Interview with Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan on the future of crowdfunding and how the pandemic has impacted the number and types of projects on the site
Ashley Carman / The Verge : Tweets: @ashleyrcarman Tweets: Ashley Carman / @ashleyrcarman : kickstarter laid off 40 percent of its workforce earlier this month, and then this week it hit a huge milestone: $5 billion in pledges. i spoke with the ceo about the future of the company and where crowdfunding even goes from here https://www.theverge.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Aziz Hasan inherited a shaken company. After reports of turmoil under founder Perry Chen in 2018, Chen stepped down and Hasan was promoted from Head of Design and Product in March 2019 — so his first real test arrives not as a product cycle but as a pandemic, forcing him to cut 40% of staff just weeks into the crisis.
The timing makes the interview a study in contrasts: days after the layoffs, Kickstarter crossed its second cumulative-pledges milestone since passing $2B in 2015, reaching $5 billion total. The conversation covers both what backers are funding during lockdowns and whether the pledge-driven model can absorb a demand shock.
First-order effects
- Kickstarter's own operations shrink immediately: the 40% workforce cut lands on a company that had already bled senior staff under Chen, concentrating more responsibility on a smaller team led by Hasan.
- Creators launching mid-pandemic face a changed marketplace, with Hasan fielding direct questions about which project categories are surviving the drop in discretionary backing.
Second-order effects
- A leaner Kickstarter shifts weight onto category mix rather than headcount — if games, design, or tech pledges falter differently under lockdown conditions, the company's revenue and curation priorities move with them.
- Hasan's performance managing the downturn becomes the de facto audition for the permanent CEO role he was still holding on an interim basis when promoted from within.
Third-order effects
- Crowdfunding's health is emerging as a proxy for the broader creator economy: a platform that has funded thousands of companies and jobs cannot cut a fifth of its workforce without signaling stress across independent creative financing.
- The episode foreshadows the structural reset Kickstarter later pursued — the fully remote, four-day-week operation and modernization push under successor Everette Taylor read as answers to the fragility exposed in this period.
The trend: Pledge-based crowdfunding platforms are being forced from founder-led culture companies into cost-disciplined marketplaces whose viability tracks the discretionary spending of their backers.