we want to be better
people than this. So here's like, here's a tool that
sets you on that path. I can't let you out
of here without talking about a piece that you wrote
that I found fascinating UM called the dark Forest theory.

(46:36):
First of all, you're a tech company founder who struggles
to be himself online, which I think is delightfully ironic
and also very now you know, I think all of
us kind of struggle with this idea that these spaces,
the Internet as it was supposed to be, which is
a place for us to connect and be ourselves, isn't
exactly that anymore. And I know for me personally, it's

(47:00):
become very self promotional. I look back at Facebook posts
I did maybe a decade ago, and oh my god,
I sound so much more myself than I do now.
And So when you wrote this post, um, and you
talked a little bit about this, and I want you
to explain what the dark forest theory is, it really
resonated with a lot of people, myself included. So what
is the dark forest theory? And how does this relate

(47:23):
to this moment we're in right now? So it started I,
you know, I'm I'm forty one years old, and I
had this realization that I'm like a well adjusted human being. Um,
we could sit next to each other in a plaine
and have a great time, but on the Internet, I'm
just like, could not be more awkward, and I don't
know how to be myself. And I well, I first
wrote it off as like the Internet stupid people are

(47:44):
good at that are stupid, you know, I've just tried
to like excuse myself being bad, And then I came
to think, well, it's probably worth a little more self
reflection than that. And also just like there's seems like
a you know, there's such a benefit to coming into yourself,
into your own as a real person. Like maybe there's
an online version of that too. What would it mean
to become that? So I had to ask myself, why
why can't I be myself? And and made me think

(48:06):
of this This book, this amazing Chinese science fiction book
called The Three Body Problem written by this author she Hinlu,
And there's this part in the book where a character
talks about how, um, when human beings look into space,
we keep sending out messages into space and we don't
get any response back, and we assume this means that
we're the only ones here. But instead this character asked

(48:27):
you to think about this a different way, in which
is to imagine a dark forest at night. It also
seems like there's nothing there, it's quiet, nothing moves that
could lead you to conclude that the forest is empty,
But in reality, the forest is full. It's just that
all the creatures have realized it's too dangerous to show
themselves that predators will find you if you stick your
neck out. And I came to realize that I had

(48:48):
the same feeling that like, if I put my neck out,
then you're you're gonna get taken down by trolls. You're
you're the advertisers will know more of your interest graph,
You're you know, you'll be exploited in all these ways,
You'll be taken out of context, like and it just
feels you feel very vulnerable and it's very dangerous. And
so what we do instead is we don't put out

(49:08):
our real selves on the Internet, and instead we use
our real selves and what's at groups and private channels
on podcasts, which like feel less like the Internet, and
that the public sphere of conversation has really emptied out
of real people being real and instead the social networks
are full of bad actors. It's it's g r U trolls,

(49:29):
it's advertisers looking to exploit you. It is like a
you know, you're kind of an idiot to like to
stand out in those because you're just like there's so
many people after you, right, like you could easily take
that mentality and that this is driving people to to
be less and less real and that this is dangerous. Well,
it's interesting because Mark Zuckerberg, you know, he always does
these New Year's resolutions that he posts on Facebook, and

(49:49):
this year he decided not to do a New Year's resolution.
He said he's not doing them anymore. But this is
his vision for the future, and he talked about the
futures privacy and these private networks where you know, it's
kind of this nod to what you're saying, people don't
feel as comfortable sharing publicly and people are kind of
going into these more private spaces. In the future is privacy.
But but what you're saying is, well, you know, we've
got to be really careful with that, because you're creating

(50:12):
this space for extremism and the louder voices that maybe
we don't want to hear as much, and and then
all of us kind of disappears with that, right I mean,
you get into like there's at this second, in this
moment of time, like the the Twitter beef between Bernie
Sanders supporters and Elizabeth Warrent supporters, where it's like, who
knows how many of these are real people? Right, Like,

(50:34):
but yeah, there's this you know, we we project what
happens in these spaces and imagine that's what everyone must
be thinking or feeling, whereas like the real, most real
voices are not being heard. Like to borrow from Nixon,
there's the silent majority that we don't really know what
people are thinking and feeling. When I've had this realization,
I thought, well, ship, I need to like, I can't
just let this go. I can't just accept this. So

(50:57):
it made me try to be better at the Internet.
And so for a while I did, like every day
I tried to tweet twice a day, and I'm like,
I'm going to be not cool. I'm going to accept
being uncool. But by the way, I love First of all,
can we just pull it back, like you're an Internet cee,
like a tech CEO of former tech ceo, like talking
about how you had to force yourself to try to
tweet two times a day. Yeah, I'm a former technol.

(51:17):
I mean I still cover technology, but the former senior
technology correspondence scene. And I feel like I would say,
like I would have to force myself to try to
tweet two times a day too. That's like a painful process.
It's even even better as you do that and you're like,
and I'm not allowed to self promote. That's the other
that's the other thing late, But like, but you know,
how is that process for you? Well, I only stop.
I mean, I still self promote all the time. It's good.

(51:39):
I mean this, you know, it abbs and flows. But
one of my New Year's resolutions for this year was
to to step into my power more, to to not
be such a so considerate all the time and and
so kind of like my theme song I don't know
if you if you know, the future song, mask Off,
but like I'm trying to be a mask off, just
be more fearless and and you know, there may be

(52:02):
unattended consequences, but I feel like in my gut it
feels like a more value creating thing versus me just
hiding and um, you know, and I don't know. And
I guess I'm assuming my opinions matter in some way
by doing this, but I don't know. There's just just
it didn't sit well with me, this idea that like
I can't be real in this place where actually it

(52:23):
seems really valuable to be real, because like I knew
is when I was a CEO, Like anytime I spoke
to a pure CEO or read a post by someone
that's like really being honest about the challenges. Like I
wanted to weep and gratitude that someone was like sticking
their neck out and and saying what they really believed.
And you know, here I was feeling fearful of doing that. Well,

(52:45):
it's this idea that if the internet is the town square, right,
and the town square got overrun and crowded and people
started going away from it, what does the town square
look like now? I don't know. Yeah, right now it
probably looks like you know, downtown Aleppo or something like that. Right,
It's just it's just empty. Uh. And you know the
election is going to make that, you know, even crazier. Um,

(53:05):
I think it's incredibly important. Right now you say you
do the Bento box theory with people. I just want
people to understand what this that this means. Yeah, let's
do it. What does it mean? And could you just
do that with me? This is an exercise you give
to people about understanding their values, So like, put me
through it. You see, I feel like I've asked you
questions throughout your career, So like I'm going to turn

(53:27):
the tables a little bit, you're you're allowed to ask
me some questions. I have a pin on right, or
or we could just talk it through. So this is
a process that I lead. There's a bentoism dot org.
You can go through this on okay, but I'm going
to draw here a blank Bento And by doing that,
I'm just drawing like a two by two box. And
in the bottom left here is now me. And so
this is thinking about this is the most selfish part

(53:49):
of you, the part of you that wants to be secure,
that like likes pleasure, doesn't want to be told what
to do. It's like the most selfish part of you.
I see her there, yeah, and so you're so the
thing is just to ask what does now me want
to need? Like when I just try to isolate that
part of me, what do they say matters? So when
I did this, things that come out are like good health,

(54:11):
money in the bank, like working on things that are
interesting to me. But I just sort of like just
like the basics of if I don't have these things,
I'm in trouble. Okay, So I guess good health is
important and money to being not just still yours work
that matters to me, and that fulfills me. Um, great
people who I surround myself with. Is that selfish or
is that just kind of get we'll get into people

(54:33):
good but that's that's good okay? And should they be
good or bad ones that either way? Either way. What's
funny is that everyone like virtue signals and their bento
of like all the ways they're great. And then because
I feel like some of them are all shadowing, they're
all also shadows, right, they all also reveal what our
faults are. So anything else you you want to speak
to here is like when you're you know, when you're

(54:55):
working on a project that's like really right for you?
What what kind of project is that? It's definitely a
creative project that's in line with my values. That's incredibly
fulfilling and I've I've left jobs for that, So I
think that's that's incredibly important to me. Okay, So deeper
fulfillment part of your No, So now now we think

(55:15):
about future me. So this is you have beautiful white hair,
your elegant, you have your health, you're doing zomba every day, generally,
do a Broadway dance class. Every song, like the Times
has already written your obituary and it says everything you
want perfect. I hope I get to choose the writer. Yeah,
what what does that person tell you is important? So
like every every moment you face, that person leans in

(55:38):
and says, Lorie here, I want you to remember this.
So my answers to this were like, don't sell out
being loyal to my friends. I grew up a child
of divorce, so like creating harmony between disharmony is like
crucial for me. Okay, so I think that I So
I would go with that. I would say, as someone
who grew up a child of divorce, not to keep

(55:58):
stealing yours. But I think that creating a very very
healthy home environment I was able to do that. I
think that would be something I was able to do
right by the people I worked with. And so is
that loyalty? Loyalty? I did the right thing, if that
makes any sense, because I think there are always opportunities
for you to not do the right thing. I did
the right thing. What about like being curious or learning?

(56:22):
I continued to learn. I think I think that's something
I think a lot of people get really stagnant. I
think it's easy to just settle, and I think I
continued to grow and I took the risks, right, Like,
you continue to take risks throughout your career, That's what
she's telling you. Yeah. So like so like I did
the unpopular thing that ended up panning out. Ye, you
took the risk and you didn't look back. Yeah great,

(56:43):
all right, So now two more? So now is it now? Us? Okay?
So now us? You're thinking about all the people in
your life that really depend on you, really like an
emotional relationship with And what I'd ask you to think
about is what's at the heart of your relationships? So
when I did this, I like listed out all the
people in my life and I suddenly realized and I thought,

(57:04):
what is at the heart of my relationships? And I
suddenly realized that if someone texts me, it's like a
thirty percent chance I'm going to write back. But but
like I could have a five hour dinner with him
and never look at my phone once and like have
this deep time. So I'm like the hyper present friend
in one ways, but also like a bad friend in
other ways. So like, what what do you what do

(57:24):
you bring to your relationships? Do you think? Um? I
think I bring an extraordinary amount of loyalty to a
select few amount of people. Yeah, I can tell you
a lot based on that. I'm similar, that's you, that's
your shadow. By the way, Yeah yeah, not letting people
in any any well, good thing. We really have two
minutes left for this interview. Any anything else for those
so loyalty with a small group. Are you adventurous? Are

(57:48):
either fun? Are you giving advice? Or you think I'm
the truth. I'm the I'm the confessional. I'm the one
you can tell anything too without any judgment. I'm your
I'm your your first column prison kind of friend. Look,
that's a great first call from prison. Yeah, I'm I'm You're,
I'm You're kind of like, let's yeah, I'm your non judgmental, Like,
let's go there and like we got this kind of person.

(58:10):
You know, I'm going to get yourself if I need
it later or something. And finally, so we have future us.
So future us. You're thinking about your children if you
have them, and everybody else's children too, But like that
next generation, what what do they need from the world.
My answers were like a world that's not on fire.
I was about to say, hopefully, hopefully one that doesn't
currently look like Australia right now, which is horriful, horrible. Um,

(58:33):
I think they need from the world a I mean selfishly.
I say this as someone who's genuinely concerned about the
state of technology and democracy. I think they need an
open and caring environment that they can grow up in
that's good for their mental health, and a place that's
a little bit kinder than the one I think we're
currently heading in. That's great, that's great. Here I have
in front of me, I've written down the things you've said,

(58:54):
and they're like written in these different boxes. So this
is like a map of your values and a map
of your goals and priorities in life. And what I
would teach you to do in a workshops we would
go through some real questions you're facing your life right now,
and we would sort of ask each part of the
bento so to give a yes or no answer, like
does this in line with your values or not? And

(59:15):
what I talk about is the goal is being self coherence,
which is to be able to act in a way
that you're always an integrity with all these parts of yourself.
Because the challenge of the modern world is like being
a good employee means being a bad partner. You know,
being a good CEO means being a bad parent. There's
like these compromises that we that we take and that
we just think are we we can't get out of.

(59:36):
But to me, this says that these are things that
you actually can bring together, that coherence is possible. So
to give you an example of how I have a
way to use this like a practical thing is when
the book came out, all I wanted to do is
self promote my book. I wanted to be like I thought,
who is my inner Gary v Ganner, Gary Vanner Chuck
and how what would Gary do? And so all I

(59:56):
wanted to do is to like, yeah, just do giveaways
and just get attention on me um. And then I
thought this is not I know, this is not like
the best way to be thinking. So I I wrote
down in my notebook, I said what should I do
with my energy? And I drew this blank bento and
I've done my bandos, so I know my values in
each of these spaces. So I thought like, now me,
what is it one? And it now me was like sweepstakes,

(01:00:17):
get attention, Like let's go Facebook live right now, you know, nudes, whatever, whatever,
it takes uh. But then the future me, which is
about not selling out and creating harmony, is like, you
need to read these three books. You need to learn more.
Um My, now us, Uh said, why are you thinking
so much about the book? Like you should create time
with your life, you should call this friend. And my

(01:00:39):
future as reminded me of this larger project of Bento
is um and like, hey, the books in the past,
you got to think about these bigger things. And so
I've started doing this as a as a weekly to
do list to where normally a to do list is
like your errands and whatever work has happened right now.
Now my to do list is filled with like schedule
a date with my wife, read this book, call these friends.

(01:01:00):
And it's like I'm forcing myself to use my time
on a weekly basis on all of these things that
that matter to me. Some of these things I was
already doing. But it's like I would be spending time
with my son as a parent, and it's like I'm
just waiting to get back to work. You know, it's
like non time I'm thinking of that time is not
valuable because it's not growing like whatever my ego is.
But instead I now can accept that. It's like, no,

(01:01:21):
this is valuable time. It's just in a different space
of my life. And so this has dramatically reshaped my
how I use my time every week. And it's just
it gives me agency. It gives me agency. And and
again it's phrase that I've never been in my mind before.
But self coherence I keep coming back to, is like,
that's that's the place to be. You're just an integrity

(01:01:43):
and what we lack as a society is the self
coherence we're not We're not in integrity with our environment,
we're not in integrity with our values. And this is
the evolution that has to happen now. And so the
Bento is a framework to get there. And whether you
buy that language, you know, uh is less im into
me than really us coming to see the truth of

(01:02:03):
these spaces and really the the opportunity and responsibility we
have to think about them all. I was thinking about
how to end this one, and I thought, why try
to tie this up in a pretty bow? Startup life
is messy, and having an idea that transforms communities and

(01:02:23):
industries that comes with a lot of highs and a
lot of lows, leaving a job that defines your identity
is messy, so is staying in one when it's clearly
time to go. I think you can hear that tension
from Yancy. We're also in a similar moment in tech.
We're trying to figure out our own identity and what
Yancey calls a dark forest where the loudest and most

(01:02:44):
extreme voices are amplified. You could argue it's a pretty
important time to understand our own values and what we
value as a society as a whole. Via Bento box
or however you want to put it, I'll leave you
with that. For more about the guests you here on
First Contact, sign up for our newsletter. Go to First
Contact podcast dot com to subscribe. Follow me. I'm at

(01:03:08):
Lori Siegel on Twitter and Instagram, and the show is
at First Contact Podcast. If you like the show, I
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Contact is a production of Dot dot Dot Media, executive
produced by Lorie Siegel and Derek Dodge. Original theme music

(01:03:28):
by Xander Singh. Visit us at First Contact podcast dot com.
First Contact with Lorie Siegel is a production of Dot
dot Dot Media and I Heart Radio