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

My new book Own Or Be Owned is out now! I wrote Own or Be Owned to answer one question: How do you make more money, less miserably? I broke it into the 12 Profit Levers… The 12 levers I've seen determine whether you print cash or hate your life. Check it out: → https://contrarianthinking.biz/oobo_bigdeal 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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  You're not gonna get the CEO job if it's an easy job. Like, they're not just giving you polished companies that are like, here is Apple. They're gonna give you a company that has a lot of problems. And me, I came in and I said, listen, mediocrity has no place here.

• 0:46Codie Sanchez?

  I'm gonna 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?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14Codie Sanchez?

  What do you do when you have to make a hard decision fast?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  People may not like this answer, but my job as a CEO is to make sure that...

• 1:25Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 1:43Speaker 01

  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 the time, 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 theirselves. 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,

• 2:27Speaker 01

  because I had a skill set that I could offer to people, right? So even if it was like, hey, I'm gonna do this for you. I'm gonna 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.

• 2:45Codie Sanchez?

  I love that. What do you think the formula is for selling yourself?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  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, outsized 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, they, they really grasp onto that. When you don't speak confidently and you don't have that confidence in yourself, people see right through it.

• 3:23Codie Sanchez?

  So true. I was just actually had a member of my team and he's one of our writers. And he, I told him to work with a few others and they were gonna pitch this other company to do a partnership with. And he opens up the, the pitch with, I know this probably won't work. And I think like, you know, maybe it's for the next go around. 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 gonna 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'd you do that, man?

• 4:07Codie Sanchez?

  Like you just undersold yourself. Like I'm, 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. It's like, what have you seen? You, 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?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  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 bleeds through when you're launching Kickstarter's. It bleeds 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, or you're feeling sensitive about things, like you have to be able to emotionally regulate that. You know?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  And you have to show up strong consistently, consistently in boardrooms, pitching, anywhere that you're gonna be.

• 5:15Codie Sanchez?

  What have you bought on Kickstarter? What are the ones you're like, I backed this one? And why?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  You know, I'll, 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, the, 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.

• 6:03Codie Sanchez?

  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.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  You know, I've seen some of the wackiest stuff do well. I, actually, I think the beautiful thing about Kickstarter is that you have these projects like Yufi Make that does $47 million selling 3D printers. But then you have these wacky projects, like I, I backed this project where it was literally a robot that was making music on its own and created an album. Like, like, just things that are just so weird and wacky that.

• 6:42Speaker 00

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• 7:11Speaker 03

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• 7:41Speaker 01

  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 niche is, 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.

• 8:03Codie Sanchez?

  We've got a client of one over here. 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. And so I guess my question to you would be, dispel that. Say that there's somebody listening right now that goes, there's no, 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?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Can I curse? I don't know.

• 8:39Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  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 and 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.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I don't know who's gonna invest in you or who's gonna 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, that's just straight up. There's gonna 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.

• 9:35Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, yeah, it's so true. Is there a category where you're like, don't do this on Kickstarter?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, guns. We're not gonna allow it. We've had people try to 3D print guns on the platform. So yeah, anything that's weapons or harmful.

• 9:50Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, save that. You can maybe go to one of our competitors or whatever.

• 9:55Codie Sanchez?

  Let's talk about how to do pre-orders.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:58Codie Sanchez?

  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.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:07Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  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 preorder, right? They have the resources and the means to actually create the product. They wanna use it to scale marketing. We have an audience of millions of people that are using the app and the website and they wanna be able to tap into that audience. So that's really, really important to them to use that as a marketing lever and also to see if they actually have product-market fit with their product with these, this audience of early adopters. The people that I see be really successful with pre-orders.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Are the people that have a plan after like they know their manufacturing, they're they know their fulfillment, they know how they're gonna 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

• 11:46Speaker 01

  retail partnerships, into investments, into all of those things?

• 11:51Codie Sanchez?

  It's a good point. So basically you go like, let's say I've got a ring company.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:56Codie Sanchez?

  And I'm selling rings.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Codie Sanchez?

  And

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Nice ring, by the way.

• 11:58Codie Sanchez?

  Thank you. I thought it was cool. And I go to put my ring on Kickstarter and I'm like, sick. I'm gonna 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 bucks.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:24Codie Sanchez?

  So now I've lost money on it.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  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 will, this is normally gonna be $200, but you're gonna get it for $125 or $100 on Kickstarter. 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, the, 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?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  The other thing that you said was like the shipping 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 to 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 chart shipping upfront and be like, well, I hope these shipping prices don't go up or go crazy later. Now, we have dynamic shipping prices through our Pledge Manager that you can charge shipping later.

• 13:50Codie Sanchez?

  That's so, 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 preorder, I have like a little pyramid of what matters, my preorder pyramid. And the preorder pyramid is basically exclusivity, urgency, value, timeliness, something like that?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, and, and, and building trust.

• 14:14Codie Sanchez?

  And trust.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And trust is huge because people are like, am I gonna 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, ninety something percent of people on Kickstarter fulfill, 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 gonna deliver on time. And you gotta 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.

• 14:58Codie Sanchez?

  Give me the secrets, you gave us some of those there. But if, 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 doing that? What do you have to do? What do the best companies do?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Well, the best companies, 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.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  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 the platform. I lie to you not, like, most of the time when I see a Kickstarter fail, 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.

• 16:06Codie Sanchez?

  So good. We call it show, don't tell.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:08Codie Sanchez?

  Because when you're yapping at people, they don't believe you anymore. Everybody's a yapper on the internet and everybody can say things.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:14Codie Sanchez?

  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 because you can't touch it, you can't see it.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 16:27Codie Sanchez?

  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 of 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 Cofounder and it basically uses AI to help you launch a business so you don't have to do everything.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 16:48Codie Sanchez?

  It's very cute. And so I think there's a way to do a video about just about anything.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Anything. And like, video, we're becoming video first everywhere, right? And like, one of the things that we're doing at 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.

• 17:30Codie Sanchez?

  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? Main Street 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.

• 18:15Codie Sanchez?

  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... Well, we 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 make in when they pitch their product or post their product for the first time?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  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, like, it gets rough. And like, you realize that about society and 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 capitalists versus Kickstarter, it's very different.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Like, when you're pitching VCs, you're pitching for the long term. You're pitching for, like, the big picture. 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, 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.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:29Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it's so good because I think a lot of times when I was an early entrepreneur, you, you assume that you gotta do these big crazy things to win. And I was actually talking to, I think one of my favorite stories was actually from Damon John from Booboo.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just saw him.

• 20:43Codie Sanchez?

  No way. Okay, I love him. And so he's been on the pod and we've stayed in touch. But he, 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 graffiti thing on your, what are those things called when you pull them down? Like the gates, like the roll down gates or something?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I don't know what those are called, yeah.

• 21:05Codie Sanchez?

  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.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:20Codie Sanchez?

  And he just did the same thing, exclusivity, scarcity, timeliness, and again and again.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And, 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.

• 21:47Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. Are there businesses or business owners that come to you that you're, that are like, you should just go get venture capital, just go raise a bunch of money, don't bootstrap it?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  It doesn't happen often, uh, but I, I often tell people like if you're building like a big B to B SaaS company, like why the hell are you coming to Kickstarter? It's a very consumer B to C type of platform. Number two is like, if it's super capital intensive, 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 and of value and,

• 22:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 23:04Codie Sanchez?

  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,

• 23:17Codie Sanchez?

  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% margins, 150K to 300K a year. That's a pretty sexy thing, especially with taxes.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:33Codie Sanchez?

  And like those exist every day. I mean, how many of those do you think you've seen in your, your career and on the platform?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Oh my God. So like so many, like that, that to me is like, one of the sweet spots of Kickstarter is like these businesses that are like anywhere from one million to a hundred 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, or some, some people raise billions of dollars, but millions of dollars. One, 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, it's a thing.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  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, 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 gonna 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.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  He would have left maybe a hundred something million dollars with that sale, even with, you know, giving, giving money to his investors back. And his investors pushed him not to sell the business, right? And that business didn't end up scaling the way that he wanted to, and he 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.

• 25:29Codie Sanchez?

  It's so true. It's, it's funny because we have a venture capital fund and somebody reached out to me the other day, cause one of our companies, it's a great company, sold. And we got in early, so it was cool, it's like a four X for us, but we put a lot of our own capital in and we keep our, 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 X's, but we've had a lot of four to five to seven X's. And one of the other venture capitalists called me and was like, what, you know, I thought this guy was gonna 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 bucks in his pocket, plus he gets to go work at this strategic company and get equity in that company. We get to a little bit to ride along. I go, this is, this is a good outcome for him.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  You're one of the good ones.

• 26:15Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, well, you know, I, 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.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:23Codie Sanchez?

  You know, a lot of these. A lot of these investors are salaried investors. They got no skin in the game and they've never actually run anything.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  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 a Andreessen Horowitz, right? Like for them, like a 4X return, they're like, why are you wasting our time? Like they need that 100, 200X return.

• 27:03Codie Sanchez?

  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 IPOed.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:17Codie Sanchez?

  Like they actually care about the 90%. Whereas most investors, 90% fail. They only care about the 10% that win. Like literally F off every other one.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Codie Sanchez?

  And I get it because you know, your best founders don't usually need your help.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:31Codie Sanchez?

  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. Cause 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?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely. It's crazy. It's gotten out of control, I think, but we could go on and on about that.

• 27:52Codie Sanchez?

  Well, I want to talk about, like for the small business that is going to bootstrap.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  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 costs, right? Like you don't want to be underwater because you did a Kickstarter or because you did a preorder. That, that happens too, unless 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.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  There's gonna be unforeseen things that you don't know that's gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna utilize all of the capital that you're coming in. So like, say, hey, you're selling this product in preorder or crowdfunding for a hundred bucks.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  It costs you X amount of dollars to make it, shipping, thinking about marketing costs. Like, hey, you're gonna run ads, you're gonna do things to like actually sell this product in preorder. Like, you wanna make sure that you're still coming out in the green after marketing costs, after shipping, manufacturing, all of those things. You wanna make sure that you have a buffer to come out in the green.

• 29:47Codie Sanchez?

  What do you think a good buffer is? Is it like 25 to 30% more than you think?

• 29:54Speaker 01

  I would say it depends on the product. It depends on the 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, et cetera. 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 wanna have a bigger buffer of like 25, 30%.

• 30:38Codie Sanchez?

  That's a great suggestion. That's fascinating about comic books.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:43Codie Sanchez?

  I would never think you could get money from people for a comic book. Tell me about that.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  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 a 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 Charlamagne the God and others, when they release a graphic novel or comic book, we had Jeremiah Love, who was the number three pick in the NFL draft this year, Heisman finalist, you know, launch a comic book with us.

• 31:31Codie Sanchez?

  How'd it do?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  They all did really, really well. And so-

• 31:35Codie Sanchez?

  What's really, really well? Hundreds of thousands?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 31:43Codie Sanchez?

  Charlamagne launched a comic book?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yes, he did. A graphic novel, yes, yes.

• 31:47Codie Sanchez?

  What's the difference?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  The graphic novel is more like a book. It's like a, like, kinda like actual novel, like a book, but comics are lighter weight, et cetera, et cetera.

• 31:56Codie Sanchez?

  Interesting.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  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 garnered 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 than to kinda like get rid of the risk by just being able to get all the money upfront?

• 32:37Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. So let's say that you wanna write a comic book.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:41Codie Sanchez?

  Could you get the comic book ready, kinda have all your ideas, create a cool video launching 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?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  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 crowdfunders, preorder people in the world. They know exact, he knows exactly how many Yeezy boots, Yeezy shoes, all of that. That's just crowdfunding and preorders, right?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And so, knowing the specific number, instead of being like, hey, I'm gonna print out a thousand comics. Well, you only sold 700, so now you only have to make 700.

• 33:49Codie Sanchez?

  That's great. So you would just come back and be like, alright, now I'm gonna do another one, but I'm just gonna do, I'm just gonna do it for 700.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:56Codie Sanchez?

  And so I can just start small and then scale my way up.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 33:59Codie Sanchez?

  Oh, that's so smart, because, you know, I think a lot of people think, well, we were told, if I build it, they'll come. And you're like, no, they won't. You gotta drag 'em, kicking and screaming.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I think that's like a Wayne's World thing, right? If we build it, they will come.

• 34:12Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  I mean, we just had a board game raise 28 million dollars. It was a trading card game, but Cyberpunk just raised 28 million dollars. 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.

• 35:07Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, that's true. Also- I have a couple of people on my team that play Dungeons and Dragons, which I did not know was a thing. But that, that weird little micro niche is crazy too.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of money behind it, yeah.

• 35:20Codie Sanchez?

  Interesting. The, the, so this is trading cards.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Trading cards, yes.

• 35:24Codie Sanchez?

  So like Pokemon trading cards.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Similar, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:28Codie Sanchez?

  Interesting. I'm sounding 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 seven million dollar card or whatever. They don't fucking care. It'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.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, well, there's different types of trading cards. Like there's the Pokemons and like Pokemon is to actually tied to a game. Like the, the Cyberpunk trading card game is actually tied to a game that you can play with people, right? So.

• 36:16Codie Sanchez?

  As opposed to you just hold it.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Instead of like, oh, I have the Michael Jordan rookie card, et cetera, et cetera. That's, that's very, very different. So the beauty in trading card games on Kickstarter, they're 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.

• 36:36Codie Sanchez?

  I know. He was like, oh, but careful if you say it on the internet because people will be like, bleh, you know?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 36:42Codie Sanchez?

  And I go, no, I'm going to save the receipts on this. Come at me in three years.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  I know, but like.

• 36:45Codie Sanchez?

  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.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think it's like everything, like the NFTs, card 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.

• 37:17Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, they just hold the bag.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Codie Sanchez?

  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.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:27Codie Sanchez?

  You know?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 37:28Codie Sanchez?

  And a car, you can utilize it, you know? Commodities, we need it for the economy. But, you know, anything that you trade, e- even art, which has held its, um, you know, its value over many, many years is tough. If you hold it just for value, because who's, uh, who are you gonna trade with quickly? If you need some cash, that's tough.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I used to run, run a big art platform called Art C, so it is.

• 37:51Codie Sanchez?

  Wait, I didn't know that.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:53Codie Sanchez?

  I liked Art C a lot. Is it still around?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, still around. And they just merged with Art Net 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, it could be a terrible investment. But if you know what you're doing, like 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.

• 38:20Codie Sanchez?

  What's the most expensive piece of art you bought?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Ooh, Cody, I'm not gonna say.

• 38:25Codie Sanchez?

  Too much?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna say, but I, I've done very well.

• 38:29Codie Sanchez?

  Fascinating. Do you have specific artists you like buying from? Are they like, like really well-known ones, like Picasso or Warhol? Or are these like modern artists?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  I, I stay typically contemporary.

• 38:41Codie Sanchez?

  Okay.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Uh, I try to do living artists. I have some artists that are not living. Uh huh. My, my philosophy, starting off, was that I wanted to support black artists, right?

• 38:51Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  And now it's shifted to like, I wanna 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.

• 39:18Codie Sanchez?

  You have a saying that I really liked, which is, as a CEO, you should think that nothing is beneath you.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:23Codie Sanchez?

  Can you talk to me about that?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  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, if you want to be in a job where people don't give a shit, be a CEO, right? That's, that's, that's, that's the key. So you have to have that, that mental toughness to deal with all the things that, 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.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  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, who are subject matter experts. I want people that are just absolute geniuses in 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, it takes to make things happen and, and, and drive the company forward. And so to me, it's, it's really that mental toughness, having a great team, but also just being able to roll your sleeves up

• 40:55Speaker 01

  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 forward. 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.

• 41:21Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, it's like, it's a no-brainer. What is the best thing for the company? Like, my job as 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 gonna 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.

• 42:08Codie Sanchez?

  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?

• 42:22Speaker 01

  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. And 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, 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 gotta 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,

• 43:04Speaker 01

  like, 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 gonna naturally slack off. Like, if you set the goal here, well, you can set it here. People aren't gonna go beyond that. They're gonna, they're gonna 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 Zooms 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.

• 43:41Codie Sanchez?

  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 of 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.

• 44:24Codie Sanchez?

  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 contrarianthinking.co/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.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 44:59Codie Sanchez?

  And you, from 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.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  It was not easy.

• 45:10Codie Sanchez?

  So what was the key? Like, how did you change the culture of a fully remote company?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  On a four day work week, too.

• 45:18Codie Sanchez?

  Oof, I mean, fuck, dude, I need to hire you.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  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...

• 46:02Speaker 01

  A completely remote team. We had four day work week. 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 of us for years.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  And we're just like, no, we're, you know, 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, bring in new talent. This is a new day at Kickstarter. And then, like, 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're creating careers of some of the biggest artists and creatives in the world.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Like, this is what it is, and we want people to know that. And then also, building out more than just crowdfunding from pre-launch 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.

• 47:46Codie Sanchez?

  I'm so excited to see what comes next. Here's what we'll do. We'll go donate to 10 Kickstarter campaigns.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I'm gonna correct you.

• 47:53Codie Sanchez?

  We'll go buy.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Buy or back.

• 47:55Codie Sanchez?

  Good one.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Buy or back.

• 47:57Codie Sanchez?

  Buy or back 10 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.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 48:12Codie Sanchez?

  Thank you so much for being on here.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Thanks, Cody.

• 48:14Codie Sanchez?

  Appreciate you, Everett.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 48:15Codie Sanchez?

  Everett, where do people follow you on Kickstarter and?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  They can follow me on all the social platforms.

• 48:21Codie Sanchez?

  What's your favorite? Let's give them one.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Ooh, what's my favorite? Uh, Threads is my favorite. Threads is my new favorite thing.

• 48:29Codie Sanchez?

  Ow, this is just you and my 65 year old mom.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yo, Threads, I love it. So I'm 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.

• 48:42Codie Sanchez?

  Okay, so we'll follow Everett on Instagram and Threads.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:45Codie Sanchez?

  And Kickstarter. Thank you for being here, man.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Thank you, I appreciate you.

• 48:54Speaker 04

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