BigDeal - Mutli-Millionaire CEO: The Simple Steps to Self-Made Success | Everette Taylor

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

If you've been wanting to buy a business for years, get your ticket to Main Street Millionaire Live. You’ll learn how to find the right business for you, make deals, evaluate them, finance them, and own the upside: https://contrarianthinking.biz/MSML26_BDYT You've got a product idea. Maybe you've even built the thing. But now you're stuck on the part that actually matters: getting people to give you money before you've spent a fortune building inventory, hiring a team, or raising venture capital that'll own your company before you do. Everett Taylor is the CEO of Kickstarter, the platform that's helped creators raise over $8 billion and launch everything from billion dollar companies to side hustles that print cash. He came up through the mailroom, got stabbed working a parking lot, and built his career by learning how to sell himself before he had anything to sell. Now he runs one of the most creative funding platforms in the world and he's breaking down exactly how to raise money without giving away equity, how to pitch without sounding desperate, and why most people fail before they even start. In this episode, you'll learn: Why selling yourself is the first skill every founder needs and how to build confidence even when you're starting from zero The pre-order pyramid: exclusivity, urgency, value, timeliness, and trust, and why video is the number one thing that makes or breaks a campaign How to calculate your real costs so you don't lose money on every sale and why you need a 25 to 30 percent buffer for the things you can't predict The biggest mistakes founders make when pitching: not being concise, not building trust, and not understanding the difference between pitching VCs and pitching customers Why raising venture capital means giving up control and how pre-orders let you test demand, keep equity, and build a real business on your terms ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: How to Raise Your First 100K Without Connections (00:00:52) The Self-Selling Framework: Marketing Yourself Before Your Product (00:03:54) Mental Toughness and Emotional Regulation: The Two Traits You Need (00:08:24) Pre-Orders Over Venture Capital: The Kickstarter Advantage (00:10:21) The Pre-Order Pyramid: Exclusivity, Urgency, Value, and Trust (00:13:41) The Video-First Rule: Why Great Campaigns Start With 30 Seconds (00:17:11) The Biggest Pitch Mistakes: Get to the Point or Get Lost (00:20:20) When to Bootstrap vs When to Raise Millions (00:23:02) The Venture Capital Trap: Why a 250M Offer Got Rejected (00:26:29) Cost Management and Buffer Strategy: The 25-30 Percent Rule (00:32:46) Surprising Success Stories: 28M Board Games and Comic Book Empires (00:37:49) The CEO Playbook: Mental Toughness, Humility, and Rolling Up Your Sleeves (00:40:43) Remote Leadership: Trust, Aggressive Goals, and Performance Management (00:43:26) The Kickstarter Turnaround: Rejecting Mediocrity and Rebuilding Culture ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're not going to get the CEO job if it's an easy job. Like, they're not just giving you polished companies that are like, here's Apple. They're going to give you a company that has a lot of problems. And me, I came in and I said, listen, mediocrity has no place here. I'm going to sit down with Everett Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter. Today's episode is all about how to raise money and how to build trust, how to pitch without sounding desperate, and what it takes to be a CEO and an entrepreneur in a business. What are the biggest mistakes you see people making when they pitch their product for the first time?

If you don't catch my attention within the first 30, 45 seconds, like, it gets rough. Great pitch is something that you humanize and make people feel like you're relatable and what you're trying to do is relatable and they understand. What do you do when you have to make a hard decision fast? People may not like this answer, but my job as a CEO is to make sure that... Okay, so you've been part of startups and product launches, and now you're the CEO of Kickstarter. But I'm curious, since you've seen it all, let's start for the person who wants to get their first 100K into their business or product. What would you tell them? What would I tell

them? Well, number one, I would say is, can you sell yourself? You know, if you don't have any resources, if you don't have any connections, can you actually sell yourself? Can you sell the dream? Can you sell the vision? Like, I tell people all of it. times founders, you may not be a marketer, but you better be a marketer for yourself, right? You should be your own CMO, right? And so for people that are starting off and they don't have those connections, they need that first 100K, then they need to know how to sell themselves. The second thing that I would say is you need to have a skill that's valuable to get you

in the doors to make those connections. For me, it was marketing. I made a ton of relationships, valuable relationships, because I had a skill set that I could offer to people, right? So even if it was like, hey, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to advise you on some strategy, et cetera, et cetera. Can you connect me to this investor? Can you connect me to this person? So really think about what value you have in terms of skills that you can give to others. I love that. What do you think the formula is for selling yourself? Number one is like, this is the opposite of what I preach of self-awareness. You do need self-awareness.

But, like, you have to have, like, outside confidence. Like, I've seen people who haven't had a dollar to their name or was talking completely BS, but they are so confident and they speak so confidently. And when you're able to speak confidently, people believe you. They really grasp onto that. When you don't speak confidently and you don't have that confidence to yourself, people see right through it. That's so true. I was just actually had a member of my team. and he's one of our writers.

And I told him to work with a few others and they were going to pitch this other company to do a partnership with. And he opens up the pitch with, I know this probably won't work. And I think like, you know, maybe it's for the next go-round. And I was like, shut up, get to the side.

Like, what are we doing here? But you're right. I was like, you know, I'm going to make up a name because I don't want to out him. I was like, Brad, you will always lose. If you start out telling all the reasons why, not to invest in you or bet on you or partner with you. So that delusional confidence, you're right, is so important.

And I think people, I asked him later, I was like, why did you do that, man? Like, you just undersold yourself. Like, I actually want to know what's going on in here. And he said, well, I didn't want him to lose respect for me. And I thought, fascinating. So, like, what have you seen? You see thousands of examples of that every year. Why aren't people confident or how do you get yourself confident

and get out of your own way? Well, I tell people all the time, one of the number one traits that you need to be an entrepreneur are two things, or two number one traits, is mental toughness and emotional regulation, right? Like, you have to be, have real mental fortitude, right? You have to be mentally tough.

If you have imposter syndrome, if you're doubting yourself, all that stuff bleeds through in your leadership. It blees through when you're launching kickstarts. It blees through when you're communicating, when you're marketing your products. you have to have a level of mental toughness. And then emotional regulation, hey, if you're feeling like not confident or you're not feeling this way or that way, you're feeling sensitive about things, like you have to be able to emotionally regulate that, you know?

And you have to show up strong, consistently in boardrooms, pitching, anywhere that you're going to be. What have you bought on Kickstarter? What are the ones you're like, I backed this one? You know, I'll be honest. Like, I'm very big on the cultural categories on Kickstarter. So the cultural categories obviously don't make as much revenue as like the products themselves, right? Like the tech gadgets, the games, those are our two biggest categories. Design and technology and gaming are our biggest categories.

I tend to like to support arts and music and in fashion and things like that. And so that's what I genuinely like to support. Like I just supported this film called Ricky. They're in theaters right now. They use Kickstarter for distribution. they wanted to distribute the film independently, and that was absolutely incredible. And so I'm all about creative independence.

I forgot that Kickstarter is for culture and arts, too. Because I've bought, like, what have I bought? I've pre-ordered a ton of stuff on there, like backpacks and, like, weird gadgets. You know, I've seen some of the wackiest stuff do well. Actually, I think the beautiful thing about Kickstarter is that you have these projects, like UfiMake that does $47 million selling 3D printers. But then you have these wacky projects. Like I backed this project where it was literally a robot that was making music on its own

and created an album. Like, just things that are just so weird and wacky that do so well. Like the beautiful thing about Kickstarter is I tell people, whatever your weird is, you can find it on Kickstarter. Whatever your niches, you can find it on Kickstarter. Because there's a community of people. that are going to engage with whatever you're doing, as long as you have, obviously,

some type of product market fit. And so, yeah, I think if you market that the right way, I think it could go off on Kickstarter, too. We've got a client of one over here. Yes. You know, it's interesting because there's so many negative stories people tell. Oh, must be nice to have money. I could never raise from other people.

You know, does crowdfunding even work in 2026? You know, there's a lot of people who tell stories to get in their own way. So I guess my question to you would be dispel that. Say that there's somebody listening right now that goes, I don't have any rich friends. I'm not worth, you know, much money. Like there's no way I can raise money. What would you say to that? Can I curse?

I don't know. Yeah. I would say that's bullshit, right? Like there's so many examples of people being able to do that. And Kickstarter is also like proof in the pudding. Like people without resources, without money, without things are able to scale. launch these products and these companies successfully. And so to me, it goes back to what I was saying before, like having a level of mental toughness. Like, if you're already thinking that way,

I don't know who's going to invest in you or who's going to believe in you. So whether you need to go to a therapist or like do some real self-reflection or really work on yourself is important because entrepreneurship is hard. Running a business is hard. And like if you're not mentally strong and mentally tough and believing yourself, you're going to fail. That's just straight up. There's going to be so many hurdles. This is a journey. I tell people the life of an entrepreneur is a marathon.

And the first thing you can't do is doubt yourself. Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. Is there a category where you're like, don't do this on Kickstarter? Yeah, guns. We're not going to allow it. People try to 3D print guns on the platform. So yeah, anything that's weapons are harmful, yeah, save that.

You can maybe go to one of our competitors or whatever. Let's talk about how to do pre-orders. I think pre-orders are one of the most underrated ways to get money into your business without you having to be the one to do it and without raising venture capital and giving away all your equity. So will you explain, one, what are pre-orders? And then two, how do you do them well in order to not give away or spend a bunch of money on your business? when you're starting. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we were talking a little bit before this, like there's a misconception around Kickstarter that it's just pure crowdfunding. A lot of the most successful people on Kickstarter use it as a pre-order, right? They have the resources and the means

to actually create the product. They want to use it to scale marketing. We have an audience of millions of people that are using the app and the website, and they want to be able to tap into that audience. So that's really, really important to them to use that as a the marketing lever and also to see if they actually have product market fit with their product with this audience of early adopters. The people that I see be really successful with pre-orders are the people that have a plan after. They know their manufacturing, they know their fulfillment, they know how they're going to leverage the audience that they've built on Kickstarter to be evangelist for them moving forward. And so when it comes to pre-order, the people that are most

successful, understand their cost, right? That is the downfall of a lot of pre-orders. Like, are you, are you correctly having the right cost of these products on the platform, right? Have you made sure that you understand the shipping, the tariffs, all those things that come with distributing a product? And number three, what is your plan after, right? Kickstarter is just the beginning. So how are you going to leverage that audience to scale that into retail partnerships, into investments, into all of those things. That's a good point. So basically, you go, like, let's say I've got a ring company, and I'm selling rings.

Yeah. Nice ring, by the way. Thank you. I thought it was cool. And I go to put my ring on Kickstarter, and I'm like, sick. I'm going to give the first hundred people that buy it, get it for 50 bucks. And so that gives me some working capital to start with, and then I'm off to the races. But I don't realize that actually with shipping, because I haven't included that, and variable

costs of goods and packaging that I didn't think about, it actually cost me $60. So now I've lost money on it. Yeah. You've made a good point, too, that I forgot to say, is that pre-orders work well when you have something valuable to put towards it. Like, hey, if you buy it here, this is a discount. Like, this is normally going to be $200, but you're going to get it for $125 or $100. on Kickstarter.

Discounts is a huge value. And then like some type of exclusivity. So like if it's like, hey, this, the color of this ring, you know, this shade or this ring is only exclusive to Kickstarter. So when it comes to pre-orders, you have to also have this feeling of like, hey, this is, this is something that's valuable. You have to drive urgency with that pre-order to make people say, hey, why wouldn't I just wait for you to launch this thing?

The other thing that you said was like, the show. and the other costs. One of the things that I did when I came in Kickstarter was when you used to come into Kickstarter, it was like you raised your money, right? And then Kickstarter was like, good luck, have fun, figure it out. Now we actually have pre-launch tools that help you before you launch a campaign,

and now also post-campaign tools like Pledge Manager to help with shipping and taxes. So you don't have to, before, you had to charge shipping up front and be like, well, I hope these shipping prices prices don't go up or go crazy later, now we have dynamic shipping prices through our pleasure manager that you can charge shipping later. That's so important.

These things sound sort of little, but they're so important in business, and it's the difference between making or losing money. So does it go, so if I want to sell something and I want to do a pre-order, I have like a little pyramid of what matters, my pre-ordered pyramid. And the pre-ordered pyramid is basically exclusivity, urgency, value, timeliness, something like that? Yes, yes. And building trust. And trust is huge because people are like, am I going to get this? Like you have to instill trust in them. You have to show that you're fully equipped to actually make this happen because on Kickstarter like with our pre-orders or

crowdfunding or whatever you want to call it, like there is no guarantee. Now 90-something percent of people on Kickstarter fulfilled, but there's still a small percentage of people that don't. And so you really have to drive that level of trust to make people feel comfortable that you're actually going to deliver on time and you've got to communicate with people constantly. Like that's one of the things that I see a lot of people mess up with on Kickstarter is that they're not communicating to their audience and keeping them up to date on what's happening. Give me the secrets. You gave us some of those there.

But if I'm, okay, so like if you want to launch your product and you want people to give you money and you want to build trust, what are the secrets to do in that? What do you have to do? What do the best companies do? Well, the best company is number one. Like, they create incredible videos. Like, I tell people all the time, people don't want to read a whole long Kickstarter page. They want to click on that video, right?

When you're launching on Kickstarter, launching a video is like the number one thing I see for people that are successful on a platform. I lie to you not. Like, most of the time when I see a Kickstarter failed, they didn't even care to do a video. Like, video is the way. Like people are reading less. They're not reading full pages. Your ability to create a video that is enticing to backers that shows your passion that tells them that you have the expertise and ability to actually make this happen goes a long way for supporting your Kickstarter campaign and it being successful and driving that trust that you need. So good. We call it show don't tell. Because when you're yapping at people, they don't believe you anymore. Everybody's Z-Apper on the internet and everybody can say things. But you know, it's funny. I'll actually include right here, if you remind me, David, my new favorite launch video that I just saw on X,

and it's for an AI company, which is actually quite hard to do a launch video for it because you can't touch it. You can't see it. And it's such a sexy video and it starts with like a guy in a field and he's talking to his grandma and it's real his real grandma about AI. And it's sort about how like work life balance. You know, his grandma's like, well, how are you going to launch a business and like, you know, not lose all of your life and all of your joy. And the business is called co-founder and it basically uses AI to help you launch a business so you don't have to do everything is very cute. And so I think there's a way to do a video about just about anything. Anything. And like video, we're becoming video first everywhere, right? And like one of the things that

we're doing a Kickstarter this year, give you a little bit of exclusive, is that we're going to become a lot more mobile first and video first on our platform because we do. realize that people, they like, within a 30-second video, you can sell somebody. It happens all the time. And so the people that know how to get people excited, make people feel like they can trust you very quickly through video, I think is the number one thing on Kickstarter in terms of seeing a success in building trust. One thing Everett and I keep coming back to is this. Most people think the hard part is raising money. But if you don't already have a business, the hardest part is figuring out what the business is you should actually raise for. That's why we built Main Street

Millionaire Live. What if you could raise money to actually buy a business that's profitable from day one, not hopes and dreams about what could be possible? Mainstream Millionaire Live, it's our three-day virtual event where my team and I show you how to find fund, evaluate, and own a real cash-flowing small business. It gives you a real look at the businesses that are profitable that you could own and covers the entire deal-making process. I think we give you in three days, more than most MBAs do. This is for the person who knows there's money in business, but maybe doesn't have the brilliant idea to do themselves. That is exactly the human that we want. If that's you and you've been curious about buying a business, then you're going to want to come to Main Street

Millionaire Live. For the cost of a couple of cups of coffee, we'll teach you everything you need to know to figure out if it is right for you to buy a business. You can go to MSM. Live. Let's get back to my conversation with Everett. What's the biggest mistake you see people make? when they, maybe talked about two of them, I don't know if cost of goods or lack of video are the two biggest mistakes. But what are the biggest mistakes you see people making when they pitch their product or post their product

for the first time? I think pitching in general, the biggest mistake that I see is people that are just not concise and they don't get to the point. I'm just like, you'll lose me. Like if you don't catch my attention within the first 30, 45 seconds, it gets rough. And like you realize that about society in the world, like our attention spans are so much shorter.

And so people are, they don't get straight to the point. So a great pitch is something that like you humanize and make people feel like you're relatable and what you're trying to do is relatable and they understand. And then also you capture their attention really, really fast. But when I tell people, when you're thinking about pitching, say, venture capitalist versus Kickstarter, it's very different. Like when you're pitching VCs, you're pitching for the long term. You're pitching for like the big pitcher.

Like you're really saying like, hey, this company can be worth $50 billion one day. On Kickstarter, you're trying to deliver immediate desires and rewards, right? Like it's a much more short term thing. You're saying, hey, I can do this in a very short amount of time. When you're pitching something like that, you're trying to build trust. You're trying to build people feeling secure about you actually being able to deliver and that you can actually make the thing happen. And so it's a very different thing.

You're not trying to pitch people on getting equity of a $50 billion thing. You're pitching people on like, hey, if you give me $100, $200, $500, I'm going to actually be able to deliver this in the timeline that I'm able to. Yeah. It's so good because I think a lot of times when I was an early entrepreneur, you, you You assume that you got to do these big crazy things to win. And I was actually talking to, I think one of my favorite stories was actually from Damon Jom from Vibu. Yeah, I just saw them.

No way. Okay, I love him. And so he's been on the pod and we've stayed in touch. But he told the story about, one, how he used to, like, go around to shops and just say, like, can I put a cool, you know, kind of graffeted thing on your, what are those things called? When you pull them down? Like the gates, like the roll-down gates or something? I don't know what those called. Yeah. And he's like, so I did those all over town.

It was like free advertising, but it was cool. And he's like, and then he's like the benefit that I often gave these shop owners was like, you'll be the first one to get our exclusive shirts here if you buy this. And it's sort of like early day online crowdfunding. Yeah. And he just did the same thing. Exclusivity, scarcity, timeliness. Yep.

And again and again. Yeah, absolutely. And people get super creative. Like, think, like, never put yourself in a box, right? Like whatever your resources are, whatever how much money you have, like you can get creative. You can think outside of the box. You see the best entrepreneurs like a Damon John and others. They think outside of the box to make things happen.

Yeah. Are there businesses or business owners that come to you that are like, you should just go get venture capital. Just go raise a bunch of money. Don't bootstrap it. It doesn't happen often. but I often tell people, like if you're building like a big B2B SaaS company, like, why the hell are you coming to Kickstarter? It's a very consumer B2C type of platform. Number two is like if it's super capital intensive, like if you can't do the thing without like, imagine like SpaceX or something like that or hyperloop or some of these companies that have started that are like super capital intensive.

Like, those are the people that need to go raise millions and millions and millions of dollars. Like, I tell people that are coming to Kickstarter that if you have something that you can deliver of value and, you know, within a 12 to 18 month timeline, like Kickstarter is really, really for you. But like, if it's super capital intensive, that's not it. And also the beauty of Kickstarter is that, you know, you don't have to build a billion dollar company. You can build a lifestyle company. you can build a side hustle. Yes, have billion-dollar companies launched on the platform. Absolutely.

But it doesn't have to be that on Kickstarter. Yeah. I also think a lot of people don't want billion-dollar companies. It's pretty miserable. The bigger, I mean, you know, you run a big company. I run a big company. The bigger the company, the more problems you got. And so, you know, we were talking about beforehand.

It's like, be really careful what you wish for. Because having a business that makes a million bucks a year in top line, and you get to keep, you know, with 15 to 30 percent margins, 150K to 300K a year, that's a pretty sexy thing, especially with taxes. Absolutely. And like those exist every day. I mean, how many of those do you think you've seen in your career and on the platform? Oh, my God.

So, like so many. Like that to me is like one of the sweet spots of Kickstarter is like these businesses that are like anywhere from one million to 100 million in revenue, right? where they're like building a business. It's not like a super large team, super large company, but they're profitable. They can provide great lifestyles for themselves.

Like, listen, when you go out and you raise billions of dollars, like one, or some people raise billions of dollars, but millions of dollars won, like that company isn't yours anymore. Like you have to deal with like, you know this,

having a board of directors, that's like fucking Game of Thrones. Like it's, it's board governance. Like, I'm telling you, it's a thing. Like it's really a tactical like chess moves constantly when you have a board and you don't own all of your company.

And also like I have this story of a good friend of mine who a lot of people don't realize this. When you raise venture capital, they need that outsized like return, right? So what might be impactful to you where you're like, oh man, I can make $50 million here. This is going to change my life forever. They're like, no, no, no, no. We need to sell this thing for billions. I had a good friend of mine who early on, I think he was like series A got a quarter of a billion dollar offer for his business. He would have left maybe a hundred something million dollars with that sale, even with, you know, giving money to his investors back.

And his investors pushed them not to sell the business, right? And that business didn't end up scaling the way that he wanted to. didn't make that much money from it. And so that money could have been life-changing. And he couldn't take it because he raised venture capital. It's so true. It's funny because we have a venture capital fund. And somebody reached out to me the other day because one of our companies, it's a great company sold. And we got in early, so it's cool. It's like a 4X for us. But we put a lot of our own capital in and we keep our fund small. So when we get multiple, like I think we've had less than 10% default rate and we've had a couple hundred axes.

But we've had a lot of four to five to seven exits. And one of the other venture capitalists called me was like, well, I thought this guy was going to run this forever. You know, I can't believe he's bailing on this. And I was like, this is life changing money for him. This is like $20 million in his pocket. Plus he gets to go work at this strategic company and get equity in that company. We get a little bit to ride along.

I go, this is a good outcome for him. You're one and a good ones. You know, I think it's all about incentives, right? Like I have enough of my own money in there and operate a company. I know how fucking hard this is. Yeah. You know, a lot of these investors are salaried investors. They got no skin in the game and they've never actually run anything.

No. And they're ruthless in their approach, right? Like at the end of the day, it's like, one of the things that people don't think about when raising money is that when you raise money, you then take on not only the reputation of the firms and the people that are investing in you good or bad, but also how what they want and what they want out of a deal, right? what you may want may be different than a general catalyst or Andreessen Horowitz, right? Like for them, like a 4x return, they're like, why are you wasting our time? Like, they need that 100, 200 X return. Yeah. You know, I always thought like one of the better ones was like the Sequoia model where like, you know,

and I don't know everything behind the scenes and everybody's got skeletons, but I always liked that they were like 90% of our companies have been acquired, sold, or IPO. Yeah. Like they actually care about the 90%. Whereas most investors. 90% fail. They only care about the 10%

the win. Like literally F off every other one. And I get it because your best founders don't usually need your help. You know, it's the ones that are

on the lower end that do. But I think it's good that you guys don't glorify venture raising. Because these days it's not even how profitable is your company. Nobody cares about that.

It's how big's your revenue and how much money have you raised. Yeah. Absolutely. It's crazy. It's gotten out of control, I think. but we could go on and on about that.

Well, I want to talk about, like, for the small business that is going to bootstrap. Yeah. How do they try to think about how much money to raise and what a successful raise looks like when you're doing pre-orders and thinking about it this way? Yeah, I think when you're thinking about, like, a company that's bootstrapping, I think, number one, you want to make sure that you're covering your cost, right? Like you don't want to be underwater because you did a Kickstarter or because you did a pre-order. That happens too.

And there's people that are inexperienced that don't know how much things cost, they haven't thought about, you know, what could, like the worst thing that could happen. Like so if you say, you know, you want to raise, you want to sell X amount of products and you want to raise half a million dollars, then you should probably say, I want to raise $700, $800, because there's going to be unforeseen. things that you don't know that's going to pop up, right? And so you need to always add a little cushion for the things that you cannot see. Even the smartest entrepreneurs, the most skilled entrepreneurs, they can't predict that. You know, like, you know, a few years, like, could you

have predicted that we're going to have tariffs the way that we work? Like, who can predict something like that, right? And so you have to add a little bit of buffer in everything that you do, but then also, hey, have a very clear strategy on how you're going to use. utilize all of the capital that you're coming in. So, like, say, hey, you're selling this product and pre-order or crowdfunding for $100. It costs you X amount of dollars to make it shipping, thinking about marketing costs. Like, hey, you're going to run ads.

You're going to do things to, like, actually sell this product in pre-order. Like, you want to make sure that you're still coming out in the green after marketing costs, after shipping, manufacturing, all of those things. You want to make sure that you have a buffer to come out in the green. What do you think a good buffer is? Is it like 25 to 30% more than you think? I would say it depends on the product. It depends on a thing.

Like, for example, like comic books, I think we might sell more comic books than anybody else in the world. Like, all the independent comic companies launch on Kickstarter. Comic books, like, that's, like, when you're launching comics, it's like, that's a very, like,

straightforward thing. Like, there's very well-known manufacturers, publishing, et cetera, etc. So like there's a little less risk. Also it's lightweight. It's like not heavy shipping costs. So like maybe you only need to like have a 10 to 15% buffer. But if you're talking about like heavy hardware that you're shipping from China and like all these things, you might want to have a bigger buffer of like 25, 30%. That's a great suggestion. That's fascinating about comic books. I would never think you could get money from people for a comic book. Tell me about that. Oh yeah.

The comics are crazy. We don't, we can't say this for sure, but we're, we're like almost confident that we sell more comic books on Kickstarter year than anywhere else in the world. And comics is interesting, the same way games and design and technology and these audiences that we've built, it has become the go-to for publishing comics and, like, manga and all these different things or graphic novels, right? And to the point that, like, now we're having celebrities like Charlemagne the guy. and others when they release a graphic novel, novel or comic book.

We had Jeremiah Love, who was the number three pick in the NFL draft this year, a Heisman finalist, you know, launch a comic book with us. How did it do? They all did really, really well. And so. What's really, really well? Hundreds of thousands? No, we've had people, they didn't raise millions, but we've had people raise millions

of dollars just on a comic book campaign. Charlemagne launched a comic book? Yes, he did. A graphic novel, yes, yes. What's the difference? The graphic novel is more like a book. It's kind of like actual novel like a book. But comics are lighter weight, et cetera, et cetera.

But yes, so we have that in this because we've built this like really crazy audience of people that are super engaged in that space. And that's where we do the best at Kickstarter is that we've garnered an audience around design and technology and tech gadgets. We've garnered an audience around gaming. We've gone in an audience around publishing and comics and these things and film. And so that's what makes Kickstarter so valuable is that we have a ready-made audience for you on the platform to tap into. And for comics, it's like, what better way to kind of like get rid of the risk by just being able to get all the money up front? Yeah. So let's say that you want to write a comic book.

Yeah. Could you get the comic book ready, kind of have all your ideas, create a cool video launch. it, you know, put a couple thousand maybe into the quote unquote marketing and product design, then put it up there. And if you don't get any pre-orders or if you don't get enough, you just pull it and give money back. Yeah. So Kickstarter is all or nothing. So like if you don't hit your goal, then, you know, all that money goes back. So Kickstarter is amazing because you can actually see in real time, like how much demand you actually have for your product. And then, like, listen, if you don't hit your goal, then it's like, okay, I didn't waste a bunch of money.

And you know exactly how much, how many comic books that you have to make. Like, I know people are very controversial about Kanye. Kanye is one of the biggest crowd funders, pre-order people in the world. They know exactly, he knows exactly how many easy boots, easy shoes, all of that. That's just crowdfunding in pre-orders, right? And so knowing the specific number instead of being like, hey, I'm going to print out, a thousand comics, well, you only sold 700. So, no, you only have to make 700.

That's great. So you would just come back and be like, all right, now I'm going to do another one, but I'm just going to do it for 700. Yes. And so I can just start small and then scale my way up. Absolutely. That's so smart because, you know, I think a lot of people think, well, because we were told, if I build it, they'll come.

And you're like, no, they won't. You've got to drag them kicking and screaming. I think that's like a Wayne's World thing, right? If we build it, they will come. Yeah, that is true. So what else would surprise? Like, is there anything that you're like, I'm kind of shocked that this raised this much money or most people wouldn't realize? I mean, we just had a board game raised $28 million.

It was a trading card game. But cyberpunk just raised $28 million. So it always astounds me like, you know, we think about, like we have a lot of video games on the platform, but we have a very healthy audience of people that do tabletop and trading card games and things like that. That's still a thing, right? Like, that's still a thing that people are really engaged with. And people are constantly, today we had someone raise, I think, 2 million in the first 30 minutes for a board game, right? So a lot of people don't realize how popular. People know video games are very popular.

A lot of people don't realize how popular board games, trading card games, role-playing games still are. Yeah, that's true. Also, I have a couple people on my team that play Dungeons and Dragons, which I did not know was a thing. thing, but that weird little micro niche is crazy too. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of money behind it. Interesting. So this is trading cards. Trading cards, yes.

So like Pokemon trading cards. Similar, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I'm sounding like such a boomer right now. I know this is like really big with the kids, but I got into it with Logan Paul on this because I was like, I think this is a terrible investment strategy. And I think anybody who buys, you know, it's okay for the super rich people to buy like a $7 million.

card or whatever, they don't fucking care. That's like one one millionth of their, you know, net worth. But for a normal kid who doesn't have much money, probably doesn't even own a house yet or any assets to say that like trading cards are going to hold their value long term just because they have over this last cycle freaks me out. Yeah, I mean, well, there's different types of trading cards. Like there's the Pokemon's and like Pokemon is actually tied to a game. Like the, the The cyberpunk trading card game is actually tied to a game that you can play with people, right? As opposed to you just hold it. Instead of like, oh, I have the Michael Jordan rookie card, et cetera, et cetera.

That's very, very different. So the beauty and trading card games on Kickstarter, there are often things that people are just playing and they're having fun and they're not thinking about this thing that is going to hold value. Don't get me started on the trading card thing. I think it's so ridiculous, by the way. I know. He was like, but careful if you say it on the internet, because people will be like, I know, I know.

And I go, no, I'm going to save the receipts on this. Come at me in three years. I know, but I don't want to be right. I'd rather that they made money and I was wrong, but I don't think that's going to be what happens. Yeah, well, I think it's like everything, like the NFTs, car games, all this stuff. The powers that be, Cody, you know what I'm talking about. There's certain people that have influence and they say this thing is worth this, right?

And then everyone does that. And the people, the powers that be, they end up making a bunch of money. And then there's a lot of people that lose a lot of money because they're trying to follow that trend. Yeah, they just hold the bag. I think it's a real issue when you buy things that don't have inherent value. I mean, I'm like old school, like Buffett. Like a house is always going to have a value because you have to live in it. Yes.

You know. And a car, you can utilize it, you know. Commodities, we need it for the economy. But, you know, anything that you trade, even art, which has held its, You know, its value over many, many years is tough if you hold it just for value because who's, who are you going to trade with quickly if you need some cash? That's tough. I used to run a big art platform called ArtC. So it is. Wait, I didn't know that. I liked Artsy a lot. Is it still around?

Yeah, still around. And they just merged with ArtNet and formed a super art company. But art is a super valuable asset if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, it could be a terrible investment. But if you know what you're doing, so much of my net worth is actually tied into my art collection. You can take out loans against your art collection, all these things.

So there's a lot of tricks to the trade when it comes to art. What's the most expensive piece of art you bought? Oh, Cody, I'm not going to say. Too much? I'm not going to say, but I've done very well. Fascinated.

Do you have specific artists you like buying from? Are they like really well-known ones like Picasso or Warhol or these like modern artists. I stay typically contemporary. I try to do living artists. I have some artists that are not living. My philosophy starting off was that I wanted to support black artists, right?

And now it's shifted to like I want to support artists that are meaningful to me, but also are solid investments as well. And so I'm tracking everything from like where they went to grad school, what galleries represent them, what museum acquisitions they have, what other collectors are buying them, like, what are they trading, how are they trading privately? How are they trading publicly in the auctions? Like, I'm tracking all that stuff. You have a saying that I really liked, which is, as a CEO, you should think that nothing is beneath you. Yeah. Can you talk to me about that? I think the components of a good CEO is mental toughness, which I've talked about a lot.

like being a CEO is lonely, it's hard. You have to get through a lot of stuff that most people are never going to relate to or never empathize in your situation. People don't feel sorry for CEOs. Like, they don't. Like, if you want to be in a job where people don't give a shit, be a CEO, right? That's, that's the, that's the key. So you have to have that mental toughness to deal with all the things that's going to come

with it. I think number two is having the level of humility to know. that you need people. Like you need the right talent, the right people around you. You have to have people that you can trust. I want to be the dumbest person in the room with my exec team. Like I want people, I want killers. I want people who are subject matter experts.

I want people that are just absolute geniuses and whatever their craft or field is around me at all times. I think also as a CEO, you really have to be willing to do anything and everything, right? Like, you know, this morning I was doing like some customer support stuff where like I had an angry creator or angry backer or whatever. Like you got to be able to roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to make things happen and drive the company forward. And so to me, it's really that mental toughness, having a great team, but also just being able to roll your sleeves up and do all the things and fill in the gaps, right? Like you have to make that work, right? And it's also keeping in mind of creativity and innovation and always thinking for it.

Like you have to be thinking 10 steps ahead all the time. And most people don't think like that. Most of the people you work with are not going to think like that. And so they might get upset with you because you're thinking three, four, five steps ahead where they're thinking only in the short term. I think CEOs have to make a lot of hard decisions too. You have some decision making frameworks. Like what do you do when you have to make a hard decision fast? Yeah, for me, it's like, it's a no-brainer. What is the best thing for the company? Like, my job is a CEO, and people may not like this answer, but my job as a CEO is to make sure that this company goes on for the next 10, 15, 20, 100 years

and to drive shareholder value. Take the emotions out of it, right? That's going to hurt some feelings. But my job, why they hired me, is to make sure that this company continues on, continues to grow and to drive shareholder value. This is business. It's not personal. And people have to understand that.

Yeah, people need to hear that more. My last two questions. One is you run a fully remote company now. What is the key to managing people and to being a leader to remote workers? Yeah, I mean, trust is huge, right? Like, you know, the ability to give people that much freedom is that you really have to trust in the talent acquisition part of the job, bringing the right people, the right people with the right morality, the right ambition, the right intensity in that environment.

Like, you need that, right? They have to be really locked in. But also, this is the not fun part, and the part that probably people hate for me as a CEO, is like, you've got to be even more aggressive about your goals. You have to be more on top of people's performance. like performance management, setting aggressive goals, making sure that people are actually locked in is really, really important because I've learned personally that if you don't give people enough work and if you don't set high enough goals, people are going to naturally slack off.

Like if you set the goal here, when you can set it here, people aren't going to go beyond that. They're going to meet you there. So I try to set ambitious goals to make sure that people are locked in. And then also communication is key from Slack to Zon. to Google meets, to having people meet in person. Like, that is an integral piece of it. Like, you still have to have in-person moments every year that people can really feel that camaraderie.

Everett's words about being a CEO really hit me. And that's because you guys know, if you're a CEO, too, it's really hard. You're like a bad hire, a couple bad expenses, a bad agency or two away from your business being in real problems. And that's exactly why we built the growth boardroom, because we don't think you should ever have to make those potentially million-dollar decisions alone. So in boardroom, we have a board of advisors, all of our tools and systems that we use to run private equity-style companies that are profitable and consistent over time.

Inside the boardroom, our advisors help owners find their next lever, the next person system, cash flow fix that helps the business run more smoothly so you can actually enjoy running it. If you've ever thought that you need help and you want somebody else alongside you in this game of ownership, this might be for you. You can schedule a call with my team here and we'll see if you're a fit. And if you are, we'll invite you into the boardroom where you get access to our advisors, where you get access to our quarterly planning and all of the technology we use to run profitable, consistent businesses that we actually love to run. You can click the link below or go to contraryingthinking.com slash boardroom. My last question, I suppose, is really, what do you think you've done? I mean, Kickstarter's been through a lot over the years. Yes, yes.

And you, for many accounts that I've heard when I asked around about you, have turned around this company. And it didn't seem like it was very easy. It was not easy. So what was the key? Like, how did you change the culture of a fully remote company? On a four-day work week, too. Oof. I mean.

I need to hire you. I know. I was at this conference this weekend, and there was a panel of really incredible Fortune 500 black CEOs. And they said something that rung true. And they said, you're not going to get the CEO job if it's an easy job. Like they're not just giving you polished companies that are like, hey, here, like, here's Apple. Here's, you know, here's Microsoft. Like, no, they're going to give you a company that has a lot of problems and a lot of issues.

You know, we were down over 20% in revenue year over year when I took over, increased competition. We had a completely remote team. We had four-day work. We had a lot of things working against us. And me, I came in and I said, listen, mediocrity has no place here. I do not accept mediocrity in any form in this company, how we deliver products, how we serve our customers, how we show up every day as employees and team members. Like, that's really, really important. So for me, it was like, I wanted to bring a level of intensity that Kickstarter never had, a level of urgency that Kickstarter has never had.

And, like, I wanted to be customer first. We started to build out things and build products that our customers and users and backers have been asking us for years. And we're just like, no, we're a big company, billions of dollars, you know, raised on the platform. We don't have to do these things. And I was like, no, we need to start listening to our creators in our community. So I aggressively had the focus to start building for them. I had the focus to reshape the team, get the people out of there that didn't need to be there, bringing in new talent.

This is a new day at Kickstarter. And then just having a level of ambition with our goals to really rethink what Kickstarter is. Reshape the brand. Like this is not begging for money. This isn't just crowdfunding. We are helping people build real businesses. We are creating careers of some of the biggest artists and creatives in the world. Like this is what it is.

And we want people to know that. And then also building out more than just crowdfunding from pre-launched to crowdfunding to post campaign. We've added three new business lines since I've gotten there. So like really just reshaping what Kickstarter could be. I'm so excited to see what comes next. Here's what we'll do. We'll go donate to 10 Kickstarter campaigns. I'm going to correct you. We'll go buy. Buy or back. Good one. We'll go buy or back. Ten Kickstarter campaigns off of this. We'll link them below in the YouTube show notes. And if anybody has a Kickstarter campaign and you want us to consider it even after we do the 10,

drop them in the comments and we'll go back some cool ass companies on there. I love it. Thank you so much for being on here. Thanks, I appreciate you, Everett. Everett, where do people follow you

on Kickstarter and? They can follow me on all the social platforms. What's your favorite? Let's give them one. Ooh, what's my favorite? Threads is my favorite. Threads is my new favorite thing. This is just you and my 65-year-old mom.

Yo, threads, I love it. Really? Just at Everett on threads, but I'm at Everett everywhere on LinkedIn and Snap and I don't even use Snap like that. I don't know why I said that. Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so we'll follow Everett on Instagram and threads. Yes. And Kickstarter.

Thank you for being here, man. Thank you. I appreciate you.