5 Questions with Patreon CEO Jack Conte -- My Exclusive Q&A

Patreon is a Bay Area-based company that enables all of us to be patrons of the arts.  The company takes a different spin on crowdfunding -- giving fans the ability to make recurring payments to content creators (musicians, video creators, artists) in order to support them monetarily on a continuing (rather than “one off”) basis for the art that moves them.  Another compelling ray of new hope in our brave new digital/social media age -- reflecting the power and opportunity of direct one-to-one engagement.  Interesting.  Compelling.  I met CEO and founder Jack Conte in the waiting room of Bloomberg, just before both of us went on the air live in separate interviews.  Conte is a musician himself. 

(1) What is the reason your company exists (and what problem(s) are you looking to solve)?

Patreon exists because the current system for "content monetization” is entirely broken.  How can a creator who routinely engages hundreds of thousands of people make only a few hundred dollars per month?!  How can a blogger who has 10k monthly uniques gets a fifty dollar check from AdSense for their readership?  How can a web comic artist be making less than minimum wage with twenty thousand daily readers?  Currently, digital content is monetized with ads, and that's a terrible way to monetize content.  It doesn't account for how much a fan CARES about the content itself.  To an advertiser, every fan is simply a pair of eyeballs, and ALL eyeballs are worth 1/1000 of a CPM.  However, some fans would be more than willing to support a creator monetarily for creating art that moves them.  On Patreon, many of our creators are literally making 100x their ad revenue - this might sound surprising, but that's how BROKEN the current ad based monetization system is.  Content monetization is a HUGE problem, and Patreon is fixing it.

(2) How are you different from your competitors?

Patreon doesn't have many competitors right now.  Recurring payments wrapped inside crowdfunding is an entirely new space.  Patreon takes it a step further by matching crowdfunding with media consumption.  The only competitor that is employing a similar concept is a company called Subbable, founded by the brilliant and thoughtful Hank Green.  Subbable is similar to Patreon but the reward structure employs the concept of a "perk bank," which allows backers to account for their cumulative donations and be rewarded with physical merchandise.

(3) Why will you succeed (and what is your single most important ingredient for success)?  

We are succeeding because there are very few companies that actually cut creators a check at the end of each month.  When creators learn about a service that PAYS them for making art, the adoption of that service is rapid and fervent.  There are thousands of services that help creators "grow” or "engage" their fans.  Very few services are actually increasing the bottom line for creators.

(4) What makes you unique (and what do you enjoy most outside of building your business)? 

Paying creators every month is what makes us unique.  What I enjoy most, outside of building Patreon, is making videos and music, and using our product to get paid for doing what I love!

(5) What digital media trend is most interesting to you (and what is the least)? 

The most exciting digital media trend right now is the inevitable move BACK to patronage.  For the last 100 years, patronage has been off everyone's radar.  Because artists were able to record their work and sell it as a physical product, patronage became unnecessary.  But now, because media has been digitized, because self-publishing is possible through social media, and because physical product sales are declining, patronage is re-emerging as the dominant source of income for artists.  This shift is inevitable, and it's already happening, right now.