What is Patreon? Patreon Review

Patreon was founded in 2013 by Jack Conte and Sam Yam. It is a crowdfunding platform for artists, aiming to provide content creators with a more stable way to monetize their content.

About Patreon

Patreon is a membership-based platform that allows these artists to receive financial support directly from users, or "patrons."

The artists on the Patreon platform were initially mainly YouTube video creators and web cartoonists, but now the artist categories cover video/film, comics, podcasts, comedy, handmade DIY, music, illustrations, games, science, dance and drama, writing, animation, photography, education, etc.

Crowdfunding Form

There are two forms of crowdfunding for artists:

1. Sponsor artists at a fixed amount on a regular basis every month (sponsor people);

2. Or sponsor the completion of a certain work/content (sponsorship for the project).

Currently, the platform mainly provides sponsorship. In addition to helping content creators obtain financial support from users, the platform also helps artists build relationship networks, manage fans, and so on.

Crowdfunding

1. First, each artist or content provider on Patreon will set up a Patreon page to introduce themselves and their works. Through this personal homepage, artists can choose to have fans sponsor them regularly and in fixed amounts every month, or sponsor a new work after it is released. Artists usually set a goal, such as the amount of money they hope to raise each month, and the project will end when this amount is reached. This part is similar to general crowdfunding platforms.

2. In addition, fans can cancel their crowdfunding payments at any time, and artists also need to provide some benefits to crowdfunding fans (generally exclusive gifts related to the content). The "weight" of the gifts will vary depending on the amount of crowdfunding.

Platform Fees

In return for its service, Patreon takes a 5% commission on each donation and a 5% transaction fee, allowing creators to keep 90% of donations.

Founding Background

The founder of Patreon is also a musician seeking funds. Jack Conte, who voiced a young boy in the video game The Sims 2, gained attention on the video platform YouTube in 2008 with his original electronic music. He was struggling with the lack of stable and continuous financial support to make music, and came up with the idea of ​​"why not build a platform for fans to crowdfund for artists", so he and his co-founder Sam Yam founded Patreon together.

Jack Conte has been seeking funding for his music and video career for a long time. He had considered the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter before, but the crowdfunding of a single project cannot provide a stable source of income for artists, and artists are the ones who need to "focus on their creation without distractions" and not be trapped by commercialization. So when he co-founded Patreon in 2013, he made a bold promise to "fund the artist community." He also said frankly that the income from advertising is too little, and the payment from fans should be the main source of income to support artistic creation.

Development History

-In May 2013, Jack Conte and Sam Yam founded Patreon, which attracted 125,000 member registrations in the first 18 months of its establishment.

-In June 2014, Patreon received $15 million in funding in its Series A round led by Indext Ventures. At the end of the same year, Patreon announced that artists on the platform could receive a total of more than $1 million in crowdfunding from members every month.

-In March 2015, Patreon announced the acquisition of a similar platform, Subbable. With this acquisition, a number of artists such as CGP Grey and Green Brothers joined Patreon. In addition, Amazon Payments, the crowdfunding payment method used by Subbable, was also connected to Patreon.

-In January 2016, the company raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Thrive CAPItal.

-In May 2017, Patreon announced that there were more than 50,000 active artists on its platform, 1 million members participated in crowdfunding every month, and a user sponsored an artist every 5.5 seconds.

-In September 2017, Patreon received another $60 million in funding in its Series C round led by Thrive Capital.

-In August 2018, Patreon announced the acquisition of membership service company Memberful.