Kickstarter – Robin P. Zander

I first got to know today’s guest through my work at Socos, alongside Vivienne Ming. Over the last several years, I’ve heard a name mentioned in a variety of unlikely contexts – by Chris Anderson, the CEO of TED, Perry Chen, the Co-Founder of Kickstarter, and Beth Comstock, the Vice Chair at GE.

My guest today is Sunny Bates, a behind-the-scenes master connector of many of the most innovative companies, personalities, and artists that you’ve heard of, and many that you haven’t.

Sunny sits on the board of Kickstarter, the MIT Media Lab, and TED. She advises companies like GE and Credit Suisse on new initiatives and is the go-to resource when companies like P&G and The Guardian need a new breakthrough.

As you’ll hear, Sunny is deeply committed to culture and the arts. I was startled to learn that she had hosted world-famous musician, Amanda Palmer, and blogger, Maria Popova, to her home for a house party.

In this interview, we discuss how Sunny has built an incredible network of innovators, spanning more than 40,000 people, how her enthusiasm for spontaneous encounters led to her role at Kickstarter, among others, and some of the trends she is most excited for in the future.

Please enjoy!

Show Notes
2:30 Sunny’s connections
5:30 Building a network
10:30 Adding value to other’s work and lives
13:30 We learn quickest alongside an expert
16:45 Exploring our creative side
19:15 Kickstarter
22:00 Looking at the big picture
24:30 A career as a series of projects
29:00 Trends in the future of work
32:15 Equality
34:45 Acknowledgment and gratitude
38:00 It’s never too late to give thanks or apologize
39:45 Compensation
44:00 Books: The State of Affairs by Esther Perel
46:30 Website: sunnybates.com
Twitter: @SunnyBates
Ted Talk

I recently had the opportunity to study with Clay Herbert, creator of Kickstarter Hacks. Clay taught a class on Kickstarter at CreativeLIVE and I’m excited to share what I learned.

I have been interested in Kickstarter for more than year and have actively been building my own campaign over the last few months. I have been at times overwhelmed, determined and delighted. Studying with Clay at CreativeLIVE put everything I’ve done into perspective and showed me that building, managing and successfully running a Kickstarter campaign is manageable and something that anyone can do.

He did this by breaking down every step of running a campaign into it’s component parts. By only trying to accomplish one small step at a time, I realized I was better able to focus on keeping one foot in front of the other and not stumbling along the way.

In what follows I will share some of my take-aways from Clay’s workshop. At least as interesting to me, though, is how these same holdups and breakthroughs transfer into a larger learning process. Increasingly, I recognize patterns in my own learning. As I discussed in my study of the Gymnastics Giant there are predictable periods in any learning process of inactivity or overwhelm. As I’ve encountered these periods in building my own Kickstarter, I have been learning to plan for them and make progress when I am at my most energetic.

Tag: Kickstarter

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