Running a creative business isn’t easy. Kickstarter’s cofounder hopes to change that

VPM | By Manoush Zomorodi, Katie Monteleone, Harsha Nahata and Sanaz Meshkinpour

Published November 7, 2025 at 2:00 PM EST

Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler wants creative work to be a financially stable career. His proposal? A new legal structure designed to protect and support artists.

About Yancey Strickler

Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur focused on supporting artists and creative people. He is the cofounder of Kickstarter, the Creative Independent, Metalabel, the Dark Forest Collective and Artist Corporations, a project aiming to create a new legal structure for creative work. He’s the author of This Could Be Our Future, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet and On the Creative Life.

This segment of the TED Radio Hour was produced by Katie Monteleone and Harsha Nahata and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].

Web Resources

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Manoush Zomorodi

Manoush Zomorodi is the host of TED Radio Hour. She is a journalist, podcaster and media entrepreneur, and her work reflects her passion for investigating how technology and business are transforming humanity.

Zomorodi is a co-founder of Stable Genius Productions and is the co-host and co-creator of ZigZag, the business podcast about being human. She also created, hosted, and was managing editor of the podcast Note to Self in partnership with WNYC Studios, which was named Best Tech Podcast of 2017 by The Academy of Podcasters.

Prior to her time at WNYC, Zomorodi reported and produced around the world for BBC News and Thomson Reuters, including a few years in Berlin.

She was named one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2018 and has received numerous awards for her work, including The Gracie for Best Radio Host in 2014 and 2018. Her book "Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Creative Self" (2017, St. Martin's Press) and her TED Talk are guides to surviving information overload and the "Attention Economy."

Zomorodi received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in English and fine arts. She is half-Persian and half-Swiss but was born in New York City, where she lives with her family.

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