Kickstarter lost its spark. Its CEO brought it back.
Everette Taylor, a celebrity CEO, helped revive the crowdfunding giant Kickstarter in his early 30s after revenue fell.
The creative crowdfunding giant, Kickstarter, tripped up before Everette Taylor, then 33, was named its CEO in 2022.
Revenue dropped by 20%, and Taylor was hired as chief executive that September, according to a recent New York Times piece. In the years since, Taylor, now 37, has been the subject of other shimmery features in Entrepreneur, Esquire, Forbes magazines – and now a profile in USA TODAY about his climb as a young, Black CEO.
Kickstarter launched in 2009 with mid-2010s fanfare before falling on hard times. But in the last four years, the company experienced a corporate revival with Taylor, who has over 600,000 Instagram followers, at the helm.
The platform differs from online charitable site GoFundMe, where donors commit to a specific cause. Patrons on Kickstarter pledge funds at different tiers and receive rewards based on the sum they pay to “back” projects. Last year was the privately-operated corporation’s best on record.
Now, as the U.S. faces economic uncertainty, Taylor will help launch The Culture Fund, a new initiative that aims to finance projects from creatives across fashion, music, art, and film industries.
Taylor said The Culture Fund came about after he saw creatives from all different backgrounds share one thing in common: financial struggles.
“A lot of them, even the people that you see, (saying) ‘Oh … I’m in Vogue’ or ‘I did this thing,’ or ‘I just like launched a movie,’ ” Taylor said, “they don’t show you that they went in debt launching that movie.”
Money where their mouth is
When Kickstarter launched over 15 years ago, Taylor said the company didn’t have users funding campaigns for $50 million tech products or $30 million campaigns for games. The platform was originally meant for lesser-known artists, musicians, filmmakers and fashion designers, Taylor said.
But over time, the platform became a home for creative projects from A-list celebrities and newsmakers, a shift that once sparked controversy, with critics saying it was lending help to some who didn’t need it.
The actress Kristen Bell, media personality Charlamagne Tha God, rapper Vic Mensa, film icon Spike Lee and actor Zach Braff have all used Kickstarter to fund their pursuits.
Now, through The Culture Fund, Kickstarter will circle back to its initial mission of helping lesser-known creatives. Kickstarter has committed $1 million to its Culture Fund as an initial test amount but plans to seek money from partners for future investment.
“I was like, ‘Hey, let’s put our money where our mouth is’ and make this commitment from ourselves,” Taylor said of Kickstarter’s initial bet.
Sold first company at 19
Taylor himself has struggled. He was predominately raised by his mother in Southside Richmond, a structurally disadvantaged neighborhood in Virginia’s capital city.
He was homeless at 17 for less than a year – a detail that has defined media coverage despite the fact that Taylor said he mentioned it offhand in one of his first-ever interviews. He witnessed mental health challenges and drug abuse.
“It’s just a terrible experience, you know?” Taylor said. “And I think for me, I never gave up hope, and I think it’s that power and that confidence in myself is what got me through.” After high school, Taylor attended Virginia Tech.
He dropped out and started his first company, EZ Events, at 19. EZ was sold two years later, in 2011. He later founded PopSocial, a social media marketing software company, which reported over $2 million in revenue in its first year.
By 2018, Taylor was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. A year later, Taylor joined Artsy, an online art marketplace, as chief marketing officer. Then, in 2022, he joined Kickstarter. Under his leadership, the company continued its four-day work week and cleared up consumer confusion over some post-COVID-19 similarities to GoFundMe.
Taylor is one of a small wave of young, Black CEOs who have rebuilt consumer trust in the companies they run, and built personal brands in the process. In a corporate landscape where the average CEO is around 60, the group includes Damola Adamolekun, who runs Red Lobster and is 37 like Taylor, and Sean Tresvant, the CEO of Taco Bell, who is in his 40s.
‘It’s very difficult to become CEO as a Black person’
Ann Mooney Murphy, a business professor at Stevens Institute of Technology near New York City, said Taylor is aligned with her recent research on CEOs who double as social media celebrities and foster parasocial (one-sided but intimate) relationships with fans.
“He is really relatable and he is trying to kind of show not just like his authority as a CEO, which he has, but his vulnerability as a person,” Murphy said. The CEO expert said Taylor’s upbringing is far from the only nontraditional aspect of his biography. Taylor was also an outside hire with marketing expertise, a rarity for top executives.
Murphy said that unlike many CEOs, who hail from operations or finance backgrounds, Taylor has used marketing strategies to brand companies – and himself.
Seung-Hwan Jeong, a business professor at the University of Georgia, studied the impact of Black CEOs at public companies with Murphy. Their research found that Black executives are typically more qualified than White counterparts, and stock values rise when firms appoint Black CEOs.
“It’s very difficult to become CEO as a Black person but if you do make it, that might mean that you have some pretty remarkable qualifications,” Jeong said.
Taylor said, “I am very much a very proud Black man. With that being said, I think I’m a great CEO period.”
At Kickstarter, The Culture Fund will tie together both Taylor’s life story and his rise at the crowdfunding company.
From Southside Richmond to CEO
In an Observer story published in June, one of the many written about his rise, Taylor said that he was inspired by Shawn “Jay Z” Carter after he saw the Roc Nation co-founder on a cover of “Black Enterprise” magazine. Now a billionaire married to Beyoncé, Carter was one of the first rappers to have revolutionary mainstream success in business.
Last month, Taylor attended one of Carter’s concerts at Yankee Stadium in honor of the 30th anniversary of his debut record, “Reasonable Doubt.” The album came out when Taylor was 7 in Southside Richmond.
Now, in an arena in the Bronx, Taylor sat listening to Carter as a CEO.
What does he have to say to the next Everette Taylor? “For all of what I’ve accomplished and all of who I am today, I want people to improve upon that and be better than who I am.”
The Culture Fund is intended for those people, and that kid.
This story has been updated.