Patreon's Jack Conte: “People used to pay for things”

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2019

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent brings on Jack Conte, founder of Patreon, to talk about busking as a business model (2:10), the web’s weird love triangle (4:40), sending $500m to creators this year (5:05), how platforms work (9:00), what kind of stuff is successful on Patreon (11:30), like gaming (14:40), people looking for their tribe online (16:35), getting money from the Kushner family (18:10), how he started (19:45), launching a company (23:10), needing to raise more venture capital (25:10), how he polices the platform (26:55), the problem with the word “influencer” (29:10), how micropayments could change the way the internet works (32:35), why he doesn’t call them “fan clubs” (34:10), the changing nature of the web (37:40), the predictability of donations (39:30), and the rise of the creators (41:25).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Yo, technology.
0:03.0	What is it all about?
0:04.6	Let's talk about busking.
0:05.8	Okay, if we just get straight into it.
0:07.4	Let's just get straight into the beep.
0:10.4	It's so funny to me because I agree that that is kind of how people are thinking of it these days.
0:15.6	That is back asswords.
0:18.1	Okay.
0:18.5	It is so funny because people used to pay for things that they used.
0:26.2	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.
0:34.2	This week, I braved an absolutely torrential downpour and traipsed all the way across
0:40.3	San Francisco to get to this week's guest. It was terrible, but the pod never sleeps, and I think
0:47.6	you will find that it was worth it. So this week on the program, we have Jack Conti, who's the founder of Patreon, which, if you don't know what it is, is a platform where artists and musicians, even podcasters.
1:04.2	Find fans who pay for whatever it is that they're doing, even though they could just get it for free like everybody
1:12.3	else does.
1:13.6	So one way to think of Patreon is the internet's biggest tip jar.
1:19.3	Now Jack, as you will soon see, we'll take issue with that description.
1:23.4	But I think you'll find his views very interesting because, well, not least because his whole business is based on the idea that people will pay and happily do so for stuff that they don't actually have to pay for.
1:38.3	And lots of people do this.
1:41.3	So the site started six years ago and it's sent about a billion dollars to
1:45.6	creators. So given how much stuff we get today for free, I thought it was worth having him on
1:53.1	to talk about this quixotic mission he's on to kind of do the opposite and why he thinks
	...

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