Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–277 of 277 posts

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#271

Post by Hydraulix989 »

hvis wrote: post #257
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon has always had its hands dirty in enforcing their definition of "morality" -- while I almost completely agreed with their decisions, banning "anime" was the last straw for me. https://www.reddit.com/r/patreon/comments/fho2ii/patreons_ba... Each choice they made to ban an "influencer" in the name of morality was a massive hit to their business because by definition, not only was said influencer banned, but als…

I'm guessing Patreon is reacting to the changes in the legal landscape. The same ones that made Craiglist close its Personals section (or however it was called): the increased liability for the platform for whatever behaviors the public at large might find objectionable. Or find an excuse to take an issue with, really. From what I know, the anime genre creators were a fairly popular niche (with the associated income…

These are private companies, other competitors have stepped up that are willing to take on a certain level of risk -- no need to get the government involved. People didn't stop making video games because of "moral" activists like Jack Thompson. Anime is a global industry for Japan, much like K-Pop is for Korea; however, I'm willing to bet that far more than just anime creators (to say nothing of their respective fan bases) have been alienated by Patreon's policies. One of my favorite creators, Louis Rossmann, is pretty vocal about being against Patreon's moral policing. I don't even watch anime, but if you don't see anything wrong with Patreon's business strategy, you can at least observe how the market is reacting to it (i.e. badly enough that they need to cut some of their top senior engineers, even though their business model practically prints money in a scalable way -- a rarity in the SoftBank tech bubble -- and the industry they are in is one of the LEAST affected by the coronavirus pandemic).

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#272

Post by tomhoward »

fareesh wrote: post #261
root_axis wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was only a "mass exodus" in the minds of Carl Benjamin fans. In reality he was a notable individual but ultimately a drop in the bucket relative to all the other activity on Patreon.

Sam Harris and others left the platform when he was banned - this is the exodus I am referring to

It seems they made the decision that they just didn't want that style of content on the platform – Benjamin, Harris, Peterson, etc, and the controversy, or risk of controversy that went with it.

I've been a follower of/contributor to some people in that sphere (though not Benjamin, to be clear), but I can understand Patreon making that choice and preferring to be a platform for creatives like musicians, filmmakers, writers, artists, etc.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#273

Post by fareesh »

tomhoward wrote: post #272
fareesh wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam Harris and others left the platform when he was banned - this is the exodus I am referring to

It seems they made the decision that they just didn't want that style of content on the platform – Benjamin, Harris, Peterson, etc, and the controversy, or risk of controversy that went with it. I've been a follower of/contributor to some people in that sphere (though not Benjamin, to be clear), but I can understand Patreon making that choice and preferring to be a platform for creatives like musicians, filmmakers, w…

Controversy seems to be a euphemism for "wrong" political views though. I'd be more sympathetic if they had a blanket "only creative professionals" policy.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#274

Post by root_axis »

fareesh wrote: post #273
tomhoward wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they made the decision that they just didn't want that style of content on the platform – Benjamin, Harris, Peterson, etc, and the controversy, or risk of controversy that went with it. I've been a follower of/contributor to some people in that sphere (though not Benjamin, to be clear), but I can understand Patreon making that choice and preferring to be a platform for creatives like musicians, filmmakers, w…

Controversy seems to be a euphemism for "wrong" political views though. I'd be more sympathetic if they had a blanket "only creative professionals" policy.

It's not a political issue, that type of language is not acceptable anywhere in public society; even 30 years ago you couldn't speak like that and expect to retain any position of prominence. Try that here and you'd be banned very quickly. Patreon making the decision to explicitly rebuke that kind of language seems totally within the realm of defensive corporate PR.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#275

Post by vladus2000 »

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…

I know someone working at a VC funded startup for a few years, they have way more employees than they probably need and seem to be paying 20-30% above the going rates to attract talent. That combination makes it hard to turn a profit. Yet they keep getting more cash infusions even though they are losing money.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#276

Post by rorygibson »

I'm slightly surprised by Patreon's pricing, given they're not a discovery platform - it's really just subscription payments and some simple CRM stuff...

It's pretty easy to make a simple facility for accepting subscription payments.

You can do this with any website, plus a tool like Trolley [1] - of which I'm the creator, btw - with no technical knowledge. The fee structure (2% for Trolley, plus your Stripe fee of ~2%) comes out less than Patreon, and you're not inside a walled garden.

Use the webhooks to link to it a CRM of your choice - probably on a free plan - and you're golden (yeah ok, maybe this bit isn't entirely non technical)

I should probably write a blog post about this, tbh :)

[1] - https://trolley.link

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#277

Post by hvis »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #271
hvis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing Patreon is reacting to the changes in the legal landscape. The same ones that made Craiglist close its Personals section (or however it was called): the increased liability for the platform for whatever behaviors the public at large might find objectionable. Or find an excuse to take an issue with, really. From what I know, the anime genre creators were a fairly popular niche (with the associated income…

These are private companies, other competitors have stepped up that are willing to take on a certain level of risk -- no need to get the government involved. People didn't stop making video games because of "moral" activists like Jack Thompson. Anime is a global industry for Japan, much like K-Pop is for Korea; however, I'm willing to bet that far more than just anime creators (to say nothing of their respective fan…

What do you mean, no need? The US government did this.

IIUC Tumblr and Craigs have similar problems as a result.

Video games are somewhat different, it's not a situation of a platform with user-generated content.

Post reply on HN