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By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times
Everette Taylor stood on stage wearing cornrows, sneakers and a quiet confidence that immediately set the tone for his keynote address at Day Two Sloss Tech 2026.
The CEO of Kickstarter wasn’t there to deliver another polished corporate speech filled with startup jargon or buzzwords. Instead, he told the audience exactly who he was—a kid from Southside Richmond, Virginia, who sold drugs as a teenager, experienced homelessness, dropped out of college twice, built and sold companies, and eventually became one of the most recognizable Black executives in the technology industry.
His message was simple:
Don’t let the world — or yourself — put ceilings on what you can become.
“I’ve never let anyone’s thoughts, opinions or projections take away from my path, my dream or my ambition,” Taylor told the audience of hundreds of entrepreneurs, founders, investors and innovators.
His keynote became one of the defining moments of the three-day conference, which returned to downtown Birmingham June 24-26, bringing together leaders from across the technology, business and creative industries to explore the future of innovation.
Hosted annually in Birmingham’s historic theater district, Sloss Tech has become one of the Southeast’s premier technology conferences, connecting startup founders, venture capitalists, students, creators and established business leaders through keynote conversations, panel discussions, networking opportunities and hands-on learning experiences. The festival celebrates Birmingham’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem while positioning the city as an emerging hub for innovation across the South.
This year’s conference featured nationally recognized executives, investors and founders who shared insights on artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, venture capital, creative technology and business growth. Across three days, attendees moved between breakout sessions, networking events and keynote presentations designed to encourage collaboration while inspiring the next generation of innovators.
For Taylor, whose career has been built on challenging convention, Sloss Tech represented exactly the kind of environment where ideas — and people — can flourish.
From Homelessness to the Corner Office
Taylor’s story began far from Silicon Valley.
Growing up in Southside Richmond, he rarely saw entrepreneurs who looked like him or examples of successful technology founders. Surrounded by financial hardship, he searched for ways to help his family survive.
“The easiest way that I saw to make money was selling drugs,” he admitted.
Everything changed because of his mother.
After discovering how he had been making money, she refused to let him continue down that path. Instead, she found him an entry-level marketing job she believed could change his future.
It did.
“I found something that changed my life forever,” Taylor said. “That was the gift of marketing.”
The position exposed him to museums, tourists and experiences that expanded his worldview beyond his neighborhood.
But progress wasn’t linear.
Following family hardships, Taylor found himself homeless. Seeking warmth inside a public library, he discovered books about Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and other technology entrepreneurs.
Those stories revealed an entirely different possibility.
“I said, ‘This tech world, this entrepreneurship — it felt like the great equalizer to me.'”
Determined to build a different life, Taylor attended Virginia Tech before eventually launching his first company, Easy Events.
He sold the business just two years later.
With the proceeds, he bought his mother a house, purchased a Porsche — and quickly realized he had made costly financial mistakes.
“I was broke again,” he joked.
Instead of viewing failure as the end, Taylor treated it as another lesson.
Everette Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter, delivered a keynote address at Day Two Sloss Tech 2026. (Reginald Allen, For The Birmingham Times)Turning Rejection into Fuel
Taylor eventually moved to California, hoping Silicon Valley would become the launching pad for his entrepreneurial dreams.
Instead, he encountered another obstacle.
As a Black founder seeking venture capital, he discovered that access to funding wasn’t equally distributed.
Rather than waiting for investors to validate his ideas, Taylor focused on creating profitable companies that didn’t require outside funding.
“I became a chief marketing officer at 25,” he said. “I started four different multi-million-dollar companies before the age of 27 with no venture funding.”
Throughout his career, Taylor said rejection became motivation rather than discouragement.
“The amount of rejection I’ve gotten in my life, the amount of failures I’ve had in my life, the amount of ‘nos’ I’ve had in my life far outweigh the wins,” he said. “It’s the wins that are celebrated.”
Those setbacks, he explained, taught him resilience.
“They’re just fuel to the fire.”
Redefining Leadership
Taylor’s career eventually led him to Artsy, one of the world’s largest online art marketplaces.
When he arrived as chief marketing officer, he noticed something immediately.
The platform overwhelmingly favored white male artists.
Many colleagues accepted the imbalance as standard business practice.
Taylor didn’t.
“I said, ‘I don’t like that. I want to change this.'”
He led initiatives that intentionally elevated Black, Brown and women artists by rethinking marketing strategies, product recommendations and platform algorithms.
The results transformed the company.
By the time he left, Artsy’s user base had grown by 150 percent, while artists of color made up more than 75 percent of the platform’s top-performing creators.
For Taylor, inclusion wasn’t simply about fairness.
“It was good for business,” he said.
His philosophy has remained consistent throughout every stage of his career.
“Whatever people say is the way things should be,” he said, “I question that.”
A CEO Without Limits
That mindset ultimately led Taylor to Kickstarter.
A chance meeting with a journalist eventually resulted in a feature story in the Financial Times. Though publication delays initially frustrated him, the article landed in front of a Kickstarter board member searching for the company’s next chief executive officer.
Taylor received the opportunity.
When he accepted the role, Kickstarter faced declining revenue and questions about its future.
Rather than making incremental changes, Taylor challenged the company’s entire approach.
“If we were starting Kickstarter today, what would it look like?” he asked his team.
The company evolved from a crowdfunding platform into a broader ecosystem supporting creators before, during and after campaigns with tools addressing shipping, taxes, business growth and long-term sustainability.
The results spoke for themselves.
Taylor said Kickstarter recorded its strongest year in company history under his leadership, adding multiple new revenue streams while dramatically increasing creator success.
But even after becoming CEO of a billion-dollar company, Taylor refused to change who he was.
“I’m a CEO of a company doing billions of dollars with cornrows,” he told the audience. “I dress how I want to. I talk how I want to. I’m still myself.”
The crowd responded with applause.
“It’s hard enough being successful in this life,” he added. “Be yourself.”
The Power of Belief
Taylor closed his keynote with a story from the NBA Finals.
Watching the New York Knicks erase a 29-point deficit after the crowd had nearly given up, he saw a lesson far bigger than basketball.
“Sometimes people are going to be cheering for you,” he said. “Other times, when you’re down, they’re not going to be there.”
Entrepreneurs, he said, cannot depend on outside validation.
Instead, they must protect the people who continue to believe in them during difficult seasons while maintaining their own belief in themselves. “You can’t let the doubters, the haters or the hard times get you down,” Taylor said. “There’s going to be plenty of them.”
Looking across the audience inside the Alabama Theatre, he reminded attendees that every founder, creator and entrepreneur in the room possessed the ability to build something meaningful — provided they refused to limit themselves.
“We don’t have to have ceilings on ourselves,” he said. “You’ve got to keep believing in yourself.”
