This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World

But the more you talk about something, the more you learn what works about it and what doesn’t. Through practice and iteration, we learned to talk about Kickstarter in a way that people connected with.

I’d make a note to find a better way to say whatever I’d just been saying in the future and shift topics to regain their attention.

We didn’t want to be everything to everybody. The goal was to make something that mattered, and to do it for the long haul. We said publicly that we’d never sell the company or take it public. We would do what was best for Kickstarter’s mission, not use it to do what was best for us.

However GDP makes no assessment of the money’s larger implications, only how much of it there is.

When society undergoes major change, people discover that the world isn’t as solid as they thought.

Execution is a critical gap between idea and reality, but it’s not the only one. Another is belief. For ideas to matter, people have to believe in them. There’s only so much an idea can do on its own. Ideas need supporters, carriers, and executors to become real.

I wanted to break free of the universe where an idea had to justify its existence based on how much money it would make somebody else. How limiting!

That a good idea, well-crafted and pursued with passion, doesn’t need a gatekeeper’s stamp of approval to succeed.

GDP sees Wikipedia as possibly having a negative value. If there wasn’t Wikipedia people would still buy encyclopedias. And all those volunteer Wikipedia editors could do something really valuable with their time, like work for money.