I wonder how much VC money was spent on marketing and promotion. You couldn't have just invented Patreon and waited for content creators to find you by going to

I wonder how much VC money was spent on marketing and promotion. You couldn't have just invented Patreon and waited for content creators to find you by going to Google and searching for "companies that serve as middlemen for people to give you patronage money". I bet marketing and promotion was/is a nontrivial percentage of expenses.