Jack Conte - On Founding Patreon, Focusing on the Art, and Monetizing Your Work

That's not what. That's not why you're valuable in the world because you make T shirts. You're valuable because you tell stories that people love that resonate with your fans. If you have ten thou people who listen to your show, that's a basketball stadium full of humans who love what you have to say. Like, in what world should that not be enough to make a living? Jack Conti's in the house. Hello, you are so in the house finally, Right, Wait, a little bit of a snaffo this afternoon, and I'm

totally fine to talk about it. But you know it's cool, it's a holiday. We just show up. I are we got in despite the fact that there's nobody else in this building, but somehow we've got in. Forty one minutes and fifteen seconds later. Jack is already one of my favorite people on Earth because when this snaphoo occurred, he was like, I'm cool, I'm chill, and he actually was, and you were like, the happiest kill this person ever happen. I just repeated it so clearly, which ship happens? You

see what I did? Drop dropped an f on. So Jack Conte has started a small platform called Patreon. We all know it. We all want to be on it. Not all of us are cool enough to be honest, just kidding, we all are, but it's the reason so many creators are able to create. And you are such an inspiration because I was telling Jack this before the interview.

As you guys know, behind the influence is all about people who are literally behind the influence, the people who create the platforms that allow social media influencers to be social medi The influencers are creators, and Jack also happens to be very musically talented and has a creator passed and present. So you fall on two sides of the coin. How does that like how do you even balance the two? It's really hard. The first five years of the company, I didn't nail it. So actually that was a real

struggle for me. And actually it was probably a little bit of there was some darkness there for me trying to figure out how to balance it because I felt like, oh God, I'm giving up my creative career and I love being a creator, and so it was really hard because you know, I was becoming like a you know, an operator and building a company and I actually kind of had to stop creating for a couple of years.

So that was that was pretty rough. But then in the last three years, I've really found a way to to still be prolific and make things. I fly down to l a once a month now and I do four music videos with one band, four with another band, and then we you know, I'm at this point now I'm releasing eight music videos a month. So that's a lot. How do you find the time and you're the founder of a massive, massive platform that you're very much involved in.

It's not like you've just stepped aside. Now that's super successful. Yeah, I mean I'm I'm there, you know, of course, every single day and I'm working more than every day, you know, on on the making Patreon a thing. Yes, starting a company is a is a triple time job. It's not the kind of thing you can just kind of not to because you can't have asked these things. No, it's you can't. And yeah, it's been you know, I've I've worked more in my life, you know, on Patreon that

I've worked ever on it. I mean it's been so intense, So so yeah, that has been you know, rewarding hard. Recently being able to in the last three years, being able to combine it with being a creator again has made me feel like so I feel like I got my pilot light, you know, turned back on. You know, it feels nice. You know how some artists become managers of other artists and they're like, now, where's where's my moment,

where's my stage? You know, like I would imagine that it could be hard to see other people creating when you really want to create, but you're also creating something but on a different level. Absolutely. Yeah, Before I figured out a way to kind of be a creator and do the business, well, let's see, the secret was amazing working with amazing people and letting go a little bit

of all the details. It was really hard because as a creator, as an artist like I, you know, when we when pap Mouse originally was making music, I was, you know, doing all the instrumentation, all the mixing, all the mastering. You know. Um, it was still a partnership with Natalie, but but I had full I had my hands. I was sculpting the whole thing, from the video to the editing to everything. And um, now Papa Mouse is like fifteen contractors right and like, and we've slowly let

go of like, Okay, we're letting go to the video editing. Okay, We're letting go to the audio mixing. Okay, we're letting go to the mastering. Okay, now we're gonna let go some of the production. And like, one step at a time, you kind of take a step back, but you still get to do the things that are exciting to you as an artist and that give you a voice as an art So I still feel like, you know, before we were able to do that, I kind of felt like I didn't have vocal chords anymore. I was like,

oh ship, like somebody took my vocal ques. I can't speak anymore. And now I feel like I got my vocal chords back, and even though my voice is a little different than it used to be in some ways, it's like even more exciting and more beautiful and more fun because it combines the creativity of other people too. It's not just my soul vision. It's like the vision of this wonderful group of fifteen people, and they get to be creative and do their thing. So it's been

really wonderful. You are a very talented musician. What came first, the music or the startup? Oh gosh, the music came. I mean, yeah, I've been playing music since I was six. I newly answer to that. By the way, You're like, you're not one of these people who's like, oh, I have a platform, let me just do whatever. This is something you've been doing for a very long time. Well, I mean Patreon came about because I was a full time professional career. I mean I bought a house off

of MP three sales from from pample News. You know, we came out with records all the time, and put up YouTube videos and built a studio from our from our you know, our our music income. So it was a professional, full time creator until Patreona Patreons my first job. I've never had a job before, so this is my first time like going on an office or kind of a little wild and crazy too because I have zero context. So I'm just kind of you know, I'm I'm I'm trying to do all this for the first time. It

is sense. You were living it because you this was something that was missing from your life. You didn't just create Patreon because you were like, oh, this is a really cool idea that you'll see like on some home shopping network that you thought was some great invention. This was something that would affect your life directly. Yeah, I as an as a creator. Um, I had just finished a music video that I spent about ten thousand bucks on. I drained my savings account. I maxed out to credit

cards to make time. I was twenty eight. Were you married at the time. Now, I wasn't married. So it's a video called Pedal and it's on my personal YouTube channel. You will love this. Stephen Steven, our camera guy DP master of all Things. But yeah, it's awesome. It's it's a wild video. Yeah. I literally built by hand. I built a replica of Lennium Falcon cockpit to be the set for the video. I mean, like I built the whole thing like hot gluing things, and like it took

me three months. I mean I was working nineteen hour days. My hands were like cracked and bloody and painted, and like I was, I mean, I was all in on this video. It's a lot of money for I'm thinking about when I was twenty eight dropping ten stacks on something like that's insane. It was insane. I it was not a good idea. I mean it was it worked out, It worked out. It was illogical, though, and I knew

that going in. I was like, you know what, I'm going to be illogical right now, because yeah, my life just lets there you go. I was like going to home Depot and Joann's Fabrics and like it was a crazy time. Not sponsored, but the idea something. I mean, the old reason that Patreon came up was because I was about to post this video that I like poured my soul into. When I posted videos at that time,

they got about a million views. So I knew I'd get about a million views and I came with this video and I'd get my ad revenue check for me to be a hundred and fifty bucks, and I couldn't stomach the idea of having spent ten grand on this thing that's gonna reach a million people. It's not like I'm a starming artist, and I'm like, I can't find an audience, Like I found my crew on the people who like what I have to say, and I put that on the web and then I get a million.

I've reached a million people around the world and I get paid a hundred and fifty bucks. Like what the funk kind of system? It's bullshit? And that that was the thing. I thought, There's got to be a better

way here. There's gotta be a way, like if you involve fans, fans want to help, they want to support, you know, you know that I've sort of sketched out this idea for a membership platform like k qe ed or you know, um a w B e Z in Chicago or sf Moment where people, you know, the fans of a thing can pay five bucks a month or ten bucks a month in exchange for exclusive access or whatever. And uh and it worked, and here we are and

here we are. So I've interviewed a ton of YouTubers who are wanting to leave YouTube, and they're very very honest about it. And it's because of what you just said. They put their heart and soul into these the content that they make, and content is getting really good. You know, people are putting a lot of money into their content. And then so many of them has have said to me, that's why I put content on Patreon. I put my quality content there. It's like their entrepreneurs of their own world.

And that's why companies like Patreon work. That's why companies like fan Joy work. Which I interviewed Chris who is the founder of fan Why am I stuttering? So I interviewed Chris, the founder of fan Joy. That's why it's hard founder of found they founder, Yes, nailed it, Okay,

that's basically was his business model too. Like, these creators are making more money selling T shirts and hoodies than they are on YouTube, which is like, what the hell year are we in and what what system of converting content into paychecks for the people who make the content have we built and deployed globally such that your best chance at making it as a creator is freaking putting your logo on a T shirt and selling a T shirt that's not what That's not why you're valuable in

the world because you make T shirts. You're valuable because you tell stories that people love that resonate with your fans. Like, we should have a system where the stories that creators tell that resonate with their fans, where that is their business and you don't have to do all the other extraneous bullshit to kind of cobble together a living. That's a dumb system. And unfortunately that's the reality for creators

right now. I mean, at the end of every YouTube video, it's like swipe up for this merch It's like that's how Joejoe's bows for Jojo Siwa, and like all the hoodies that Jake Paul sells, that's how they're making their money.

And I think what we've essentially, yeah, the the kind of state of the industry that we're in right now is we've figured out, you know, in order to zooming way out for a second, in order to kind of put up the first phase of the web, we basically made the web free, right we said, the web is free.

You pay with your attention and with your privacy. Because what we essentially do to we track every movement you make on the web, and then we sell information about you aggregated, but we sell information about you two people who want to change your behavior, advertisers. You know, Um, I don't know how deep I can get, but that's essentially what I just described as the economic engine that

drives the production of content on the web. Right now, consumers pay with their privacy and with their personal information and with their attention, and that gets converted into the paycheck for creators. But it turns out that essentially that's a very inefficient system and it takes millions of people, millions, because advertisers are interested in reaching millions of people. It takes millions of people in order to convert to a

paycheck for a creator. Whereas if you have ten thou people who listen to your show, that's a basketball stadium full of humans who love what you have to say. Like, in what world should that not be enough to make a living like that? We need a system on the web where ten people is enough. And that system is more like a consumer payment system. It's more like heck freaking Disney is doing it now. Disney plus New York

Times is doing it. They have a subscription portion of New York Times, which is now bigger than their advertising business. So consumer payments is you know, going back to what I said before, you know, in terms of phases of the web, that initial phase of the web where the primary economic driver is this advertising model. We're shifting to a new phase. I think over the next you know, decade or two, ten to twenty years, we're going to see consumer payments start to be Yeah, I think that's

gonna happen. I mean, it's already happening. It is, it is, and your want of the driving forces in that, So you should be really happy about that. Yeah. For people who don't understand how Patreon works, would you mind us giving a high level explanation of the platform. Yeah. So the way Patreon works is a fan can pay five bucks a month, ten bucks a month, hunter bucks a

month at honestly, whatever the tiers the creator creates. Fan can pay a subscription pledge to a creator in exchange for exclusive community, early access, extra episodes, behind the scenes, interviews,

extra photos, basically extra content and community and interaction. Um and Patreon is the system that allows creators flexibility to build and run whatever membership they want if they want to have, you know, five dollar, ten dollar, hundred dollar if they want to have twenty five fifty two D and then you can load whatever benefits you want into

those tiers early access, exclusive access, exclusive community. We have integrations with community platforms, all this kind of stuff, so you can kind of do whatever you want to do as a creator, and for creators, it's an amazing way

to essentially build a super close fan base. You own your audience as a creator, Like you get their email addresses, like on what other platform you get the email addresses of the people that are actually like fans of you, and you make so much more money than you would buy ad revenue. We have creators making literally fifty to two times what they make through ad revenue by just letting their fans contribute five bucks a month for an extra episode these tears, do you guys control them in

any way? Like you can't have Let's say somebody wants to do something kind of salacious for like, do you guys have any type of because I would imagine just in this world and the culture we live in, that there might be some scandal, right, how do you control that? And do you at all? Or are you like free the nipple, who cares? So I mean so, uh, we actually do allow on nudity on Patreon, but we don't allow porn, and so yes, we have to be very

careful about that. And um, it's amazing how the internet will surprise you with new types of anything. Um. And so it requires quite a few people. Actually ten percent of Patreon's employees are people devoted to the problem that you just talked about. It's like, hey, how do we define what is allowed and what is not and be really thoughtful about it because we're talking about a person's income here, Like it's we're not talking about you know,

posting pictures. We're talking about your paycheck as a human. So that's a lot of responsibility that we have to take very seriously and really put our money where our mouth is to make sure we're making good, thoughtful decisions. We have no automated takedowns. Humans make every single decision. They're right twelve page reports before they do anything like that.

To make sure that we're being really like a creator friendly put a lot of red tape involved in making a decision like that, as as there should be from from my perspective as a creator, because you have a flight to catch to maybe do a music video or ten. What advice would you give someone who wants to go on and pay drown and be a successful creator on the on the site. Step one is make great stuff that your fans love. Um, if you don't quite have a fan base yet, uh, Patreon doesn't work as well

for you. Um. It's really a membership platform. It works great for creators who are who have already kind of found what they want to make and then seeing that reach people. So this isn't like a throw ship to the ceiling and see what stick. This is like a come with your audience. Yeah, exactly. And it's not, Um, it's not that we don't care about solving that particular problem, or it's not that we don't want to help folks

find fans. It's just we're being at a startup. You have to prioritize and so we're saying, Okay, you know the problem we're gonna solve versus. So you're getting a bunch of views on YouTube, but you're not making any money. That's the problem Patreons focused on. And we're going to tackle other problems like the ones you just mentioned eventually in our life as a company. But um, but yeah, advice, make great stuff that you love, that your fans are

passionate about um, and just make it awesome. And then when you when you're proud of it, and when you see it resonating with other folks, start a Patreon page, and honestly, at that point, just be be yourself, be honest, tell your fans what's going on, invite them in on the journey. UM. The creators who love their fans and whose fans love them back, they do the best on the platform. I love that, Jack CONTI everyone my new

best friends. Thanks for having me. Of course I wish this could have been longer, but again snafus, it happens. But I do want to have you come back because I want to do an entire thing on music. If that works for you. Cool sounds great, of course, it's cool. You're the personalized All right, we'll have a safe flight. I got you out of here at one seconds. I was keeping an eye on it. That is with a k pro level time management right there. All right, Well,

we'll see you soon. Okay, thanks, thanks you are you are you? I hate your friends and made me too. I'm through. I'm through. I'm thro this ak Obama anthem, turn it up and don't attendrum this a ourck obama and them turn it up and throw attendroom this, I

throw up in your broken bag. Look up with someone man know this that social aqua too, aside that byr lips and bio lights house where she had a membership, hit different when it stays in my dad, I try about music every day like the cheet me do they and my Friensillandinois, but go down here we go stupid this I think on the table just so we can

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it up and throw a dantroom fun. You and you and you I ain't good friends and they hate me to fuck you and you and you with this our hyprobama, and I'm hurt it up and go attention this hyprobama dou Sif they can't box me in, I'm blue as this that truth that's one of my quotions can fit me in the children out of pocket, but I'm always in my back. Yeah, that's so open. Who's all that I'm pulling up with an email trick? That's back in

this psychia Trumbo music. Every day that we get me do think and my friends are all annoying, but we go down here, we go through with the second on the table just so we can be suppluted. And the pocket came eluted one more. I'm so forging buck you and you and you. I hate your friends and they hate me too. I'm through. I'm through. I'm through this hypro Obama and I'm burning up and going tend to

bok you and you and you. I hate your friends and may hate me to suck you and you and you do this apple Bama and them turn it up and throw attention. Suck you, Sucu and you and you do I hate your friends and they hate me? Do not do I'm do I'm dou his ePRO Boma and them burn it up and go atten your walk you and you and you. I hate your friends and they hate me. Do bucku? You and you and you DEI no Boma and them burt it up. The don't work man,

fuck you. Behind the influence of the production of I Heart Radio and TDC Media