Hacker News Reader

Comment by caniszczyk | Hacker News Reader

cool feature but putting the burden of funding on individuals vs companies is supporting what I call the "open source gig economy" - doesn't work well for Patreon and others - we need better ways to sustain individuals who choose not start their own company around open source projects or work full time at a company supporting open source

https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-...

View on HN

In the Clojure community we have Clojurists Together [0] which is just a program that allows both companies and individual (at different prices) to contribute funding the development of Open Source projects. I think that model works quite well.

[0]: https://www.clojuriststogether.org/

> doesn't work well for Patreon and others

What do you mean? What's wrong with Patreon?

"Take Patreon as an example, a popular funding platform for all sorts of things including open source projects that has been around since 2013 and has paid out $1 billion to creators since then. While that’s an astonishing figure, Patreon isn’t a sustainable business with its current private company model and level of VC funding of $105M:

“Under the company’s current business model, 90 percent of funds are paid directly to content creators. Patreon takes 5 percent, and the remaining 5 percent covers transaction fees.” Patreon CEO Jack Conte said in an interview with CNBC, that the platform will soon be facing the challenge of maintaining a profitable model as the company continues its growth.

In 2019, the company is also on track to pay out $500 million to content creators, 5% of that is $25 million and Patreon has ~300 employees, so probably not even covering their labor costs."

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/crowd-funding-platform-patre...

It's a bit mind blowing to think that Patreon is 300 employees. What are they all doing?

I wonder that too. Liberapay is just as capable open platform being run by like 10 people, right?

Like most VC-funded startups, they have a huge staff of people whose job it is to promote Patreon and manage larger accounts.

> Patreon CEO Jack Conte said in an interview with CNBC, that the platform will soon be facing the challenge of maintaining a profitable model as the company continues its growth.

"growth" -- for a company that is nothing more than an intermediary with a well-established platform. What do they need to grow for? If anything, it's time for some cuts actually.

They made some recent changes meant to address this: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024952552-N...

Whether or not it'll work is an open question.

Sounds like that's plenty to cover wages of £60k ($80k USD) gross, which is double the median graduate salary in the UK. I guess compared to what people earn in SV it's pocket change?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com