Guest: Jack Conte, CEO & co-founder of Patreon

For many YouTube video creators, getting millions of views on your videos may seem like the goal. But when Jack Conte and his wife Nataly Dawn became YouTube stars through their band Pomplamoose, they didn’t automatically find gold at the end of the rainbow.

“You check your ad revenue and you make 48 bucks in ad revenue and you're like, ‘Oh my God, I'm worthless,’” Jack recalls. “And you check that dashboard every day ... and eventually you start to believe that you're worth $48 a month. That's a bad f**king feeling.”

That’s why in 2013, he co-founded the artist-funding platform Patreon, and discovered that there were a lot more creators like him out there. As of 2022, those creators have earned more than $3.5 billion from Patreon.

Chapters:

(01:06) - Barriers to entry
(03:04) - The creator economy
(08:36) - Patreon’s mission
(11:22) - Its name
(13:12) - Talking to artists
(17:26) - Detail obsession
(24:07) - “Nobody has an answer”
(27:17) - Playing empty rooms
(31:09) - Success feels like failure
(33:37) - “I’ll be happy when...”
(39:26) - Type one vs type two joy
(45:32) - Self-confidence
(48:30) - Obsession, humility, and kindness
(53:51) - Figuring out your sound
(56:18) - “I’m f**king terrified”
(01:00:33) - Pedals
(01:04:04) - Starting Patreon
(01:07:04) - Who Patreon is hiring

Mentioned in this episode: Jason Kilar, Spotify, YouTube, Pomplamoose, Google Docs, GoDaddy, LaCroix, James Freeman and Blue Bottle Coffee, Woody Allen, Medium, YCombinator, Apple and the App Store, MySpace, Matthew “The Oatmeal” Inman, AdSense, Home Depot, Skrillex and Fred Again, Matt Bunting, and Sam Yam.

Links:

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Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

#208 CEO & Co-Founder Patreon, Jack Conte: Crowd Surfer

Grit