About

Hello 👋

My name is Yancey. I'm a writer and entrepreneur whose work supports artists and creative people. My projects span founding companies, starting labels, writing books and essays, and creating frameworks and tools that help people experience the world differently.

My current focuses are Metalabel, a platform that helps creative people cooperate rather than compete, and Artist Corporations, a project to establish a new legal structure for creative work. Other current projects include the Dark Forest Collective, a label of a dozen-plus writers publishing books and ideas together, and two upcoming books exploring creativity.

I'm a cofounder, Board Director, and former CEO of Kickstarter, which has helped creative people raise more than $8 billion (and counting) for their projects. I cofounded The Creative Independent, a resource of emotional and practical guidance for artists. I started eMusic Selects, an early digital-only record label.

My writing explores creativity, systems, and ways of being.

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World (2019) introduced Bentoism, a framework for widening our scope of self-interest. "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet" (2019) articulates why we feel afraid to be ourselves online, now also a book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet (2024), with ten other writers. On the Creative Life (2025) collects a dozen conversations with artist Joshua Citarella on how we approach our creative practices.

Other writing projects include The Post-Individual (2024), an examination of identity in the internet age, and Nine Creative Meditations (2024), a digital publication sharing personal creative lessons.

My career began as a music critic writing for Pitchfork, Spin, and The Village Voice.

I grew up on a farm in Clover Hollow, Virginia, and now live in New York City.

Videos

Conversations

• New Creative Era podcast with Joshua Citarella (2025)
• Dialectic with Jackson Dahl (2025)
• Joshua Citarella podcast (2023)
• Interdependence with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst (2022)
• The Ezra Klein Show (2019)
• The Charlie Rose Show (2015)

Bio

Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur whose work supports artists and creative people. He's the cofounder and Director of Metalabel, a platform that helps creative people cooperate rather than compete, and Artist Corporations, a new legal structure for creative work. He's the cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, which has helped creators raise more than $8 billion for their projects, and the cofounder of The Creative Independent, a resource of emotional and practical guidance for artists. He's the author of the books "This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World" (2019); "The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet" (2024), and "On the Creative Life" (2025). His career began as a music critic writing for Pitchfork, Spin, and The Village Voice. He grew up on a farm in Clover Hollow, Virginia.