Patreon

Patreon, Inc.
Type Private
Founded 2013
Headquarters San Francisco, United States
Founder(s)
Website www.patreon.com
Type of site Crowdfunding

Patreon is a crowdfunding platform popular with YouTube content creators, musicians, and webcomic artists. It allows artists to obtain funding from their fans or patrons, on a recurring basis, or per artwork.[1] This San Francisco based company was started by musician Jack Conte and developer Sam Yam in 2013.[2] Patreon has been featured in Forbes, Billboard, and Time magazine.

History

Patreon was founded in May 2013 by artist Jack Conte, who was looking for a way to make a living from his popular YouTube videos.[3] Together with Sam Yam he developed a platform that allows patrons to donate a set amount of money every time an artist creates a work of art. The company raised $2.1 million in August 2013 from a group of venture capitalists and angel investors.[4][5] In June 2014 the company raised a further $15 million in a series A round led by Danny Rimer of Index Ventures.[6]

The company has signed up more than 125,000 "patrons" in its first 18 months.[7] In late 2014, the website announced that patrons were sending over $1 million per month to the site's content creators.[8]

In March 2015, Patreon acquired Subbable, a similar voluntary subscription service co-created by John and Hank Green, and brings over Subbable creators and contents including C.G.P. Grey, Destin Sandlin's Smarter Every Day and the Green brothers' own CrashCourse and SciShow channels.[9] The merger was consequent of an expected migration of payment systems with Amazon Payments that Subbable used.

In October 2015, the site was the target of a massive hacking attack with almost 15 gigabytes' worth of password data, donation records, and source code taken and published. The breach exposed more than 2.3M unique e-mail addresses and millions of private messages.[10][11]

Model

Artists set up a page on the Patreon website, where patrons can pledge to donate a given amount of money to an artist every time they create a piece of art, optionally setting a monthly maximum. Alternatively a fixed monthly amount can be pledged. This is different from other crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, where artists obtain a single sum after a successful campaign and typically have to start over for every new piece.[3] Similar to other platforms however, artists will often provide rewards for their patrons.[12][13] Patreon takes a 5% commission on pledges.[14]

Participating artists

As of February 2014, almost half of the artists produce YouTube videos, while the rest are writers, draw webcomics or make podcasts.[15] On average, patrons donate $7 per creation. Patreon is growing rapidly both in patrons and creators, with 10,000 artists expected to use Patreon by the end of February 2014.[16] While the website initially targeted musicians (musician and performer Amanda Palmer uses Patreon and operates independently from a music label), established webcomic artists such as Jonathan Rosenberg, Zach Weinersmith and Paul Taylor are successfully using it.[17] Any content creation that may be deemed pornographic photography is prohibited since a December 2014 policy change. Non-photographic sexual imagery (drawn, sculpted, or computer generated, for example) is allowed.

References

  1. ↑ The California Report.org: "Creating Patrons of the Arts Through Crowdfunding" July 11–13, 2014.
  2. ↑ Patreon.org: Intro Accessed 14.7.1014
  3. 1 2 Levitz, Dena (9 September 2013). "Donation, Patron Services Help Fans Support Their Favorite Authors". PBS. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  4. ↑ Tate, Ryan (22 October 2013). "The Next Big Thing You Missed: ‘Eternal Kickstarter’ Reinvents Indie Art". Wired. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  5. ↑ Luckerson, Victor (4 December 2013). "Top 10 Exciting Startups". Time. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Buhr, Sarah (23 June 2014). "Patreon Raises $15 Million Series A, Revamps Site To Focus More On Content". TechCrunch. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Dredge, Stuart. "Amanda Palmer races to $13,000 per release in Patreon crowdfunding". the Guardian. Retrieved 2015-06-11.
  8. ↑ "Creators on Patreon Receive Over 1,000,000 per Month From Patrons". October 10, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Patreon Acquires Subbable, Aligning the YouTube Stars". Forbes. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
  10. ↑ Hunt, Troy. "Pwned websites - Patreon". Have I been pwned?. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
  11. ↑ Goodin, Dan (2 October 2015). "Gigabytes of user data from hack of Patreon donations site dumped online". ars technica. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
  12. ↑ Pham, Alex (10 May 2013). "Jack Conte’s Patreon: Anyone Can Be a Patron of the Arts". Billboard Biz (Los Angeles). Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  13. ↑ Henriksen, Erik (7 February 2014). "Portland Cartoonist Erika Moen Launches a Patreon (Also, Patreon Sounds Pretty Brilliant)". The Portland Mercury (Portland, OR). Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  14. ↑ "Patreon Help Center". Patreon. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
  15. ↑ Patreon.com: Projects Roll
  16. ↑ Wolf, Michael (19 February 2014). "Analysis: Patreon seeing strong growth in creators, pledges, pageviews". Gigaom Research. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  17. ↑ Allen, Todd (24 February 2014). "Patreon Raises $2.1 Million". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 1 March 2014.

External links

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