Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler to step down this year
"Today I'm announcing that we are beginning the search for Kickstarter's next CEO"
Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler will step down later this year, and the crowdfunding platform has put out a public call to find his successor.
Strickler founded Kickstarter with Perry Chen and Charles Adler in April 2009, but work on the platform started several years before. Initially, Chen was the company's CEO, but Strickler took over late in 2013.
As such, Strickler became CEO just after the boom years for game developers on the platform, when games like Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2 and Star Citizen proved just how powerful a source of funding the crowd could be. This year, passed 10,000 funded games.
Indeed, Kickstarter as a whole seems to be in rude health. In Strickler's time as CEO the "dollars pledged to projects" have tripled, with the last three-months bringing in more money ($170 million) than any equivalent period in the company's history.
"Great stuff is cooking in the oven," Strickler said in a blog post. "Being the CEO of Kickstarter is an unreal opportunity for someone with a deep connection to creative projects, someone who doesn't believe in putting profit above all, and someone who's excited by the challenge of building on a successful business that's oriented to the long term."