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

Summary

TED Talks Daily: “How do you rethink how the world works? An entrepreneur and an engineer answer”

With Yancey Strickler & Jenny Du

Date: September 19, 2025 | Series: TED Intersections

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Episode Overview

This TED Intersections episode features a direct, unscripted conversation between Yancey Strickler (writer, entrepreneur, former Kickstarter CEO) and Jenny Du (engineer, chemist). The focus is on how individuals find unique purpose and challenge the status quo to create change. Both share personal stories, dig into the roots of their work, and explore the discomfort—and necessity—of “being weird” or out of place within existing systems. The discussion is deeply reflective, mixing philosophy, personal narrative, and practical insights about resilience, innovation, and navigating societal inertia.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. The Power (and Pain) of Not Fitting In

• Yancey Strickler opens up about a lifelong feeling of not belonging, tracing its connection to his drive to create new structures (“artist corporation,” Kickstarter).

  • Quote: “I've never felt like I belonged anywhere … I have to figure out what's my weird way.” (03:10)
  • Reflects on childhood efforts to conform: buying clothes like other kids, but still being seen as different.
  • Core insight: The traits that are difficult when young can become sources of strength in adulthood.

• Jenny Du connects these ideas to education:

  • The school system pushes conformity, but those who "don't fit" can ultimately become the greatest changemakers.
  • Quote: “The ones that are a little bit not the right, that don't fit or stand out ... will make the greatest change at some point later on.” (05:24)

2. Embracing Obstacles and the Depth They Bring

• Strickler describes how overcoming obstacles—whether mastering guitar as a lefty or navigating social exclusion—deepens both understanding and capability.
  • Quote: “That extra step deepens your way, deepens your understanding of that thing. And ultimately ... really accelerates the exceptional, like your ceiling.” (06:10)
• The pair contrasts traditional paths (safe, "professional" roles) with entrepreneurial ones, pointing out the necessity—and value—of finding one's own way.

3. Origins of Big Ideas: The Unignorable Spark

• Jenny Du recounts the moment that changed her trajectory: reading the FAO statistic that a third of global food is wasted before people eat it.

  • Quote: “Sometimes you hear something that you can't unhear. … It sort of nags at you for a while and then you feel compelled, like, what can we do about that?” (07:27)
  • Explains how being outsiders in food/agriculture enabled her and her team to question “accepted truths” and approach the problem with beginner’s mind, focusing on using their scientific skills for meaningful impact.

• Yancey Strickler explains his drive as a kind of “dumb self-interrogation,” using loneliness in the midst of success as a catalyst for questioning and building communities.

  • Two influences hit him in one week: the self-inventive, DIY ethos of punk music, and the founding of the Royal Society.

  • Realizes both are about creating new structures that allow people to congregate and advance ideas outside traditional power systems.

    • Quote: “A punk label and the Royal Society are the same thing … the most powerful form of culture creation ever.” (13:02)

4. Culture, Structure, and Opening Doors

• Strickler unpacks the metaphor of “building a door instead of a wall”—an idea rooted in Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.
  • The hero’s journey is about confronting opposites (light/dark, life/death), finding the hidden “crack” (opportunity), and opening a door for others as well.
  • Quote: “Doors of transcendence are everywhere. But there’s a trick … they are always locked by opposites.” (16:10)
  • He relates this idea to his work on the artist corporation and Kickstarter—creating organizational frameworks so others can thrive outside the norm.

5. Resilience, Opposition, and Shared Purpose

• Jenny Du reflects on the challenge of finding conviction in the face of complexity, entrenched incentives, and resistance.

  • Quote: “Our time is finite … so how do you make the most of that? … It will take some kind of commitment to action. … [It] may not even be solved in your lifetime, but that's the path that's worth walking.” (17:31)
  • Importance of mutual support, learning from others facing their own “fight,” and not letting “the hard days win.”

• She admires Strickler’s creation of a new legal structure and asks about the practicalities (“where do you start?”).

  • Strickler responds that shifting structures is often a technical, esoteric process, accessible to those stubborn (or privileged) enough to pursue it.
    • Quote: “[The structure] happened … because it is so technical and esoteric. It's just, it operates at a very different frequency.” (21:53)

6. Empathy, Persuasion, and Change-Making

• The importance of empathy when facing opposition:

  • “People are operating rationally within their local maximum... It works best if you can crawl into someone's bubble with them and look into the world together.” (21:39)

• Often, the act of listening and understanding helps move the conversation, and thus possibilities, forward.

7. Optimism in a ‘Doomy’ World

• Both discuss the current atmosphere of “doom”—social malaise, noise, negativity.
• Jenny Du takes the long view, calling herself “mostly optimistic”:
  • “If you can look over a long enough period of time, … what’s good and right … prevails in the end. … Enough of the right moments and drivers start to kind of click together to create a critical mass or a moment that allows ... change to come forward.” (24:38)
  • Quotes support from history that the pendulum always swings back, though not without work and resilience.
• Yancey Strickler echoes the need to intentionally navigate truth amid noise.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Approaching Purpose and Action

  • Jenny Du: “It's not about me or us and our beautiful ideas. It is about the why we want to do it and who else is it for.” (02:06, reiterated 17:31)

• On Using Difference as Strength

  • Yancey Strickler: “The things that hold you back when you're younger are your strengths when you're older.” (04:45)

• On Creating New Institutions

  • Yancy Strickler: “Had that observation and wrote it up for myself … and all five [peers] wrote back, like, wow, I've never thought of it this way. … That feedback led to building a tool for that sort of project to exist today.” (13:02)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:06–05:20] – Personal backstories: not fitting in, learning to value the “weird way”
• [07:27–10:30] – Du’s ‘spark moment’ and beginner’s approach to food waste
• [10:44–13:02] – Strickler’s “dumb self-interrogation” and the punk/Royal Society analogy
• [16:10–17:25] – The Hero’s Journey, opposites, doors of transcendence, and culture creation
• [17:25–21:39] – Resilience, opposition, and the value of collective action
• [21:39–24:20] – Empathy when persuading, legal structure innovation, technical change-making
• [24:20–27:00] – Coping with pessimism, practicing optimism, and ending reflections

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Final Takeaways

• Finding Purpose is often rooted in discomfort or difference; the best innovations come from outsiders who ask “why?”
• Resilience is essential; the path to meaningful change is long, often opposed, and frequently requires inventing new frameworks altogether.
• The world may feel “doomy,” but optimism—rooted in history, resilience, and the collective—is both reasonable and actionable.

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Recommended for listeners who crave:

• Deep dives on the psychology of innovation
• Behind-the-scenes processes of major social entrepreneurship
• Unfiltered conversations about personal and professional growth

Transcript

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[Elise Hu]

This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The Titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes, subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and [e-mail] you'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 Yancy Strickler sits down with engineer and chemist Jenny Dew 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. Yancy 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.

[Jenny Dew]

In 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. Love how your career has been on like 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?

[Yancy Strickler]

My first thought was I've never felt like I belonged anywhere.

[Jenny Dew]

Okay, we gotta unpack that.

[Yancy Strickler]

Yeah, yeah. Like I grew up in the country on a farm. I loved books. I didn't, you know, just. It wasn't what am I doing here? And that always created kind of a hyper awareness. Another word is anxiety. Another word, you know, but just a feeling of not totally fitting in. And I've never really been a part of any institution. I've never been really blessed by. I mean this Ted, this stage is certainly an amazing exception. 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, a very rural area. I didn't. Yeah. I 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 often very self aware of what I'm doing. And so I'm like doing something while having some understanding of 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. And 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. Yeah, 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, let's only buy 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 rip off. And 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 so it's just now it's just kind of just how I, it's like that my gait, you know, it's how I walk.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

And it's often annoying.

[Jenny Dew]

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 a good student looks like. And then unfortunately schools just sort of like be a robot, repeat these things back to me. And then I think there's sort of a belief that the ones that are a little bit not the right, that don't fit or stand out or even almost like struggle in that environment will be almost like nurtured in the right way. The 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.

[Yancy Strickler]

I think anytime you're having to, like, whether you want to or not, confront some obstacle or overcome. I'm left handed and I'm having to learn guitar or whatever. There's so many things. But that extra step deepens your way, deepens your understanding of that thing.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

And ultimately I think like really accelerates the exceptional, like your ceiling 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.

[Jenny Dew]

Right.

[Yancy Strickler]

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.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

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?

[Jenny Dew]

You know.

[Yancy Strickler]

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. What made you, like, how did this thing you're doing start even?

[Jenny Dew]

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. I 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 these 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 and you're sort of like, this can't be possible. We're in the 21st century. This is the best we can do, kind of. So I would just treat it as like the thing you can't unhear and then it sits with you and it sort of nags at you for a while 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? What 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. And 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 laddered up. So and so it was sort of like, I don't know if this is gonna work, but it sure seems like worth trying.

[Yancy Strickler]

You're gonna do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jenny Dew]

And how about for you then, like, you know, call it the spark or fundamental core issue that you were trying to unpack.

[Yancy Strickler]

I mean, I think basically all my work always starts with like, why Yancy sad and just like a dumb self interrogation. And for me it was like, I'm a writer and I was building an audience. I 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 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. But to put themself out, they just made up a fake record label name, a logo and a P.O. box.

[Capital One Bank Guy]

Love it.

[Yancy Strickler]

And you print it and then you self legitimize. But what always happened 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 at a pub on Thursday nights because they're annoyed that facts are determined by the Church and the King. So 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.

[Jenny Dew]

We brought it back to the beginning.

[Yancy Strickler]

Yeah, it is an umbrella. It is some organization that stands for a purpose. It 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 creation ever. But, yeah, but I ended up 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 and 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 structure, I've never seen this thing. And that feedback sort of fed that this is real. And that process led to the. Ultimately to seeing, 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. But, like, it really did begin with just trying to understand my own unhappiness with a situation that was to my liking. Yeah, 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 in 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. You're called to return. You deny it, you don't want it. You have to go deeper. You go deeper, and then you. And then you return. And the pivotal moment is that you. You find transcendence. And across every society, myth, he 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. Light and dark, life and death, or as I saw when 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, the grandest things are in finding our way to those, to that hidden door. And again, it's just like the glory of the universe. The trick of the whole, it's all. It's all, like. 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 at 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. Lot of feelings that go into it. And learning about what you are doing, I'm thinking, oh, what a great. Wow. Everybody's gonna love this. Like, what a great thing. And Then to hear you have opposition, there are forces that oppose this. Maybe people don't care, you know, maybe the world you see is very hard for someone else to see.

[Jenny Dew]

Yes.

[Yancy Strickler]

And. Yeah, how do you carry that?

[Jenny Dew]

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? 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. 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. So 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, if that makes sense. 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. So it's definitely a challenge of, like, resilience. But we also know that, I mean, I think you know, your own stories, you know, encountering the same kinds of things, like. So it's also inspiring, though, to, like, meet other people. Everyone's got their own version of the fight, I guess. And 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 their own, sharing their stories and just going like, man 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. I 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 the. So 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, you know, that you had to walk down.

[Yancy Strickler]

Well, I think it always helps. Even when people are opposing you, I think it helps to empathize because I think everyone, generally people are operating rationally within their local maximum.

[Jenny Dew]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Yancy Strickler]

But can you change that?

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

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, it's moved forward eight steps. And people are open to that, I think, in certain circumstances. But 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 yeah, I mean, the artist corporation idea is, 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. 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 as being passed as law in states. And yeah, just had a bit of an inside view into that. And 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.

[Jenny Dew]

Right. And like, who's really gonna like dive into that?

[Yancy Strickler]

Who's gonna care that much? Who's gonna possibly care that much? And so I just happened to have seen that before and then when I ran into like 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. And just, oh, could you do that thing on that thing? You know, 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 idea and feeling arrived at, like, my most capable moment as a human being. Until now. Until now. 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.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah. Do you?

[Yancy Strickler]

I feel like the vibe. The mood in the world right now is quite doomy.

[Jenny Dew]

It's tough.

[Yancy Strickler]

It's doom.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

Are you an optimistic person? Are you. Does that get you down? Do you, like, see over it.

[Jenny Dew]

Mostly? Yes. Probably depends a little bit on the day, and that's okay. It's almost learning to give myself some kind of 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. 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 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. So that's kind of, I think, why I maintain a bit more of, like, an optimistic view. It's 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, devolve to such a state?

[Yancy Strickler]

There's a lot of noise. Yeah, A lot of noise. But how do you navigate according to truth?

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah.

[Yancy Strickler]

And it's a conscious mindset, I think, a little bit of some intentionality and not allowing yourself to just be pulled by what you see.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah. Yep.

[Yancy Strickler]

I think this is probably all of our time.

[Jenny Dew]

Thank you. So much. That was such a treat.

[Yancy Strickler]

That was awesome.

[Jenny Dew]

Yeah, awesome.

[Elise Hu]

That was a conversation between Yancy Strickler and Jenny Du 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 [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for 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 Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Sangmarni Vong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balarazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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