My Name Is Daniel Drake, I Am Not Dancakes

It’s Dancakes. It’s a pancake pun. Pancakes – but with a “D” instead. Dancakes.

Dancakes is a brand. I am only one artist. I share ownership with my team. It is a group effort.

My name is Dan. I founded the company. But I am not “Dancakes”. It’s not my stage name. It’s the name of the company I started with the help of my friends.

It crushes my heart when one of my teammates works their ass off and all their credit gets thrown at me. We’re a collective.

Tbh I’ve suggested changing the name but everyone else says it’s not that big a deal. The brand name works and is clever yadda yadda.

Just, like…please. It sucks so bad to have all these other amazing people get steamrolled. Because my name is in the company name.

Dancakes. A brand. Not a guy. I’m not Dr. Dancakes. I’m Dan, and I built a team, called Dancakes. I know. Maybe it’s a lot. But it would mean so much to me if my team started to get the recognition they deserve.

Ben, Dana, Lee, and Jenny, are all remarkable artists that are better than me at many things. I know I’ve got some small notoriety in this world, but it gets harder and harder for me to stand by while folks ignore the other artists and say that things they did are things I did.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.