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Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

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Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#201

Post by anticsapp »

rcxdude wrote: post #179
michaelt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it said that porn tends to have a large amount of chargebacks. There would also, presumably, be a fear of censorship targeting your entire company for over a subset of content. Back in 2018 Tumblr was blocked from Apple's app store [1] and responded by banning all adult content on the service [2] - and I'm sure there's a similar risk from school/workplace/ISP NSFW blocking services which are of course famo…

Their response wasn't really correlated with the ban. They were moving in that direction for months, despite the fact that the problem with their platform wasn't the ecosystem of properly marked porn posted by creators, but the avalanche of untagged porn (some illegal) posted by bots which they were unable or unwilling to do anything about (the illegal stuff is why Apple banned their app). When they started the ban,…

How do the Reddit and Imgur apps get away with distributing porn and serving ads against it on the App Store? Maybe it was just a different time in the Tumblr era?

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#202

Post by mumblemumble »

hef19898 wrote: post #177
dannyw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A middleware that can be described as Wordpress with access control and Stripe integration, but worse in terms of performance and UX; somehow takes on $165 million in funding [1] and describes their business model as "not sustainable" [2]. Patreon is a low touch SaaS platform that charges up to 12% PLUS payment processing fees. They do not provide any meaningful level of discoverability: you must build your audience…

There seem to be a lot of businesses out there, that should be cash positive. Yet, the VC funded ones (also the ones you read about), aren't. No idea why, maybe easy access to VC money, and VCs themselves, cause them toneglect cash flow? I also saw this effect with Chinese manufaturersofsolar modules, whatever amount of cash they need, they get from Chinese banks. In their day to day operations, cash flow doesn't rea…

So, I've never worked in a startup, but I've done my time in a large conglomerate. While I was there, I noticed a pattern that I believe translates fairly well:

Business teams make decisions that are based at least as much on the resources that are available to them as on what makes business sense. A really well-funded software team will buy itself a bunch of expensive computers, and proceed to write a to-do list app that assumes it's running on high-end kit. A really well-funded marketing team will throw huge blowout after-hours parties at trade shows even though the target audience is people who go to bed at 8pm. All well-funded teams hire too many people too quickly, and then waste productivity on failing to do a good job of keeping everyone coordinated. The corollary to this is that the best-funded teams have a tendency to underperform. (Or at least that's the impression I get.)

My sense is that it's similar with individual companies: The best way to create a train wreck is to find a really promising up-and-coming startup, and help it become a well-capitalized up-and-coming startup.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#203

Post by hef19898 »

_-0-_ wrote: post #194
hef19898 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which sounds like an opportunity, doesn't it? Fraud free adult patreon.

But how would you go about implementing insurances for the fraud-free part?

That would be the product, right? Honestly, no idea. But IMHO an adult site that's secod purpose is not to spread malware and defraud people, while simultaniously making sure creators have a stable income should be a viable business.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#204

Post by eckmLJE »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #186
asiachick wrote: post #104

I have no idea about the financials of Patreon but their site leaves so much room for improvement. It's actually pretty awful. There are lots of independent artists running Pateron accounts with 200-5000 patrons. Fans sign up to support them but also to get access to their library of content. Patreon provides a piss-poor UX for getting to this content. There is no list of content. There just "here's the stream of pos…

I don't think most consumers of content use patreon to get at the creators content eg I use YouTube to watch forgotten weapons.

Many creators use Patreon as a way to paywall their content behind minimum levels of Patreon support. By supporting on Patreon, you gain access to their content.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#205

Post by vel0city »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #200
albertshin wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree that they're anti-user. But they have a dilemma. Imagine a nicely formatted table of Netflix movies and shows available in your country. New, potential users can quickly find out if it's worth signing up. Existing users can quickly realize that maybe the service is not worth it. I also have a theory that if you're stuck looking for something to watch and you've already spent enough time on their platf…

Netflix's UI, more specifically, is anti-Search. Search is a binary proposition. Netflix either has the content you're searching for, or it does not. Because Netflix is optimizing for total time spent on platform, this is a bad proposition, from their perspective. That's why the Netflix home screen has become a circus of autoplaying videos, "recommended for you" queues, and "watch it again." The goal, from a UX persp…

You say its anti-search, but its like three button presses on my Roku to get to the search menu which seems pretty fast and accurate. Its one click to get to the search box in the Windows app. I've never had a hard time trying to search for a specific title.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#206

Post by hef19898 »

jerf wrote: post #196
hef19898 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to be a lot of businesses out there, that should be cash positive. Yet, the VC funded ones (also the ones you read about), aren't. No idea why, maybe easy access to VC money, and VCs themselves, cause them toneglect cash flow? I also saw this effect with Chinese manufaturersofsolar modules, whatever amount of cash they need, they get from Chinese banks. In their day to day operations, cash flow doesn't rea…

Employee count seems to be the major problem. The current Patreon site doesn't seem to justify more than 50, and I still feel I'm being generous; I really want to say 20. A couple of web people, contract out any design work you need, some sales staff, a few support people, definitely some business people and support people to deal with chargebacks and the credit card company, and I'm having trouble finding how they h…

From my total outside perspective to both, development and patreon, it is that there is more to platform business than just reach and number of users. I mean without users, it is pointless. But without value for the users, it is kind pointless as well. Or not pointless, but falling short of the potential.

EDIT: 200 people, depending on the business, is still in start-up teritory if the company is not decades old.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#207

Post by Kye »

asiachick wrote: post #104

I have no idea about the financials of Patreon but their site leaves so much room for improvement. It's actually pretty awful. There are lots of independent artists running Pateron accounts with 200-5000 patrons. Fans sign up to support them but also to get access to their library of content. Patreon provides a piss-poor UX for getting to this content. There is no list of content. There just "here's the stream of pos…

Patreon is at stage 3: https://www.kyefox.com/2020/04/09/patreons-future/

Everyone but the people at the top are getting tired of all its problems and the uncertainty, but where else do you go? So far, no one has an integrated replacement. You can build a Patreon in pieces connected by APIs, but Patreon is (unfortunately) the only place you can get everything in one place for the price.

WordPress is a common alternative for membership sites, but it comes with expenses that scale up in proportion to how little you want or are able to do yourself. All the plugins for WordPress that do membership and file access control are in the $100-300/year range. Then there's the cost of hosting: cheap if you don't mind running everything yourself, more than the plugins if you get managed hosting. It's worth it, but you need the money to start, and you lose the ease of everyone already having a Patreon account.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#208

Post by sp332 »

icelancer wrote: post #30
0xy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying this as a Cloudflare investor, CF is in the wrong here and not spec compliant.

It's outside of my expertise. I just know that both sides have opinions and there's backers for both. Would be nice if there was an alternative to archive.is - outline?

archive.org gets my vote.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#209

Post by paxys »

hef19898 wrote: post #178
paxys wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very large amount of chargebacks and fraud happening on adult sites.

Which sounds like an opportunity, doesn't it? Fraud free adult patreon.

It's not like every other adult site sells fraud as a feature. It's just really difficult and expensive to prevent. A single chargeback can cost the merchant up to $100 in fees.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#210

Post by tomp »

scott_s wrote: post #180
tomp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy has proven to be the best competition for shitty legacy content delivery methods. I wonder if we'd have Netflix without ThePirateBay. Fact is, people want to pay for content (not because it's "not cheating" or whatever, but because they genuinely want to support artists and want them to keep creating) but are unwilling to jump through hoops for that. It's on Patreon & co to improve their game.

Then pay to support a creator on patreon and consume their content elsewhere. (I don’t think this is ideal, but your summation made it sound like a false dichotomy.)

I'm up for it, I support no (or very short) copyright, but let's be honest here - that's way more friction for end-users.
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