How do you rethink how the world works? An entrepreneur and an engineer answer | Yancey Strickler and Jenny Du

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. What happens when following the right path leads you to the wrong place? Writer, entrepreneur, and former Kickstarter CEO, Yancey Strickler, sits down with engineer and chemist, Jenny Du, to explore the question of how we each find unique purpose in this new episode from TED Intersections, our original series that features unscripted conversations between speakers and experts taking on subjects at the intersection of their expertise. Yancey and Jenny discuss how they each found the spark that led to their success and why it's important to love our own weird ways of being.

0:54In a way, it's not about like me or us and our beautiful ideas. It is about the why we want to do it and who else is it for and knowing that there will be benefits to many other people if we can find a way to get it right.

1:25I love how your career has been on disrupting the status quo, kind of breaking those structures down. You did it at Kickstarter and now with your new artist corporation structure, like let's just like take it back almost. Why has it been important to shake the institutions and these like normal ways of working? My first thought was I've never felt like I belonged anywhere. wow okay we gotta unpack that yeah yeah like i grew up on the country on a farm i loved books i didn't you know just it wasn't how what am i doing here and that always created kind of a hyper awareness another word is anxiety another word you know but just uh a feeling of not totally fitting in.

2:25And I've never really been a part of any institution. I've never been really blessed by, I mean, this, this TED, this stage is certainly an amazing exception. We'll make it very excited about, but I've just never had the option to be part of those things. You know, I went to a high school in the middle of nowhere, very rural area. I didn't, yeah, I don't have no connections. like so just those things are not for me and so anything I've done it's always been I have to figure out what's my weird way and I'm again that not belonging causes me to be off often very self-aware of what I'm doing and so I'm like doing something while having some understanding and maybe why I'm doing it and through that like a deepening I don't know this is like retrospectively I'm saying this is what's happening.

3:18And so I would say it's because I don't have a choice. I would also say it's often annoying. Like as a kid, yeah, as a kid, I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to fit in. I remember one year before like seventh grade, my mom and I go in the mall and I'm just like, it's only by the clothes that I know the other kids who I'm not like wear. And I went to school wearing those clothes and it's like they still could tell. what what what a ripoff uh and so so you know but as you learn how to be yourself you know i think the things that are the things that hold you back when you're younger are your strengths when you're older and and so it's just now it's just kind of just how i it's like that my my gate you know i walk yeah yeah um and it's often annoying well i feel like that i mean they say like let's say in school and you're really expected to conform to this pretty set framework of what like a good student looks like and then unfortunately schools just sort of like be a robot repeat these things back to me yeah and then it's I think there's sort of a belief that the ones that are a little bit not the right that don't fit yeah or stand out or even almost like struggle in that environment will be, you know, almost like nurtured in the right way.

4:47The folks who will make the greatest change at some point later on, it's just more that in this time and place that wasn't the right time and place. I think anytime you're having to like, whether you want to or not, confront some obstacle or overcome, you know, I'm left-handed and I'm having to learn guitar or whatever. There's like all kinds, like so many things. But like that, that extra step deepens your way, deepens your understanding of that thing. Yeah. And ultimately, I think like really accelerates the exceptional, like your ceiling. And in a way that, again, if you're just like following, following the path, doing the right things, you arrive at like, oh, you're a professional.

5:36Right. But yet someone else might be the entrepreneur that like, yeah, you're the SVP at a big company, but they have made their own company. And I think a lot of it is like, yeah, that I mean it the opposite of this way, but some people come out wrong. Like I came out wrong, you know, you know, and but like but like. But then you just force your way through the world. And that process really teaches you, I think, ways that the world works, which is something you are dealing with these days. How did this thing you're doing start, even? Yeah. So it started with hearing a fact for the first time that a third of the food that we produce worldwide is lost or wasted before it ever has a chance to be eaten.

6:30I was an FAO report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in 2012. And our founder, James Rogers, heard that and was just sort of like, wait, what? And sometimes you hear something that you can't unhear. And I think especially quite close to us because where we are located in Santa Barbara, California, We're surrounded by fruits and vegetable fields, especially if you're driving between where we are and you head up into Northern California. And it's pretty crazy suddenly to have it in front of you to see this food that we're growing. And then just almost like, well, imagine just, especially for fruits and vegetables, like take half of it off the plate.

7:19And you're sort of like, this can't be possible. we're in the 21st century um this is the best we can do kind of um so it was I would just treat it as like the thing you can't unhear um and then it sits with you and it sort of nags at you for a while and um and then you feel compelled like what can we do about that what do we what can we uniquely contribute even to maybe trying to figure that out? So then as material scientists, chemists, engineers, it was like just then starting to ask some really basic questions. Like, okay, why is there food waste? Like, how do plants decay or spoil today? How do they protect themselves?

8:17What does that mean? So it's just like really probably the benefit of a beginner's lens or mind on this because we don't come from food or agriculture. And so almost then hopefully not being trapped by or being blinded by the things that are immediately in front of us, but you lose track of and you just accept how they are. So anyways, that's how we got started and really kind of grateful for that journey. it blends all these things that we talked about at the very beginning. It's like, I love science and engineering. So we have a technical problem. I want to put that towards something I would deem as like meaningful and impactful use.

8:59And so helping, especially healthy foods last longer that which I wish all of us were eating more of, you know, for our own kind of health and benefit, like all those things and laddered up so well. And so it was sort of like, I don't know if this is going to work, but it sure seems like worth trying. You're going to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how about for you then, like, you know, call it the spark or fundamental core issue that you were trying to unpack? I mean, I think basically all my work always starts with like, why Yancey sad? And just like a dumb self interrogation. And for me, it was like I'm a writer and I was building an audience.

9:47I was running a community and doing a lot of stuff and having success with it. And I felt very lonely all the time. And tried to elevate people to be a part of it with me. And the dynamics were off. And, yeah, I just felt unhappy. I was doing what I loved and I felt unhappy doing it. and I ended up just like pausing for a bit, like for a month, and I just read a lot. That's what I do. I just read. I read old and random. And I read two things in the same week, one about the history of hardcore and punk bands, which is my world, and how in all cases they made such weird music no record label would put them out, so they had to put themselves out.

10:36But to put themselves out, they just made up a fake record label name, a logo in a P.O. box. Love it. And you print it, and then you self-legitimize. But what would always happen is by the time the first record would come out, like four other people would come and be like, we make music like you. Can we be part of it too? And it made me see that something like a punk label is not just putting out music, it's manifesting more punkness. It's teaching people the worldview, how to adopt it. And that same week, I was learning about the history of the Royal Society. Began 1660 in London. Christopher Wren and other natural law scientists start meeting in a pub on Thursday nights because they're annoyed that facts are determined by the church and the king.

11:15So they start a club with the motto of take nobody's word for it. And in 1664, they published the first zine, Philosophical Transactions, which is people just trying experiments, experimenting with the idea of experiments. And those pages is like Funded the Babbage Machine, where Isaac Newton published Benjamin Franklin's Kite Experiment, peer review, scientific method, all created through that process. And I came to feel like those two projects, a punk label and the Royal Society, are the same thing. We brought it back to the beginning. It is, it is, it is, yeah. Yeah, it is an umbrella. It is some organization that stands for a purpose.

11:56It is open to anyone who reflects the criteria and promotes that same purpose. and there's like some sort of economic or rules that determine how it functions together. But I came to see that like across history, that's been the most powerful form of culture or creation ever. But yeah, but I ended up like had that observation and wrote it up for myself and I wasn't sure what to do about it. And I ended up sending it to like five people who I thought about when writing it who are people who run projects like this. Some of them I knew, some of them I didn't. And I reached out and I had just attached a Google Doc.

12:33And I said, hey, I'm working on this thing. It's not public, but I wrote this while thinking of you. And really curious to know what you think. And all five people wrote back. And all five had some reaction of like, wow, I've never thought of it this. I've never seen this meta strike. I've never seen this thing. And that feedback sort of fed that this is real. And that process led ultimately to building a tool for that sort of project to exist today and then to imagine how those sorts of projects could legally become powerful, could become wealthy, could become bigger than how we think of an artist's role today.

13:12But it really did begin with just trying to understand my own unhappiness with a situation that was to my liking. I'd made the situation I wanted, but I did not enjoy it. and trying to figure that out for myself has just led to, well, you know, in the talk I gave, I talk about how on starting Kickstarter, there had been a wall and we built a door. And that had been in the talk for a while. And about a month ago, I was reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is a book by Joseph Campbell. And this is where the hero's journey idea comes from. The hero's journey is, you know, you kind of get the shit kicked out of you.

14:01You're called to return. You deny it. You don't want it. You have to go deeper. You go deeper. And then you return. And the pivotal moment is that you find transcendence. And across every society myth, it says there's similar sort of shape to the story. But the trick to transcendence, transcendence is a door. And the door of transcendence is all around us. There's like 12 right here between us right now. The doors of transcendence are everywhere, but there's a trick to doors of transcendence. Doors of transcendence are locked in very specific ways. And he writes that the doors of transcendence are always locked by opposites.

14:38Light and dark, life and death, or as I saw and I read it, artist corporation. Exact opposites. But opposites lead you to think that there is no space between them. but in the hero's journey because you've gotten the shit kicked out of you and because you'd like to see it differently now you perceive the crack and the final stage of the hero's journey is to identify that and by identifying the doors and opening them and returning and telling people you open the doors for everybody and that is the point of the journey but it's always locked by these opposites. And it's like, yeah, like that's the deepest truths.

15:19The grandest things are in finding our way to that hidden door. And again, it's just like the glory of the universe, the trick of the whole, it's all in chorus with itself. It's harmonizing with itself. And these things just give us a hint of like what's actually a play. But there is a mix of like it's an honor and it's a responsibility and it's a duty. And there's a lot of feelings that go into it. And learning about what you are doing, I'm thinking, oh, what a great, wow, everybody's going to love this. Like what a great thing. And then to hear you have opposition. There are forces that oppose this.

16:06there maybe people don't care you know maybe the world you see is very hard for someone else to see yes and yeah how do you carry that um maybe that goes back to a little bit your previous question almost like why what like why do i identify as a scientist why do i love science um and it had always been and I don't I'm sure just positive influences from different places in my life it was like how do you do something that's like doing good wanting to spend like our time all of our we're all here on borrowed time you know our time is finite and so how do you make the most of that and that has been at least for me to find ways to serve or do good to elevate almost our collective quality of life if possible.

17:07So I guess in the face of opposition, it's like the conviction, I guess, that is tested as to whether or not you kind of stay on the course, I guess, that you're on. And I think thinking about like the knowing that there's like an entanglement of systems or incentives or whatever that's kind of got us all trapped and just don't accept those things as inevitable. And that it will take some kind of commitment to action. and you've also maybe got a willing willing to do that and know that it may not even be solved like in your lifetime but that's the path that's worth walking yeah if that makes sense so um and then I guess in that sense it's helpful because in a way it's not about like me or us and our beautiful ideas it is about like the why we want to do it and who else is it for and knowing that there will be benefits to many other people if we can find a way to get it right.

18:26So it's definitely a challenge of resilience. But we also know that, I mean, I think your own stories, you know, encountering the same kinds of things. So it's also inspiring, though, to meet other people everyone's got their own version of the fight I guess and uh how do you not like the heart let the hard days win kind of is actually really tapping into others who are on a journey of of their own um sharing their stories and just going like man like taking energy I think from that So, I mean, I think about like the, you know, what you shared at this, Ted, this year with regards to this artist corporation.

19:18I thought like, to me, it's so impressive because when we work within certain bounds, like you almost like as a common person, you work within legal bounds. You've gone and you've created a whole new legal structure. And so I have a bazillion questions about like, where do you start? Who do you need to convince? What else needs to change in order to sort of like accommodate that? And so like, can somebody today go and actually register themselves or incorporate as an artist corporation? but like that's such a perfect example of, at least for me, as a rule follower, like but the laws are shaped in this way and where is there really like room to carve this out?

20:07So I would love to take it from almost like us trying to figure out what's the resilience that you need to sort of walk through this, but actually hear your direct example of how did that, like what's the first two steps or something yeah that you had to walk down well I think it always helps even when people are opposing you I think it helps to empathize and because I think everyone generally people are up people are operating rationally within their local maximum yes yes yes but can you change that yeah and it works best if you can crawl into someone's bubble with them and look into the world together and by the time you're done talking you know it's moved forward eight steps and like people are open to that i think in in certain circumstances but we all we're all resistant to being wrong because that means changing you know changing means that we were wrong or had to move so like those are gentle things to do but um yeah i mean the artist corporation idea is um it's a it's well first it's just teaching me more about how the universe works and I previously co-founded Kickstarter and the last time a new corporate structure was made in the United States was 2012 and it was a public benefit corporation structure and Kickstarter was one of the first companies to become one of those and so we closely followed as the process was happening being passed as law and states and yeah, just had a bit of an inside view into that.

21:52And it just registered to me that it was very technical and very esoteric, but like it happened. Yeah. It happened kind of because it is so technical and esoteric. It's just, it operates at a very different frequency than other things we're aware of. Right. And like, who's really going to like dive into that? Who's going to care that much? Who's going to possibly care that much? And so I just happened to have seen that before. And then when I personally ran into a wall with something I wanted to do and felt like I wasn't clear what option to take, some part of my brain remembered, hey, there's that thing.

22:31And just thought, oh, could you do that thing on that thing? Could you add that to that? And I have the blessing of experience that I feel grateful for every day. and the blessing of experience lets you know, lets you know how to roll with those things sometimes. And so this, this idea and feeling arrived at like my most capable moment as a human being until now, until now. And, uh, and arrived with me being fortunate to know so many great people who could help with so many things of this. I don't understand. Yeah. Do you, I feel like the vibe, the mood in the world right now is quite doomy. It's tough.

23:16It's doom. Yeah. Are you an optimistic person? Are you just like, does that get you down? Do you like see over it? Mostly yes. Probably depends a little bit on the day and that's okay. It's almost learning to give myself some kind of like grace through that. if you can look over a long enough period of time, it's almost like the things that matter, they kind of bubble back up to the surface, even if there's a time of disruption. And maybe, again, maybe that's naive, that in a way, like, what's good and right and really better for all of us, like, prevails in the end. But I guess, fortunately, there's been so many examples in history where that pendulum, you know, does kind of navigate its way back and forth, but it's never sort of, at least to me, I don't feel like it's sort of gone in one direction forever and ever and never been able to recalibrate or find its way back again.

24:21So that's kind of, I think, why I maintain a bit more of like an optimistic view is just that like if we look on a long enough time scale then enough of the right moments and drivers start to kind of click together to create a critical mass or a moment that allows like change to come forward. I don't know how else to describe it but it's like what's at the root of all of our like malaise as a society that it can sometimes like uh devolve to such a state um there's a lot of noise yeah a lot of noise but how do you navigate according to truth yeah and um it's a conscious mindset i think a little bit of yeah some intentionality and not allowing yourself to just be pulled by what you see yeah yep i think this is probably all of our time.

25:18Thank you so much. That was such a treat. That was awesome. Yeah, awesome.

25:27That was a conversation between Yancey Strickler and Jenny Dew for our original series, TED Intersections. Visit TED.com to watch this conversation and others from the series. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Today, TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.

26:06I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

26:16Thank you.