Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter Luncheon

The Economic Club of Grand Rapids will be kicking off the 2024-2025 season with Everette Taylor, CEO of Kickstarter, the world’s premier crowdfunding platform for creative projects. Under Everette’s leadership, Kickstarter was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies for trailblazing the future of work and for the company’s global impact in the creator economy. Taylor also currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors for 1stDibs (NASDAQ: DIBS), the leading online marketplace for extraordinary design where he is also a member of the Compensation Committee.

Prior to joining Kickstarter, Everette most recently served as the CMO of Artsy, the largest online marketplace for buying and selling fine art. During his time at Artsy he was recognized by Business Insider as one of the World's Most Innovative CMOs and by Forbes as one of the World's Most Influential CMOs due to the business seeing all-time record revenue growth and brand awareness. As a marketing executive and CMO, he helped lead Skurt, an on-demand rental car company, and Qualaroo, a B2B software company, to successful acquisitions. He also co-founded and led growth of GrowthHackers, the largest community for growth marketers, which established Taylor as one of the most sought-after marketers in the tech industry.

Everette’s other marketing achievements include becoming the youngest CMO for Sticker Mule, a popular e-commerce company, and overseeing growth strategy for new social products for Microsoft. As a founder, Everette started his first company, EZEvents, at age 19, and it was successfully acquired in 2011. In 2013 he established ET Enterprises, a diverse portfolio of companies including PopSocial, MilliSense, ArtX, and GrowthHackers. As CEO of PopSocial, he was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2018 for his innovation in the social media marketing space, and Forbes 30 under 30 All-Star in 2019 for exponentially growing the company.