14 ms·

Patreon raises big round at $450M valuation

159 points by doppp 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
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raverbashing 9y ago
Patreon is fighting the good fight so far, especially with YT promoting more disposable content with every passing day
- philfrasty 9y ago
  Are you a Jake Pauler?
- otalp 9y ago
  Well, YouTube seems to be punishing any mildly controversial topic, so the positive side is that Nazis and other crazy people can't use it as a viable platform, but on the flip side you can't really talk about anything really serious without getting your ad revenue cut.
  - tomp 9y ago
    By "Nazis" you mean Jordan Peterson? Because it's the likes of him that are getting banned - in his case temporarily, thank god, but non-ultra-leftists without large social following are doomed.
    - otalp 9y ago
      >but non-ultra-leftists without large social following are doomed Completely false, "left" YouTube channels I know of: like Philosophy Tube and Contrapoints are having serious problems with their videos being demonetised and removed. Videos which even mildly critisize capitalism are being demonetised, it's pretty much impossible to run a left wing YouTube channel without Patreon. Virtually all political videos are demonetized. For example, PhilosophyTube wanted to make a relatively straightforward series on the history of Liberalism, but even before uploading the videos was told by YouTube(when he contacted them) that under the new rules videos like that wouldn't qualify for ads(https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/898261400786657280 https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/898261400786657280) So you're displaying a huge persecution complex if you think this doesn't apply to the left even more, since Google and advertisers are large corporations, which means they are de facto fine with pro-capitalist content while obviously against helping spread or advertising on anti-capitalist content.
      - notahacker 9y ago
        It's perfectly possible to run the channel. You're just not going to make any money from it. Can't really blame advertisers for not wanting to associate their brands with political content, especially if it's as toxic as a Jordan Peterson rant on gender, and can question the motives of anyone whose decision on whether to critique capitalism or not is based on whether they can get enough juicy ad dollars for doing so.
        l33tbro 9y ago
        I thought Peterson was a psych professor who has interesting perspectives on the bible. What are his toxic views on gender? Genuinely curious.
        canoebuilder 9y ago
        "Toxic" views I suspect along the lines of, It does more harm than good to the individual and society to entertain the delusions of mental health conditions. The condition of gender dysphoria is a personal issue best dealt with between the affected individual and their health care provider. But the key driver for Peterson was that pronouncements on these issues have absolutely no place in the Canadian constitution. I think it was only with this issue(legislative lunacy) that he started discussing this, and it wasn't out of some contempt or animosity for people inclined to dress and behave a particular way, but rather because when societies start legislating what people are and aren't allowed to say and think, things tend to go real bad, real quick. Peterson felt a strong duty to take a stand here due to his long study of the horrors and atrocities of communism the 20th century that often stemmed from mandates imposed on acceptable speech and thought.
        notahacker 9y ago
        Peterson gained a lot of attention and an entirely new YouTube following for refusing to call transgendered students by their preferred pronoun on the basis it was "mouthing Marxist words" and directly linking it to gulags and mass slaughters Lest one think that this might be an unfortunate bit of hyperbole taken out of context in what must be an unusual situation for an outspoken middle-aged religious intellectual to face, he's doubled down on it with an angry lecture series on the subject and other crackpot theories like "the idea that women were discriminated against across the course of history is appalling" and actually it's all a myth caused by the birth control pill making modern women hostile towards masculine men. I wish I was parodying that argument; I'm merely summarising it. I doubt advertisers were upset by his studies on the Bible
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      I think those that follow the alt-right overestimate how much others care that they are banned. I remember when loads of them left Twitter for Gab, pronouncing that Twitter was doomed without them. And yet, Twitter hasn't really seen any negative effects of them leaving.
- sschueller 9y ago
  Patreon is falling into the same problem, banning people who they don't agree with. People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Do you have an example?
    - sschueller 9y ago
      Maybe not the best example but Lauren Southern is one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g
  - jerf 9y ago
    "People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon." That's less of a concern though, because Patreon is easier to replace than YouTube. The problem with YouTube is that, at least as long as the Internet chatter I hear is still accurate, YouTube itself is still losing money, so replacing YouTube involves being able to immediately hugely subsidize people watching lots of video, and to be willing to do so when it is demonstrated that even the market leader who gets all the good ad contracts is losing money, so there's no payday if you win. That's a tough sell. Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. But it's feasible down in that range, and said replacement at least has a cash flow and a clear path to ramen profitability. It's gonna be a competitive field and Patreon has all the name advantage right now, but it's a feasible plan for a "true startup" of just a few people in a garage in a way that "let's replace YouTube!" isn't. In fact there's at least three competing services I've heard of that already exist, and I have no reason to believe I've heard of them all.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      > Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. Stripe literally has an offering just for this use case: https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect Forum + Stripe Connect + CDN for Video (Cloudfront, Fastly, Whatevs) = Patreon replacement. You could literally replace it with a weekend Hackathon.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
joelthelion 9y ago
That means they're going to expect a lot of revenue. Which they plan to take on money that people give freely. I don't see that ending well.
- charrondev 9y ago
  Well luckily for them they don’t have to take no money in order to be the good guys here. They only need to take less than the other methods of monetizing videos (youtube). I’d imagine they’ve expored what kind cut they will need to take to be profitable and how that will affect the decisions of the people paying in.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Not really. Youtube is indirect monetization thorugh advertisers. The audiences (that the respective companies care about) are completely different. Patreon wants creators and their fans on their platform moving money through them so they can take their fees. Youtube doesn't care at all about content creators or viewers but about advertisers - as long as advertisers are happy Youtube would cripple the user or creator experience. So the people giving Patreon money are not necessarily satisfied with 1% less fees than Youtube advertisers pay because they aren't advertisers and advertisers aren't using Patreon to fund creators.
    - Retric 9y ago
      I think he was referring to things like selling t-shirts. Basically how sites like xkcd make money without advertising.
- jerf 9y ago
  I use Patreon on a lot, and I don't have any expectation that they are doing it for free. If they were doing it for free, then that would mean to me that the service would be unstable and would disappear some random month without recourse when its unpaid developer gets a job somewhere else, or someone files some light lawsuit against them and that's enough to take the whole thing down. A bigger problem than that they take a cut is probably some expectations management on why, what that cut does for everyone, and what it would mean to not have it.
gourou 9y ago
They probably have the biggest platform for paying creatives, I wonder when they'll ditch YouTube to get more control over their user base and increase their 5% margin.
- wongarsu 9y ago
  I fail to see any advantage in ditching YouTube? On private videos for Patreon subscribers Youtube supplies free video hosting with a decent and familiar experience for the content creator. For public videos (or videos that become public after a delay), Youtube offers free hosting and lots of discoverability. In both cases I only see Patreon having additional cost with little to no upside by ditching Youtube (especially since Youtube policies are already very lenient on non-monetized non-public videos). Maybe I'm missing something obvious?
  - xemdetia 9y ago
    There are a lot of patreon people that don't have a strong youtube presence, and a lot of that content ends up being cross hosted by youtube. You have people that are working with a pre-payout budget of a few thousand a month- it's possible that they are trying to build out more pay-to-use features that increase the 5% slice they are taking. Private video hosting for supporters that isn't rigged to youtube settings is something that could actually be a boon. Just because youtube is easier doesn't mean delivering on a non-youtube service couldn't help delivering the rewards. I can see how they can upsell a lot of other services though around delivering rewards. If I have 10000 people who need stickers for that 5$ support level is it worth the time to hand-stuff all those envelopes? Or is it worth an extra 20c a letter to have someone else stuff it for you? The more I think about it the more I think that they can actually provide legitimate services in the same frames as vistaprint, teespring and others for these physical deliverables and just providing that fulfillment. Videos that I can schedule to release on patreon might just be worth it to some people.
    - wongarsu 9y ago
      Something with merchandise will likely happen. Quote from the article: >Deeper pockets could also allow Patreon to build out its suite of bonus tools for creators, some of which it could charge extra for. “There’s going to be new opportunities to build revenue streams into the product” Conte has promised me. He suggested that could include selling event tickets or merchandise, or better helping creators understand and communicate with fans. With them having a partnership with a livestreaming platform, I wouldn't put it past them to do something to replace private YouTube videos. But I think shipping postcards or stickers or art prints is a much more direct way to more revenue, and could be relatively cheap to set up with the right partnerships.
EGreg 9y ago
What if there was a crypto-currency for this? :)
- wongarsu 9y ago
  Currency exchange is too high of a barrier for supporters. A large portion of Patreon is artists asking for support for content they offer for free, with only token benefits for the supporters. Making the act of giving money as simple and convenient as possible is key in that scenario. Using a crypto-currency is pretty much the opposite.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    No, I mean one crypto-currency specifically designed for what Patreon does. Instead of paying Patreon with a credit card, you'd pay to buy this crypto currency. And then distribute it micropayment-style to all kinds of things. Isn't anyone doing that? IMHO the hardest part is the Coinbase thing - collecting credit cards and dealing with chargebacks etc. in a compliant way in many countries. The other stuff is easy - such as localization in many languages. You know who does this also? Kickstarter. They just launched in Japan!
    - wongarsu 9y ago
      Ah, yes, you could do that. But aren't you then stuck with either one platform which does that, offering you no advantage over what Patreon offers today, or loosing a lot of the miscellaneous Patreon features for keeping Patreons and creators in touch in exchange for gaining censorship resistance? It's certainly doable, but I think it would be a hard sell compared to Patreon or any regular centralized Patreon alternative.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      That'd still end up dealing with currency conversions. People still buy food and pay rent in their local currencies. If you're talking about something that's only usable on Patreon, then why a crypto-currency? It could much easier just be like gems in a clicker game. But then, they'd get some bad press for basically making people use casino chips.
dandermotj 9y ago
That's a P/E of 60... Also this: > In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut. I hope this is sarcasm, because if I had to pay 5% to make any other transaction I'd be fuming. With a marginal cost of facilitating a new patron near zero, I don't think creators or patrons will suffer this as Patreon grows.
- jasode 9y ago
  >if I had to pay 5% to make any other transaction I'd be fuming. Fyi... for comparison, Kickstarter fee is also 5% of funds raised. https://www.google.com/search?q=kickstarter+fee https://www.google.com/search?q=kickstarter+fee
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- arkitaip 9y ago
  Creators accept Patreon's high transaction cost because they don't many other options. If you, for example, are a youtuber, chances are that Google will screw you out of video monetization because their subpar AI raises more flags than a signalman on acid. Other payment solutions like Pay Pal are a goddamn nightmare to set up and handle for micro businesses [0]. Patreon also acts like a landing page and even CMS for content creators, so you're paying for that too. [0] Holy shit is Pay Pal the most dysfunctional organization I've ever dealt with. Just verifying my identity as a business owner has meant weeks of me sending countless copies of my bank statements, phone bills and photo ID to Pay Pal staff because apparently comparing the address on the submitted documents with the one on file is too difficult a task. In the end it was easier to change my address on file so it matches the one of the submitted documents character by character (yay security theater). Of course when they finally verified my address I got an email that the copy of the photo ID I submitted suddenly was "too pale and is illegible as a result" and now I can't even access the verification process page...
- falcolas 9y ago
  Apple takes 30%. So does Google. Kickstarter takes 5%. Many online stock trading firms take somewhere around 10-15%. That fairly well justifies the qualifier of "tiny" in today's world. Given that the basic cost for processing credit cards and other such minutia is already around 2%, the benefit of not having to worry about chargebacks, fraud, or PCI compliance... worth that extra 3% IMO.
outoftacos 9y ago
Oh god, now they're trapped in the endless useless growth demand cycle. Too bad, I enjoy supporting a few artists on there and it's just a matter of time until this hurts them.
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Seriously, I enjoy having my comics supported by my fans there and I'm not looking forwards to them having to Make A Profit.
  - stephenson 9y ago
    They should help you make a profit, but not make one themselves?
    - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
      They should make a profit. What we don't want is to spoil the nice service with desperate attempts to earn enough profit to satisfy investors.
      - pc86 9y ago
        Ah, so they should make a profit but not too much.
        nobodyorother 9y ago
        It's the Tiger Woods problem, also known as Focus on Your Core: TW gets video game endorsements and makes ungodly piles of money because he's a great golfer. When he focuses on making new games and supermodels instead of golfing, his game suffers and all the perks that came because of the good golf game go away. ...Like how he hasn't had his name on a golf video game in years. Essentially: pursuit of profit when it undermines your core competency is shortsighted.
        9y ago
sixdimensional 9y ago
I remember the first time I saw a music video by Jack Conte on YouTube, way before he started Patreon. He did a bunch of cool music videos (example https://youtu.be/lBUUOJpFg9Y https://youtu.be/lBUUOJpFg9Y) . Also, his work with Pomplamoose was pretty awesome. I remember hearing him talk about his idea for Patreon on some of those YouTube videos. He seems like a pretty nice guy, so I am super excited for him to hear that Patreon has been such a great success!! Let's hope they can continue their mission and keep taking it to positive places from here!
clarkevans 9y ago
This market segment might support a cooperative model, similar to Stocksy United (https://www.stocksy.com/ https://www.stocksy.com/), where the artists collectively own the monetization platform. Stocksy bootstrapped with a 1M investment loan (not equity) which is now paid off. Now Stocksy is fully owned by artist-members.
- jasode 9y ago
  The viability of co-op depends on what content creators want from a patronage/crowdfunding platform: scenario 1: If artists just want a straight monetary passthrough, then artists-owned entity like ASCAP (collects music royalties) may be workable. ASCAP is "boring", but it does what it needs to do. scenario 2: However, if artists want a payment platform that evolves towards a combination of Facebook+Medium+Ticketmaster+Slack+Youtube+cdn+etc, a co-op model will be underfunded. (In this scenario, you'd have to imagine that there would be future features that artists don't even know they want.) In the marketplace of ideas, it's possible for both business models to be offered. E.g. artists sign up for co-op platform because it's 2% fee instead of VC-backed Patreon for 5% fee. However, it's possible for artists en-masse to abandon the co-op business for the VC-funded business because its enriched platform gives them ability to earn more which overshadows the higher 5% fee.
  - clarkevans 9y ago
    Since venture subsidizes losses till critical mass is achieved, perhaps it is more likely that a VC-funded platform will initially be much less expensive compared to a revenue financed cooperative.
- AVTizzle 9y ago
  Where can one find access to these 1M investment loans?
  - kruhft 9y ago
    Build business (and personal credit) and go to a business bank with a business plan.
justinzollars 9y ago
Why do they need so much money?
- hobofan 9y ago
  I would wager Silicon Valley salaries are the main money sink.
- beambot 9y ago
  Best time to raise funds is when you need it least. Maybe this was a way to pad the bank account in case of a downturn.
payne92 9y ago
I'm still wondering why Youtube isn't ALL OVER this model. Given that many are getting paid for publishing videos of what they do, it would be a great feature.
- chis 9y ago
  Yeah, it's really bizarre that YouTube is content to constantly struggle with ad revenue, when most of their top users are making orders of magnitude more money through patreon. There's precedent too since twitch has had this exact model for years now.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  The answer is that Google is terrible at getting non-advertising revenue sources online.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  YouTube is trying things like tips (superchat), but their cut is enormous, something like 30%, plus processing. I'm glad YouTube isn't the one solving this though, because it means that I get to support folks who YouTube is screwing over, when I watch their content on vid.me and bitchute.
- grafporno 9y ago
  A vast part of Youtube's audience are minors who don't have credit cards and couldn't pay for content. So they are shown ads.
  - payne92 9y ago
    Youtube would not replace the ad model with a patron model, they would ADD the patron model. Patreon has shown there is clear demand for that feature.
    - krapp 9y ago
      One of the reasons Youtubers are moving to Patreon is a lack of trust in Google to provide a platform that generates a stable income, due to their demonetizing of accounts,arbitrary tweaks in the algorithm, refusal to defend Fair Use, etc. If I were a big successful Youtuber, which I'm not and will never be, I wouldn't go near a patron service provided by the same company whose practices were driving me away from them to begin with.
arikr 9y ago
Based on https://patreonhq.com/creators-have-made-100m-on-patreon-ddfcc9338662 https://patreonhq.com/creators-have-made-100m-on-patreon-ddf..., seems like they are growing at about 2.4x/year. They will do $7.5 million in net revenue in 2017. Then assuming the growth rate doesn't slow (remember, growth rates usually get slower over time), $18 million in net revenue in 2018, and $43 million in net revenue in 2019. Net revenue, not net income. $450mm seems overvalued.
- hobofan 9y ago
  I'd not be surprised if their growth this year is even bigger than last year. 2017 is the year of the Youtube Adpocalypse and more and more creators are looking for alternate, more stable, revenue streams. There is still a lot of potential of revenue coming in from existing big content creators switching to the platform. When Philip DeFrance started his Patreon a few months ago he became the #2 most sponsored creator in Patreon in a few days, and his channel is "only" ranked ~350th by number of subscribers.
- paulpauper 9y ago
  pretty much everything tech VC-related is overvalued by conventional metrics
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Normally startups raise money to accelerate growth. Nice try with your projection but that's not how startup valuation and growth works.
crescentfresh 9y ago
I'm not too up-to-speed with Patreon, is it like twitch but for any type of creative content?
- spike021 9y ago
  Not so much like Twitch, IMO. Patreon is purely for gathering a fanbase with open communication between fans and creators and the ability to share content in exchange for support of the creators. So a musician might link to private music videos on youtube with the financial supporters on Patreon first. Or they might provide a special .mp3 that is only available there. As far as I know, Patreon doesn't actually have the capability to host videos itself (I could be wrong since I haven't looked at it in a while).
- MrRadar 9y ago
  Patreon is more like Kickstarter but for ongoing projects/support (e.g. web comics, YouTube channels, etc.). People can set up accounts to charge per item produced/released (e.g. per comic page or per video) or on a straight monthly basis.
samplonius 9y ago
There is a lot of money in sex. Patreon is basically "will undress for money".
robk 9y ago
Is there a porn angle here? Seems like from Googling there's a decent amount of sexual content. I wonder if this is like Tumblr with a seedy underside of adult oriented growth.
- j_s 9y ago
  I think it's reasonable to classify it as "don't ask, don't tell". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14927517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14927517 I've never seen anything more effective at enabling content that is routinely censored by credit card companies. [...] Patreon is a layer of abstraction that has enabled a startling opening up of opportunity for censored content, and that's shown in the NSFW side of Patreon.
- raiyu 9y ago
  Absolutely doesn't take much to find the links: https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+nsfw&oq=patreon+nsfw&aqs=chrome..69i57.2374j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+nsfw&oq=patreon+nsfw... Simple writeup: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16074892/patreon-erotic-modeling-nsfw-content-nudes https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16074892/patreon-erotic-mo...
jhallenworld 9y ago
Here is who is making money on Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators (AvE is #9? Wow.. also lots of NSFW..)
a-robinson 9y ago
Why didn't they just set up a Patreon page for themselves?
- elyrly 9y ago
  Even the fox knows when he's bested
balls187 9y ago
So what happens when YouTube builds in Patreon like functionality?
- dragontamer 9y ago
  Social networks have momentum. Youtube is still secondary to Twitch when it comes to serious online gaming streams. I guess Youtube has a big "Lets play" audience, but that hasn't really eaten into Twitch's core audience. ------------ The thing about Patreon is that its multi-medium. I've seen good video games, webcomics, books, AND yes, Youtube Channels, which are funded through Patreon. Unless people start selling their Art, Video Games, Books, Webcomics and so forth on Youtube, I think Patreon will be fine.
- Asdfbla 9y ago
  Doesn't seem like Youtube was particularly good at copying established business models in the past (streaming, video on demand, etc.). But you knows, at least for the video-producing crowd (what fraction of Patreon users is that even?) raising money through Youtube donations might be an alternative.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
  My understanding is that many YouTubers use Patreon not only to supplement their income, but also as insurance against their videos getting demonetized over issues they may not have control over. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.
- subpixel 9y ago
  The bet being made, I think, is that when Patreon is doing several times current revenue, Google will want the paying users and their credit card numbers and will be happy to pay for them by acquiring Patreon. Even though Google could recreate the whole Patreon system, they'd be forced to start with a customer base of zero and risk pissing off Patreon's customers and creators by trying to get in between them. Also, as others have pointed out, Patreon is not just Youtube. Google tried to clone a product and a network before, with Google+, so they know how difficult that can be.
denweb 9y ago
Patreon is fascist.
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  If you took a few minutes to write out a few sentences, like Patreon's recent actions of X, Y, and Z run counter to the sort of values we should promote in a free and open society... It would likely get your point across better and might spur some useful discussion. With the type of info asymmetry inherent in most discussions, people lacking your knowledge on this subject are likely to quickly dismiss statements like this.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    People who have a decent knowledge of what they're likely referring to will probably also dismiss it, too.
    - denweb 9y ago
      Looking at your previous comments, you always have a lot to say with none of it having any substance. Fascist sympathizer.
  - denweb 9y ago
    You are incredibly dumb for how smart you are. In nazi Germany you were probably just as smart. "Be a little more composed and the nazis will understand your point." Canoebuilder the idiot.
brian-armstrong 9y ago
Patreon changed the really quirky but cool logo on the front of their building to one that's considerably more boring. I wonder if it signals significant internal changes. Why bother changing such a thing?
perseusprime11 9y ago
Is it coming down to Patreon vs. Medium?
mmargerum 9y ago
That’s a lot of VC money. Ugh. I hope the folks I pay on patreon move to another site because I’m not interested in paying VC vultures. 450m for god sakes.

159 points by doppp 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

raverbashing 9y ago

Patreon is fighting the good fight so far, especially with YT promoting more disposable content with every passing day

philfrasty 9y ago
Are you a Jake Pauler?
otalp 9y ago
Well, YouTube seems to be punishing any mildly controversial topic, so the positive side is that Nazis and other crazy people can't use it as a viable platform, but on the flip side you can't really talk about anything really serious without getting your ad revenue cut.
- tomp 9y ago
  By "Nazis" you mean Jordan Peterson? Because it's the likes of him that are getting banned - in his case temporarily, thank god, but non-ultra-leftists without large social following are doomed.
  - otalp 9y ago
    >but non-ultra-leftists without large social following are doomed Completely false, "left" YouTube channels I know of: like Philosophy Tube and Contrapoints are having serious problems with their videos being demonetised and removed. Videos which even mildly critisize capitalism are being demonetised, it's pretty much impossible to run a left wing YouTube channel without Patreon. Virtually all political videos are demonetized. For example, PhilosophyTube wanted to make a relatively straightforward series on the history of Liberalism, but even before uploading the videos was told by YouTube(when he contacted them) that under the new rules videos like that wouldn't qualify for ads(https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/898261400786657280 https://twitter.com/PhilosophyTube/status/898261400786657280) So you're displaying a huge persecution complex if you think this doesn't apply to the left even more, since Google and advertisers are large corporations, which means they are de facto fine with pro-capitalist content while obviously against helping spread or advertising on anti-capitalist content.
    - notahacker 9y ago
      It's perfectly possible to run the channel. You're just not going to make any money from it. Can't really blame advertisers for not wanting to associate their brands with political content, especially if it's as toxic as a Jordan Peterson rant on gender, and can question the motives of anyone whose decision on whether to critique capitalism or not is based on whether they can get enough juicy ad dollars for doing so.
      - l33tbro 9y ago
        I thought Peterson was a psych professor who has interesting perspectives on the bible. What are his toxic views on gender? Genuinely curious.
        canoebuilder 9y ago
        "Toxic" views I suspect along the lines of, It does more harm than good to the individual and society to entertain the delusions of mental health conditions. The condition of gender dysphoria is a personal issue best dealt with between the affected individual and their health care provider. But the key driver for Peterson was that pronouncements on these issues have absolutely no place in the Canadian constitution. I think it was only with this issue(legislative lunacy) that he started discussing this, and it wasn't out of some contempt or animosity for people inclined to dress and behave a particular way, but rather because when societies start legislating what people are and aren't allowed to say and think, things tend to go real bad, real quick. Peterson felt a strong duty to take a stand here due to his long study of the horrors and atrocities of communism the 20th century that often stemmed from mandates imposed on acceptable speech and thought.
        notahacker 9y ago
        Peterson gained a lot of attention and an entirely new YouTube following for refusing to call transgendered students by their preferred pronoun on the basis it was "mouthing Marxist words" and directly linking it to gulags and mass slaughters Lest one think that this might be an unfortunate bit of hyperbole taken out of context in what must be an unusual situation for an outspoken middle-aged religious intellectual to face, he's doubled down on it with an angry lecture series on the subject and other crackpot theories like "the idea that women were discriminated against across the course of history is appalling" and actually it's all a myth caused by the birth control pill making modern women hostile towards masculine men. I wish I was parodying that argument; I'm merely summarising it. I doubt advertisers were upset by his studies on the Bible
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    I think those that follow the alt-right overestimate how much others care that they are banned. I remember when loads of them left Twitter for Gab, pronouncing that Twitter was doomed without them. And yet, Twitter hasn't really seen any negative effects of them leaving.
sschueller 9y ago
Patreon is falling into the same problem, banning people who they don't agree with. People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Do you have an example?
  - sschueller 9y ago
    Maybe not the best example but Lauren Southern is one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtImwK5TI4g
- jerf 9y ago
  "People are moving all their eggs from Youtube to Patreon." That's less of a concern though, because Patreon is easier to replace than YouTube. The problem with YouTube is that, at least as long as the Internet chatter I hear is still accurate, YouTube itself is still losing money, so replacing YouTube involves being able to immediately hugely subsidize people watching lots of video, and to be willing to do so when it is demonstrated that even the market leader who gets all the good ad contracts is losing money, so there's no payday if you win. That's a tough sell. Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. But it's feasible down in that range, and said replacement at least has a cash flow and a clear path to ramen profitability. It's gonna be a competitive field and Patreon has all the name advantage right now, but it's a feasible plan for a "true startup" of just a few people in a garage in a way that "let's replace YouTube!" isn't. In fact there's at least three competing services I've heard of that already exist, and I have no reason to believe I've heard of them all.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > Patreon can't literally be replaced in the legendary "HN denizen claims to be able to replace $X in a weekend", because dealing with taking payments takes longer than that. Stripe literally has an offering just for this use case: https://stripe.com/connect https://stripe.com/connect Forum + Stripe Connect + CDN for Video (Cloudfront, Fastly, Whatevs) = Patreon replacement. You could literally replace it with a weekend Hackathon.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

joelthelion 9y ago

That means they're going to expect a lot of revenue. Which they plan to take on money that people give freely. I don't see that ending well.

charrondev 9y ago
Well luckily for them they don’t have to take no money in order to be the good guys here. They only need to take less than the other methods of monetizing videos (youtube). I’d imagine they’ve expored what kind cut they will need to take to be profitable and how that will affect the decisions of the people paying in.
- zanny 9y ago
  Not really. Youtube is indirect monetization thorugh advertisers. The audiences (that the respective companies care about) are completely different. Patreon wants creators and their fans on their platform moving money through them so they can take their fees. Youtube doesn't care at all about content creators or viewers but about advertisers - as long as advertisers are happy Youtube would cripple the user or creator experience. So the people giving Patreon money are not necessarily satisfied with 1% less fees than Youtube advertisers pay because they aren't advertisers and advertisers aren't using Patreon to fund creators.
  - Retric 9y ago
    I think he was referring to things like selling t-shirts. Basically how sites like xkcd make money without advertising.
jerf 9y ago
I use Patreon on a lot, and I don't have any expectation that they are doing it for free. If they were doing it for free, then that would mean to me that the service would be unstable and would disappear some random month without recourse when its unpaid developer gets a job somewhere else, or someone files some light lawsuit against them and that's enough to take the whole thing down. A bigger problem than that they take a cut is probably some expectations management on why, what that cut does for everyone, and what it would mean to not have it.

gourou 9y ago

They probably have the biggest platform for paying creatives, I wonder when they'll ditch YouTube to get more control over their user base and increase their 5% margin.

wongarsu 9y ago
I fail to see any advantage in ditching YouTube? On private videos for Patreon subscribers Youtube supplies free video hosting with a decent and familiar experience for the content creator. For public videos (or videos that become public after a delay), Youtube offers free hosting and lots of discoverability. In both cases I only see Patreon having additional cost with little to no upside by ditching Youtube (especially since Youtube policies are already very lenient on non-monetized non-public videos). Maybe I'm missing something obvious?
- xemdetia 9y ago
  There are a lot of patreon people that don't have a strong youtube presence, and a lot of that content ends up being cross hosted by youtube. You have people that are working with a pre-payout budget of a few thousand a month- it's possible that they are trying to build out more pay-to-use features that increase the 5% slice they are taking. Private video hosting for supporters that isn't rigged to youtube settings is something that could actually be a boon. Just because youtube is easier doesn't mean delivering on a non-youtube service couldn't help delivering the rewards. I can see how they can upsell a lot of other services though around delivering rewards. If I have 10000 people who need stickers for that 5$ support level is it worth the time to hand-stuff all those envelopes? Or is it worth an extra 20c a letter to have someone else stuff it for you? The more I think about it the more I think that they can actually provide legitimate services in the same frames as vistaprint, teespring and others for these physical deliverables and just providing that fulfillment. Videos that I can schedule to release on patreon might just be worth it to some people.
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    Something with merchandise will likely happen. Quote from the article: >Deeper pockets could also allow Patreon to build out its suite of bonus tools for creators, some of which it could charge extra for. “There’s going to be new opportunities to build revenue streams into the product” Conte has promised me. He suggested that could include selling event tickets or merchandise, or better helping creators understand and communicate with fans. With them having a partnership with a livestreaming platform, I wouldn't put it past them to do something to replace private YouTube videos. But I think shipping postcards or stickers or art prints is a much more direct way to more revenue, and could be relatively cheap to set up with the right partnerships.

EGreg 9y ago

What if there was a crypto-currency for this? :)

wongarsu 9y ago
Currency exchange is too high of a barrier for supporters. A large portion of Patreon is artists asking for support for content they offer for free, with only token benefits for the supporters. Making the act of giving money as simple and convenient as possible is key in that scenario. Using a crypto-currency is pretty much the opposite.
- EGreg 9y ago
  No, I mean one crypto-currency specifically designed for what Patreon does. Instead of paying Patreon with a credit card, you'd pay to buy this crypto currency. And then distribute it micropayment-style to all kinds of things. Isn't anyone doing that? IMHO the hardest part is the Coinbase thing - collecting credit cards and dealing with chargebacks etc. in a compliant way in many countries. The other stuff is easy - such as localization in many languages. You know who does this also? Kickstarter. They just launched in Japan!
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    Ah, yes, you could do that. But aren't you then stuck with either one platform which does that, offering you no advantage over what Patreon offers today, or loosing a lot of the miscellaneous Patreon features for keeping Patreons and creators in touch in exchange for gaining censorship resistance? It's certainly doable, but I think it would be a hard sell compared to Patreon or any regular centralized Patreon alternative.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    That'd still end up dealing with currency conversions. People still buy food and pay rent in their local currencies. If you're talking about something that's only usable on Patreon, then why a crypto-currency? It could much easier just be like gems in a clicker game. But then, they'd get some bad press for basically making people use casino chips.

dandermotj 9y ago

That's a P/E of 60... Also this: > In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut. I hope this is sarcasm, because if I had to pay 5% to make any other transaction I'd be fuming. With a marginal cost of facilitating a new patron near zero, I don't think creators or patrons will suffer this as Patreon grows.

jasode 9y ago
>if I had to pay 5% to make any other transaction I'd be fuming. Fyi... for comparison, Kickstarter fee is also 5% of funds raised. https://www.google.com/search?q=kickstarter+fee https://www.google.com/search?q=kickstarter+fee
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
arkitaip 9y ago
Creators accept Patreon's high transaction cost because they don't many other options. If you, for example, are a youtuber, chances are that Google will screw you out of video monetization because their subpar AI raises more flags than a signalman on acid. Other payment solutions like Pay Pal are a goddamn nightmare to set up and handle for micro businesses [0]. Patreon also acts like a landing page and even CMS for content creators, so you're paying for that too. [0] Holy shit is Pay Pal the most dysfunctional organization I've ever dealt with. Just verifying my identity as a business owner has meant weeks of me sending countless copies of my bank statements, phone bills and photo ID to Pay Pal staff because apparently comparing the address on the submitted documents with the one on file is too difficult a task. In the end it was easier to change my address on file so it matches the one of the submitted documents character by character (yay security theater). Of course when they finally verified my address I got an email that the copy of the photo ID I submitted suddenly was "too pale and is illegible as a result" and now I can't even access the verification process page...
falcolas 9y ago
Apple takes 30%. So does Google. Kickstarter takes 5%. Many online stock trading firms take somewhere around 10-15%. That fairly well justifies the qualifier of "tiny" in today's world. Given that the basic cost for processing credit cards and other such minutia is already around 2%, the benefit of not having to worry about chargebacks, fraud, or PCI compliance... worth that extra 3% IMO.

outoftacos 9y ago

Oh god, now they're trapped in the endless useless growth demand cycle. Too bad, I enjoy supporting a few artists on there and it's just a matter of time until this hurts them.

egypturnash 9y ago
Seriously, I enjoy having my comics supported by my fans there and I'm not looking forwards to them having to Make A Profit.
- stephenson 9y ago
  They should help you make a profit, but not make one themselves?
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    They should make a profit. What we don't want is to spoil the nice service with desperate attempts to earn enough profit to satisfy investors.
    - pc86 9y ago
      Ah, so they should make a profit but not too much.
      - nobodyorother 9y ago
        It's the Tiger Woods problem, also known as Focus on Your Core: TW gets video game endorsements and makes ungodly piles of money because he's a great golfer. When he focuses on making new games and supermodels instead of golfing, his game suffers and all the perks that came because of the good golf game go away. ...Like how he hasn't had his name on a golf video game in years. Essentially: pursuit of profit when it undermines your core competency is shortsighted.
        9y ago

sixdimensional 9y ago

I remember the first time I saw a music video by Jack Conte on YouTube, way before he started Patreon. He did a bunch of cool music videos (example https://youtu.be/lBUUOJpFg9Y https://youtu.be/lBUUOJpFg9Y) . Also, his work with Pomplamoose was pretty awesome. I remember hearing him talk about his idea for Patreon on some of those YouTube videos. He seems like a pretty nice guy, so I am super excited for him to hear that Patreon has been such a great success!! Let's hope they can continue their mission and keep taking it to positive places from here!

clarkevans 9y ago

This market segment might support a cooperative model, similar to Stocksy United (https://www.stocksy.com/ https://www.stocksy.com/), where the artists collectively own the monetization platform. Stocksy bootstrapped with a 1M investment loan (not equity) which is now paid off. Now Stocksy is fully owned by artist-members.

jasode 9y ago
The viability of co-op depends on what content creators want from a patronage/crowdfunding platform: scenario 1: If artists just want a straight monetary passthrough, then artists-owned entity like ASCAP (collects music royalties) may be workable. ASCAP is "boring", but it does what it needs to do. scenario 2: However, if artists want a payment platform that evolves towards a combination of Facebook+Medium+Ticketmaster+Slack+Youtube+cdn+etc, a co-op model will be underfunded. (In this scenario, you'd have to imagine that there would be future features that artists don't even know they want.) In the marketplace of ideas, it's possible for both business models to be offered. E.g. artists sign up for co-op platform because it's 2% fee instead of VC-backed Patreon for 5% fee. However, it's possible for artists en-masse to abandon the co-op business for the VC-funded business because its enriched platform gives them ability to earn more which overshadows the higher 5% fee.
- clarkevans 9y ago
  Since venture subsidizes losses till critical mass is achieved, perhaps it is more likely that a VC-funded platform will initially be much less expensive compared to a revenue financed cooperative.
AVTizzle 9y ago
Where can one find access to these 1M investment loans?
- kruhft 9y ago
  Build business (and personal credit) and go to a business bank with a business plan.

justinzollars 9y ago

Why do they need so much money?

hobofan 9y ago
I would wager Silicon Valley salaries are the main money sink.
beambot 9y ago
Best time to raise funds is when you need it least. Maybe this was a way to pad the bank account in case of a downturn.

payne92 9y ago

I'm still wondering why Youtube isn't ALL OVER this model. Given that many are getting paid for publishing videos of what they do, it would be a great feature.

chis 9y ago
Yeah, it's really bizarre that YouTube is content to constantly struggle with ad revenue, when most of their top users are making orders of magnitude more money through patreon. There's precedent too since twitch has had this exact model for years now.
3pt14159 9y ago
The answer is that Google is terrible at getting non-advertising revenue sources online.
microcolonel 9y ago
YouTube is trying things like tips (superchat), but their cut is enormous, something like 30%, plus processing. I'm glad YouTube isn't the one solving this though, because it means that I get to support folks who YouTube is screwing over, when I watch their content on vid.me and bitchute.
grafporno 9y ago
A vast part of Youtube's audience are minors who don't have credit cards and couldn't pay for content. So they are shown ads.
- payne92 9y ago
  Youtube would not replace the ad model with a patron model, they would ADD the patron model. Patreon has shown there is clear demand for that feature.
  - krapp 9y ago
    One of the reasons Youtubers are moving to Patreon is a lack of trust in Google to provide a platform that generates a stable income, due to their demonetizing of accounts,arbitrary tweaks in the algorithm, refusal to defend Fair Use, etc. If I were a big successful Youtuber, which I'm not and will never be, I wouldn't go near a patron service provided by the same company whose practices were driving me away from them to begin with.

arikr 9y ago

Based on https://patreonhq.com/creators-have-made-100m-on-patreon-ddfcc9338662 https://patreonhq.com/creators-have-made-100m-on-patreon-ddf..., seems like they are growing at about 2.4x/year. They will do $7.5 million in net revenue in 2017. Then assuming the growth rate doesn't slow (remember, growth rates usually get slower over time), $18 million in net revenue in 2018, and $43 million in net revenue in 2019. Net revenue, not net income. $450mm seems overvalued.

hobofan 9y ago
I'd not be surprised if their growth this year is even bigger than last year. 2017 is the year of the Youtube Adpocalypse and more and more creators are looking for alternate, more stable, revenue streams. There is still a lot of potential of revenue coming in from existing big content creators switching to the platform. When Philip DeFrance started his Patreon a few months ago he became the #2 most sponsored creator in Patreon in a few days, and his channel is "only" ranked ~350th by number of subscribers.
paulpauper 9y ago
pretty much everything tech VC-related is overvalued by conventional metrics
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Normally startups raise money to accelerate growth. Nice try with your projection but that's not how startup valuation and growth works.

crescentfresh 9y ago

I'm not too up-to-speed with Patreon, is it like twitch but for any type of creative content?

spike021 9y ago
Not so much like Twitch, IMO. Patreon is purely for gathering a fanbase with open communication between fans and creators and the ability to share content in exchange for support of the creators. So a musician might link to private music videos on youtube with the financial supporters on Patreon first. Or they might provide a special .mp3 that is only available there. As far as I know, Patreon doesn't actually have the capability to host videos itself (I could be wrong since I haven't looked at it in a while).
MrRadar 9y ago
Patreon is more like Kickstarter but for ongoing projects/support (e.g. web comics, YouTube channels, etc.). People can set up accounts to charge per item produced/released (e.g. per comic page or per video) or on a straight monthly basis.

samplonius 9y ago

There is a lot of money in sex. Patreon is basically "will undress for money".

robk 9y ago

Is there a porn angle here? Seems like from Googling there's a decent amount of sexual content. I wonder if this is like Tumblr with a seedy underside of adult oriented growth.

j_s 9y ago
I think it's reasonable to classify it as "don't ask, don't tell". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14927517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14927517 I've never seen anything more effective at enabling content that is routinely censored by credit card companies. [...] Patreon is a layer of abstraction that has enabled a startling opening up of opportunity for censored content, and that's shown in the NSFW side of Patreon.
raiyu 9y ago
Absolutely doesn't take much to find the links: https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+nsfw&oq=patreon+nsfw&aqs=chrome..69i57.2374j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+nsfw&oq=patreon+nsfw... Simple writeup: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16074892/patreon-erotic-modeling-nsfw-content-nudes https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16074892/patreon-erotic-mo...

jhallenworld 9y ago

Here is who is making money on Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators (AvE is #9? Wow.. also lots of NSFW..)

a-robinson 9y ago

Why didn't they just set up a Patreon page for themselves?

elyrly 9y ago
Even the fox knows when he's bested

balls187 9y ago

So what happens when YouTube builds in Patreon like functionality?

dragontamer 9y ago
Social networks have momentum. Youtube is still secondary to Twitch when it comes to serious online gaming streams. I guess Youtube has a big "Lets play" audience, but that hasn't really eaten into Twitch's core audience. ------------ The thing about Patreon is that its multi-medium. I've seen good video games, webcomics, books, AND yes, Youtube Channels, which are funded through Patreon. Unless people start selling their Art, Video Games, Books, Webcomics and so forth on Youtube, I think Patreon will be fine.
Asdfbla 9y ago
Doesn't seem like Youtube was particularly good at copying established business models in the past (streaming, video on demand, etc.). But you knows, at least for the video-producing crowd (what fraction of Patreon users is that even?) raising money through Youtube donations might be an alternative.
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 9y ago
My understanding is that many YouTubers use Patreon not only to supplement their income, but also as insurance against their videos getting demonetized over issues they may not have control over. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.
subpixel 9y ago
The bet being made, I think, is that when Patreon is doing several times current revenue, Google will want the paying users and their credit card numbers and will be happy to pay for them by acquiring Patreon. Even though Google could recreate the whole Patreon system, they'd be forced to start with a customer base of zero and risk pissing off Patreon's customers and creators by trying to get in between them. Also, as others have pointed out, Patreon is not just Youtube. Google tried to clone a product and a network before, with Google+, so they know how difficult that can be.

denweb 9y ago

Patreon is fascist.

canoebuilder 9y ago
If you took a few minutes to write out a few sentences, like Patreon's recent actions of X, Y, and Z run counter to the sort of values we should promote in a free and open society... It would likely get your point across better and might spur some useful discussion. With the type of info asymmetry inherent in most discussions, people lacking your knowledge on this subject are likely to quickly dismiss statements like this.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  People who have a decent knowledge of what they're likely referring to will probably also dismiss it, too.
  - denweb 9y ago
    Looking at your previous comments, you always have a lot to say with none of it having any substance. Fascist sympathizer.
- denweb 9y ago
  You are incredibly dumb for how smart you are. In nazi Germany you were probably just as smart. "Be a little more composed and the nazis will understand your point." Canoebuilder the idiot.

brian-armstrong 9y ago

Patreon changed the really quirky but cool logo on the front of their building to one that's considerably more boring. I wonder if it signals significant internal changes. Why bother changing such a thing?

perseusprime11 9y ago

Is it coming down to Patreon vs. Medium?

mmargerum 9y ago

That’s a lot of VC money. Ugh. I hope the folks I pay on patreon move to another site because I’m not interested in paying VC vultures. 450m for god sakes.