Kate Drane is a bit of an enigma. She helped launch hundreds of crowdfunding projects at Indiegogo (in fact, I worked with her on the Ubuntu Edge and Global Learning XPRIZE campaigns). She has helped connect hundreds of startups to expertise, capital, and customers at Techstars, and is a beer fan who co-founded a canning business called The Can Van.
There is one clear thread through her career: providing more efficient and better access for innovators, no matter what background they come from or what they want to create. Oh, and drinking great beer. She is fantastic and does great work.
In this episode of Conversations With Bacon we unpack her experiences of getting started in this work, her work facilitating broader access to information, funding, and people, what it was like to be at Indiegogo through the teenage years of crowdfunding, how she works to support startups, the experience of entrepreneurship from different backgrounds, and more.