5 ms·

Oh god, now they're trapped in the endless useless growth demand cycle. Too bad, I enjoy supporting a few artists on there and it's just a matter of time until

Oh god, now they're trapped in the endless useless growth demand cycle. Too bad, I enjoy supporting a few artists on there and it's just a matter of time until this hurts them.

egypturnash 9y ago
Seriously, I enjoy having my comics supported by my fans there and I'm not looking forwards to them having to Make A Profit.
- stephenson 9y ago
  They should help you make a profit, but not make one themselves?
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    They should make a profit. What we don't want is to spoil the nice service with desperate attempts to earn enough profit to satisfy investors.
    - pc86 9y ago
      Ah, so they should make a profit but not too much.
      - nobodyorother 9y ago
        It's the Tiger Woods problem, also known as Focus on Your Core: TW gets video game endorsements and makes ungodly piles of money because he's a great golfer. When he focuses on making new games and supermodels instead of golfing, his game suffers and all the perks that came because of the good golf game go away. ...Like how he hasn't had his name on a golf video game in years. Essentially: pursuit of profit when it undermines your core competency is shortsighted.
        H1Supreme 9y ago
        What? Tiger Woods got paid money for them to use his name on those games. He didn't work on them. lol. Furthermore, he played his best golf when he was out whoring around.
      - Anderkent 9y ago
        They should make whatever profit they can; but the concern is that they will be pressured by external investors to make more profit that they can sustain.
      - Xixi 9y ago
        The problem is not if Patreon is making enough profit to satisfy investors. The problem is if they don't. The reasoning goes as follows: VCs are chasing the next Google, and if Patreon cannot grow enough there is a real risk that it will die/resort to shady business practices by trying too desperately to achieve this growth. Without VCs it could remain a healthy, profitable, medium-sized company...
        wpietri 9y ago
        Exactly. It's the devil's bargain that you make when you take venture capital. VC is a hits-driven business. If it looks like you'll only be a moderate success, they will push you to take risks and spend more money in hopes of being giant. That will push up your odds of total failure and worse.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - egypturnash 9y ago
        Sure! Like, okay, Patreon has a staff of so many people for development, so many people for admin/moderation, and they have offices, and hosting, and whatever other costs I'm not thinking of. And all of those things need to be paid. I'm quite happy to give them a few bucks for every page of comics I draw in exchange for them making this lovely system to funnel money to myself and other creators, and keeping it running. But the core mission of Patreon is "nothing short of helping every creator in the world achieve sustainable income. We’re making this happen by building the best platform for creators to make money, run their creative businesses, and connect with the fans who matter most." (Taken from their careers page, https://www.patreon.com/careers https://www.patreon.com/careers) Once all those above costs are met by skimming off a small percentage of the money going through their setup, what do they do with that money? Do they start lowering their cut? Do they start donating it to charities? Fund other weird business ideas? Or just pay back the people they've borrowed money from, who won't be satisfied by anything but huge returns? I know Kickstarter's built itself into a "public benefit corporation", which makes it explicitly bound to consider things aside from "how much money will this make regardless of other costs"; Patreon makes similar noises but I don't believe they've taken the step of formalizing this yet. And I would be delighted to find out I'm wrong on that.
      - whipoodle 9y ago
        This is so stupid
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    I'm fine with them making enough money to keep the thing running and play around with new improvements (although honestly it works pretty fine for me and a lot of other creators I know as is). I'm not so happy about them having big piles of money that need to be paid back to investors who only care about profit.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  I mean, even without this investment, they were always going to have to make a profit. That's kinda what businesses do.
Dirlewanger 9y ago
Eh, just like Kickstarter, there's Patreon clones for as far as the eye can see.
- dmix 9y ago
  It's not just like Kickstarter. Patreon has a business model built on recurring monthly revenue stream. Kickstarter makes money off of one-off events. It's a totally different business.
  - Cederfjard 9y ago
    I think the point was that Patreon has a lot of competing services in the same space, just like Kickstarter has in it's. Note that I have no idea if that's true, but that's my interpretation.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Oh god, now they're trapped in the endless useless growth demand cycle. Too bad, I enjoy supporting a few artists on there and it's just a matter of time until this hurts them.

egypturnash 9y ago

Seriously, I enjoy having my comics supported by my fans there and I'm not looking forwards to them having to Make A Profit.

stephenson 9y ago
They should help you make a profit, but not make one themselves?
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  They should make a profit. What we don't want is to spoil the nice service with desperate attempts to earn enough profit to satisfy investors.
  - pc86 9y ago
    Ah, so they should make a profit but not too much.
    - nobodyorother 9y ago
      It's the Tiger Woods problem, also known as Focus on Your Core: TW gets video game endorsements and makes ungodly piles of money because he's a great golfer. When he focuses on making new games and supermodels instead of golfing, his game suffers and all the perks that came because of the good golf game go away. ...Like how he hasn't had his name on a golf video game in years. Essentially: pursuit of profit when it undermines your core competency is shortsighted.
      - H1Supreme 9y ago
        What? Tiger Woods got paid money for them to use his name on those games. He didn't work on them. lol. Furthermore, he played his best golf when he was out whoring around.
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      They should make whatever profit they can; but the concern is that they will be pressured by external investors to make more profit that they can sustain.
    - Xixi 9y ago
      The problem is not if Patreon is making enough profit to satisfy investors. The problem is if they don't. The reasoning goes as follows: VCs are chasing the next Google, and if Patreon cannot grow enough there is a real risk that it will die/resort to shady business practices by trying too desperately to achieve this growth. Without VCs it could remain a healthy, profitable, medium-sized company...
      - wpietri 9y ago
        Exactly. It's the devil's bargain that you make when you take venture capital. VC is a hits-driven business. If it looks like you'll only be a moderate success, they will push you to take risks and spend more money in hopes of being giant. That will push up your odds of total failure and worse.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - egypturnash 9y ago
      Sure! Like, okay, Patreon has a staff of so many people for development, so many people for admin/moderation, and they have offices, and hosting, and whatever other costs I'm not thinking of. And all of those things need to be paid. I'm quite happy to give them a few bucks for every page of comics I draw in exchange for them making this lovely system to funnel money to myself and other creators, and keeping it running. But the core mission of Patreon is "nothing short of helping every creator in the world achieve sustainable income. We’re making this happen by building the best platform for creators to make money, run their creative businesses, and connect with the fans who matter most." (Taken from their careers page, https://www.patreon.com/careers https://www.patreon.com/careers) Once all those above costs are met by skimming off a small percentage of the money going through their setup, what do they do with that money? Do they start lowering their cut? Do they start donating it to charities? Fund other weird business ideas? Or just pay back the people they've borrowed money from, who won't be satisfied by anything but huge returns? I know Kickstarter's built itself into a "public benefit corporation", which makes it explicitly bound to consider things aside from "how much money will this make regardless of other costs"; Patreon makes similar noises but I don't believe they've taken the step of formalizing this yet. And I would be delighted to find out I'm wrong on that.
    - whipoodle 9y ago
      This is so stupid
- egypturnash 9y ago
  I'm fine with them making enough money to keep the thing running and play around with new improvements (although honestly it works pretty fine for me and a lot of other creators I know as is). I'm not so happy about them having big piles of money that need to be paid back to investors who only care about profit.
s73ver_ 9y ago
I mean, even without this investment, they were always going to have to make a profit. That's kinda what businesses do.

Dirlewanger 9y ago

Eh, just like Kickstarter, there's Patreon clones for as far as the eye can see.

dmix 9y ago
It's not just like Kickstarter. Patreon has a business model built on recurring monthly revenue stream. Kickstarter makes money off of one-off events. It's a totally different business.
- Cederfjard 9y ago
  I think the point was that Patreon has a lot of competing services in the same space, just like Kickstarter has in it's. Note that I have no idea if that's true, but that's my interpretation.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]