Ringelman: Curating campaigns would violate Indiegogo's open platform mission
Danae Ringelman · 93 Rejections, One Revolution: How Indiegogo Changed Crowdfunding Forever · Dec 15, 2025 · at 43:05
Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelman responds to host Guy Raz asking why Indiegogo did not curate projects to guarantee higher campaign success rates and platform commissions.
0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Philosophically, we couldn't become the gatekeeper. Otherwise, what's the point of all of this?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Danae Ringelman
Ringelman: Traditional gatekeeper financing locks out audience demand
“And that was the moment that I realized that there was
A huge room of people that wanted this thing to happen, yet they didn't have the power to make it happen, and it was all dependent on one person to say yes. And that was the inequity that drove me to even…”
Ringelman: Indiegogo initially explored equity investments and SEC exemptions
“We also did explore, is there any SEC loopholes we could get around? So at the, and when we were first starting, we were actually, we're thinking investments, like full on investment.”
Indiegogo co-founders each committed $30,000 of their own money to launch
“I remember each of us committing 30,000 dollars of our own money, which was a big chunk of our savings, or at least for me.”
Danae Ringelman's original business school idea was a democratic voting fund
“What drove me back to business school was to start something that would make the funding process more democratic. And my initial idea was a fund, actually, with a democratic twist. Where the investors could be lots of people putting a little bit in. And then t…”