TED Talks Daily
Yancey Strickler and Jenny Du: How do you rethink how the world works? An entrepreneur and an engineer answer | TED Intersections
19 Sep 2025
What happens when following the “right” path leads you to the “wrong” place? Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler and scientist Jenny Du discuss how they’ve made careers out of rethinking old systems and imagining new ones. They dive into the spark that led to their success — and show why it’s important to love your own “weird ways” of being. (This conversation is part of "TED Intersections," a series featuring thought-provoking conversations between experts navigating the ideas shaping our world.)Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
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 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.
In a way, 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, and knowing that there will be benefits to many other people if we can find a way to get it right. I love how your career has been on like disrupting the status quo, kind of breaking the 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 it's like normal ways of working.
My first thought was I've never felt like I belonged anywhere.
Okay, we've got to unpack that.
Yeah, yeah. Like I grew up in 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 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, 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.
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