About
My name is Yancey Strickler. 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 projects are Metalabel, a project that helps creative people cooperate rather than compete; Artist Corporations, a project to establish a new legal structure for creative work; the Dark Forest Collective, a label of a dozen-plus writers publishing books and ideas together; and New Creative Era, a podcast with Joshua Citarella about our creative practices.
I'm a cofounder 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) articulated why we feel afraid to be ourselves online, now also a book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet (2024), with ten other writers.
The Post-Individual (2024) is an in-depth examination of identity in the internet age released as a limited-edition ZIP file.
Nine Creative Meditations (2024) is a digital publication sharing nine creative lessons from my life.
On the Creative Life (2025) is a book collecting thirteen conversations with Joshua Citarella on our creative practices.
With the Dark Forest Collective, I served as both publisher and editor on Nadia Asparohouva's book Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading.
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 project 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.
