Kickstarter Wants to Be More Than a Crowdfunding Platform 'Our mission statement does not contain the word crowdfunding,' says Yancey Strickler, a co-founder and CEO of the company.
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Kickstarter is nearly synonymous with the idea of crowdfunding.
And yet, the platform's leader says its ambitions extend beyond it.
"We don't want to ride the same horse into the sunset," said Yancey Strickler, a co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, in an interview with Jessi Hempel as part of the 92nd Street Y's weeklong 7 Days of Genius Festival.
Though Yancey wouldn't disclose exactly what Kickstarter's life beyond crowdfunding will look like, he did say that innovation within Kickstarter is a priority right now. On average, Yancey spends the equivalent of about a day per week working on planning a roadmap for how the Brooklyn-based platform will innovate beyond crowdfunding.
Related: Get Your Burning Crowdfunding Questions Answered on Kickstarter's Version of Reddit
"Our mission statement is to help bring creative projects to life," Strickler said. "Our mission statement does not contain the word crowdfunding."
He continued: "We pioneered [crowdfunding] and made it incredibly popular, but it was never the intent. It was a really interesting mechanic that Perry (another Kickstarter co-founder) dreamt up to allow art and creative projects to happen. Always the focus was on the output."
Any new tool or service that Kickstarter rolls out will do just that, and support creative people early on in the idea manifestation and creative process. Unlike the billion-dollar arsenals companies such as Google and Facebook can readily access to invest in research and development labs, Kickstarter, which currently employs 135 people, is working with a much tighter pool of resources as it brainstorms its next chapter.
Related: The First 100,000 Successful Kickstarter Campaigns, in 10 Numbers
"We have some ideas that we are very excited about," says Strickler. "There are going to be way more misses than hits for sure, but having the stomach and having the drive and the willingness to challenge what is already a successful enterprise and make it into something fundamentally new and even more meaningful -- that's everything."
