The Kickstarter PBC Annual Report

Our portfolio company Kickstarter became a Public Benefit Corporation in the fall of 2015. I blogged about it at the time. A Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) is a specific type of corporation that allows for public benefit to be a charter purpose in addition to the traditional corporate goal of maximizing profit for shareholders (from Wikipedia).

One of the requirements of being a PBC is that you publish an Annual Benefit Statement after each full year as a PBC. Kickstarter published its first Annual Benefit Statement yesterday. You can read it here.

Here are some bits from the statement:

• Our CEO’s total compensation in 2016 was 5.52x the median comp of all non-CEO, non-founder employees in 2016. A 2015 study by Glassdoor found that the average CEO earns 204x the median total worker compensation.
• As of December 31, 2016, our team was majority women (53%), as was 61% of our Senior Team and half of our Executive Team.
• 100% of our interns in 2016 joined us from New York-based organizations fighting inequality: Coalition for Queens, Prep for Prep, Ladders for Leaders, Tech Talent Pipeline, and ScriptED.
• We donated 5% of our after-tax profits to six organizations working to build a more creative and equitable world.
• We took advantage of two tax credits in 2016 and paid a combined effective tax rate of 25%.

I would encourage you all to read the entire statement. It stayed with me all day yesterday. I am proud to be a Director and investor in Kickstarter which is showing the world that you don’t need to choose between making money and doing right. You can do both at the same time.