Patreon Blog

Cloudfront supports private content [1]. Its good to see video encoding/storage/delivery maturing; the more players in the space, the more options one has to choose from if a provider prefers to not host your content (whether that's because of a ToS violation, or because the company CEO just doesn't want to host your content). "Drop in" solutions give your provider a great deal of control over your fate, which is okay, until its not. With Patreon raising a large round ($60MM) of financing [2], I'd expect them to build out their own streaming system based on S3, an encoding engine, and a CDN, versus be under the control of a turnkey provider (a la Reddit having to move off of Imgur). [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Priv… [2] https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477

The thread's title points to a CNBC story by Brandon Gomez. However, the journalism is very light and is missing a lot of context about what CEO Jack Conte is talking about. However, a better story that Dan Olson linked to (scroll down his twitter feed) is the September 2017 announcement of the $60 million round by Jack Conte himself[0]. In that blog, JC laid out in more detail the new products Patreon was trying to build to increase revenue. Excerpt of the bullet points: 1. Business Infrastructure - Think of this as the back office — the tools, workflows, dashboards, and information that you need to get your business cranking. [...] analytics [...] financials [...] 2. Rewards to Energize Patrons This is everything you need to entice and keep your patrons, [...] Actual goods, whether digital or physical, like a signed poster or an extra episode [...] Patreon doesn't want to be just a simple "paypal/stripe" payment middleman that takes a 5% cut of subscribers payments. As a rough analogy, they also want to be a "SalesforceCRM/QuickenAccounting" backoffice and a "Amazon/WooCommerce" for merchandise -- for their creators. JC is hoping that creators will give up more than 5% (e.g. maybe 30% cut) to pay for those services. So when people ask "what does Patreon need all that VC money for?", JC basically told you. The question remains if the creators are willing to pay for those extra "value-added" services to manage the creators' backoffice + storefront. (Examples of…

He used slurs, that's for certain. But it's critical to point out that the context in which they were used was to tell the Alt Right that they're behaving exactly like they see the groups they despise (blacks, Jewish people, gays etc.) through their bigoted worldview. Not to mention, your excerpt cuts off a crucial part of what he said. As other commenters pointed out, the whole part of this was: > It's not about, like, actually doing any good, it's about getting attention. And I see, like, 'kikes are ruining everything'. [laughs] Good—good—good job. Should tackle field [I can't understand this sentence]. You're making your movement look like you're not full of Nazis! Great! Bravo!" In case the context isn't clear, saying that they "look like you're not full of Nazi" is sarcasm. Of course subscription to belief in a global Jewish conspiracy makes a group look like they're full of Nazis. It is difficult to claim that these statements were meant as an attack on blacks and Jewish people themselves. It's pretty obvious that this banning was carried out for ideological reasons. In the past, Jack Conte stated that Patreon would only ban people for speech that was spread on their platform.[1] This was flat out ignored. It looks like much of their userbase is calling them out on the questionable justifications for the banning, too.[2] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofpbDgCj9rw 2. See comments on https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf Edit: changed…

> arguing with and insulting nazis. He wasn't arguing with white supremacists because he fundamentally disagreed with them. It was infighting between factions. He disagreed with a particular faction's behavior and words. He was arguing with them because they, using his words, were acting like "white n-words"[1]: > “I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n_____s, just so you know. You act like white n_____s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mood to deal with this kind of disrespect.” > “Look, you carry on, but don’t expect me to then have a debate with one of your f__gots.…Like why would I bother?…Maybe you’re just acting like a n____r, mate? Have you considered that? Do you think white people act like this? White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another, and you guys can’t even act like white people, it’s really amazing to me.” [1] https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf?gi=fe9f94842…

Good question. I've found a transcript published by patreon: https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf?gi=fe9f94842… It's... pretty vitriolic. I'm not totally comfortable with even quoting the redacted version, but here goes nothing: >“I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n_____s, just so you know. You act like white n_____s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mood to deal with this kind of disrespect.” >“Look, you carry on, but don’t expect me to then have a debate with one of your f__gots.…Like why would I bother?…Maybe you’re just acting like a n____r, mate? Have you considered that? Do you think white people act like this? White people are meant to be polite and respectful to one another, and you guys can’t even act like white people, it’s really amazing to me.”

It's worth remembering that less than three months ago, Patreon raised $60M in a series C (https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477): I’ve got some exciting news! Patreon has just secured an additional round of financing ($60M!), which means we will be scaling our team, building faster, and building more — all in service of getting you paid what you deserve to be paid, for the value you give the world. YESSS! So why is Patreon changing their fees now, when they just got a ton of money and can basically do whatever they want in order to grow? Their Zendesk article (https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963) isn't much help: Q: Why is Patreon doing this now? A: Patreon exists to allow creators to get paid what they deserve to be paid, for the value they give the world. This is awesome and to continue this vision, we need to constantly evaluate our processes. As we work to deliver bigger and better features for creators and patrons in 2018, we felt like sooner than later made sense to put this change into effect. This doesn't actually answer the question: why do the fees need to be changed at all, whether sooner or later? Were creators asking for this change? What was wrong with the way it worked before? The obvious answer is that Patreon needs more money for some reason. But… they just raised a bunch of money. So I really don't understand how this change makes sense or helps anyone.

Based on https://patreonhq.com/creators-have-made-100m-on-patreon-ddfcc9338662, 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.

You write "he's no racist". The SPLC did not say he is a racist, did they? I didn't see that in the text I mentioned, but perhaps they said it elsewhere? If not, then you don't need to take their word for something they didn't say. They did make an association between him and racism, so let's examine that connection. This thread exists because of an NYT article about an action by Patreon where Patreon, at https://patreonhq.com/hate-speech-on-patreon-a9026e52c2cf and mentioned elsewhere in this thread - says he "used racial slurs to insult others and specifically linked those slurs with negative generalizations of behavior, in contrast to how people of other races act." You can confirm that those are some pretty racist statements. Now, I know that some people demur stating that someone is a racist for doing racist things. Are you making that distinction? Even if you don't think he's a racist for making those comment, it is enough to support the SPLC association of him with racism, yes? If not, why not?

I don't think this is it. If Patreon is using Stripe, they are likely using "Stripe Connect" (https://stripe.com/connect) - which was built specifically for marketplaces like Patreon to take in funds and pay out. The compliance/legal issues around being a money services business are automatically handled by Stripe in this case. My hypothesis is that this is really around fraud risk more than anything. Batched payments are notoriously confusing to cc customers. If you made a bunch of small donations and got confused as to why you saw one $18.XX charge on your credit card statement, you might open a dispute with your bank, which would have the action of automatically reversing the entire charge with Patreon's processor (i.e. Stripe). Assuming Patreon is eating this and not reversing every donation that is currently batched, then the average chargeback amount (and therefore loss to Patreon) is much higher in the current scenario than if donations are charged individually. In fact, they even wrote about chargebacks and "friendly fraud" in a blog post earlier this year -> https://patreonhq.com/chargebacks-tips-to-fight-friendly-fraud-and-get…