Why Kickstarter’s Perry Chen Says the Hardest Part of Startups Isn’t the Product

When Perry Chen first pitched the idea behind Kickstarter, it wasn’t about scaling a tech company. It was about staging a concert.

He was living in New Orleans and wanted to bring in the DJ duo Kruder & Dorfmeister for a show. But the risk — upfront costs, no guaranteed ticket buyers — made it financially impossible. So Perry had a simple but radical thought: What if you could fund creative ideas before they happened?

That “what if” led to a decade of iteration. And ultimately, it gave birth to Kickstarter — a platform that has since helped raise over $7 billion for more than a quarter of a million creative projects.

In a recent interview on Advice Line with Guy Raz, Perry opened up about what happened after Kickstarter — and the deeper emotional journey that most founders face. The hardest part of building a startup, he said, isn’t the idea or even the execution. It’s knowing when to let go.

“The delusion that I had, and the delusion that we all have as entrepreneurs — if I cut through that with common sense from the future… honestly, who knows if I would’ve gone through with it,” Perry reflected.

Building the Dream Can Be a Trap

Perry doesn’t downplay what Kickstarter became. But he’s also candid about the psychological toll of building something meaningful.

Founders, he argues, often stay in companies long past the point of alignment. Out of duty. Out of fear. Out of an internalized pressure not to let investors, employees, or even their former selves down.

“Most entrepreneurs, statistically, end up in that category,” he said. “They just drive themselves to not fail — and add years and years to businesses they wish they could have left. The off-ramp seems impossible”.

This is a different kind of advice than you’ll hear in most startup circles. But it’s the kind of clarity that only comes with experience — and the hard-earned freedom of stepping away.

Leaving the Company You Built

Perry stepped down as CEO of Kickstarter years ago, stayed on as chairman, then as a board member. Today, he’s no longer involved in the company. He’s returned to his first love — music.

“I am now liberated,” he told Guy Raz. “After I left as CEO, I went into the art world. Did some shows, some galleries, even some museum work. But I have since returned to music… and that’s now where I put my energy”.

For many entrepreneurs, leaving the company they built feels like failure. But Perry reframes it as part of a creative arc. Just as artists move from one body of work to another, so too can founders evolve.

You’re Allowed to Want Something Different

In the Advice Line episode, Perry was generous with startup advice to live callers. But his biggest contribution may have been his recurring question:

“What do you want?”

Not what the investors want. Not what your customers want. Not what your LinkedIn profile says you should want. You.

“There’s no better question than just keep asking yourself: What do I want?” Perry said. “If there's a dissonance between what the entrepreneur wants and what the business needs — that becomes a weight. It can crush both the business and the person running it”.

The Quiet Courage of Letting Go

Perry Chen’s legacy isn’t just Kickstarter. It’s also the way he navigated his exit — slowly, thoughtfully, without self-destruction. That might be an even rarer entrepreneurial skill.

He reminds us that starting something doesn’t mean you have to run it forever. That the person who takes an idea from zero to one isn’t always the one who scales it from ten to a hundred. And that it’s okay — even necessary — to ask if your current trajectory still aligns with who you are.

Because startups aren't just products. They're reflections of the people who build them.

And the most sustainable kind of growth? It starts from the inside.