The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 24 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rubin: Indiegogo missed owning crowdfunding by obsessing over unit economics
“We were in the position to own all of them, and, you know, we decided that we had to think too much about unit economics and profitability, and I think that's a shame.”
Conte: Patreon refused to alter content policies to retain high-profile creators
“We weren't going to you know, we weren't going to change our minds to keep two or three creators as painful as that was.”
Jack Conte: 8chan launched on Patreon to crowdfund the site's initial development
“The thing that caused the debate was a website called eight Chan that launched on Patreon.
Guy Raz: Yeah.
Jack Conte: And they were using Patreon to fund the development of the site.”
Jack Conte: Breaking through online is easier today, but retention is harder
“I actually think it's easier to break through now. I think it's harder to stick. But I think it's easier to break. And what I've seen is, you know, the internet has really shifted away from the follower model. And it's shifted into an interest-based model that…”
Jack Conte: Two-thirds of Patreon payment volume goes to middle-class creators
“About two-thirds of our payments volume is not going to the, like, you know, super top-of-market creatorists, like the super rich and famous creators. It's going to what we call, I don't like the term, but, like, some people call it, like, the creative middle …”
Conte: Patreon's growth was primarily driven by a creator viral cycle
“Some of the people who watched my video were creators themselves, and when they landed on my Patreon page, and they saw this random middle-of-the-road YouTuber making six figures, they had that same mind-blow moment that I had had two years before when Lauren …”
Jack Conte: Online platforms absolutely can define pornography with rigorous explicit rules
“I've heard people say, you can't define porn, you just kind of know it when you see it. I beg to differ. You can define porn.”
Jack Conte: Patreon does not work without an existing audience
“If you don't have an audience actually Patreon doesn't work so well for you at all, and so I think it's totally fair to, like, point that out, and I actually think it's important to be honest about that. Like, we want to be honest with that. If somebody expect…”
Conte: Creator monetization economics failed to keep up with distribution technology
“The economics of that failed to evolve with the distribution technology. So like the distribution happened first, and the economic systems to support that didn't keep up. And so we were in this horrible phase where essentially artists are working for free.”
McKenzie: Patreon proved audiences will pay directly for creators they love
“Yeah, Patreon, I think, is a hugely important company because it changed the culture. It showed not only that people will be willing to pay for content online, they'll be willing to pay for the artist or creator who they most love or trust.”
Jack Conte: Building a community as a founder differs from a creator
“Building a community as a founder is different than building community as a creator. There are similarities, but I think it would be a mistake to assume it's one for one”
Conte: Unfiltered creators build the most loyal followings on Patreon
“I feel like if you're kind of averaging yourself Off to appeal to as many people as possible. You kind of appeal to nobody. And what we see with creators on Patreon is the ones who are just almost like entirely unfiltered, who just empty their minds into a mic…”
Jack Conte: Founders must shift from consensus to internal conviction
“There comes a point where you have pretty good judgment, you've seen a bunch of things before, and rather than cross-indexing a bunch of different disparate opinions, if I could go back in time, I'd tell myself, figure out what you want to do, what kind of com…”
Conte: Patreon is not profitable and burning cash every month
“So no, Patreon's not profitable. It's tracking toward profitability. We're burning money every month, but actually the business is, like, very healthy.”
Jack Conte: Everyone said Patreon was a bad idea when he started
“When I was starting Patreon, the number of people who told me that's a bad idea, it's not gonna work, was like, everyone. I don't think a single person said, that's a good idea, you should go do that.”
Conte: Patreon has over 200,000 creators getting paid on platform
“It's a little over 200,000, yeah, who are getting paid.”
Conte: Patreon co-founders agreed to a 50-50 equity split
“Yeah, it's in this email. We agree to become fifty-fifty partners in Patreon.”
Conte: All 40 creators rejected Patreon's initial launch invitation
“We made an Excel spreadsheet with those folks, and I found their contact info, and reached out to all 40 of them, and all 40 of them said no.”
Patreon launched securely storing credit cards but without actual payment processing logic
“We couldn't, for example we couldn't process all the payments at that time yet. I hadn't hooked any of that up. We could accept your credit card. And so that would get saved, you know, very securely by the way, because we were working at Stripe, but we hadn't …”
Conte: Patreon raised $2.1M seed round at $6M valuation
“That first round ended up being 2.1 million at a six million valuation, so it was, you know, about a third.”
Conte: Patreon's first content policy took two months and totaled 40 pages
“He built these
Jack Conte: Very massive content policy and trust and safety and enforcement systems, and he worked with us for a period of two months to draft the first version of what became Patreon's content policy, which was, turned out to be about 40 page…”
Conte: Patreon saw triple-digit MoM creator growth during pandemic
“Not only creators, you know, launching on the platform, you know, triple digit growth month over month and podcasting and music and things like that, but also patrons, like, Stepping up and really doing their part.”
Jack Conte earned over $100K annualized within two months of Patreon's launch
“Within the first couple weeks, I passed 5000 dollars a month. And then soon after that, it was, yeah, it was even more. And at the time, I was making maybe two videos a month. So, you know, suddenly, like very suddenly, within two months, I went from draining …”