- There so many folks these days
that have millions and millions of followers online
and they'll post videos or podcasts
or whatever it is that they post
and they'll get, you know,
50,000 people seeing it on a regular basis
and then they get their ad revenue cheque
at the end of the month and it's 50 bucks.
And that sucks.
Artists deserve to be paid more than that.
(slow techno music)
I started Pomplamoose with my wife.
We created our own YouTube channel.
We bought pomplamoose.com,
and we started posting videos and music
under the name Pomplamoose.
And we did that, let's see, that was 2008,
so we did that for a few years,
and we actually were like doing pretty well.
We were going on tour and playing massive venues
and we were getting a bunch of iTunes downloads,
and kind of cobbling together various revenue streams
to make it work.
We were in the very early, first wave of people
that were using YouTube to reach other musicians and fans.
And eight years ago, the monetization methods
for creators were just totally broken.
And I remember looking up from this,
feeling like, there's gotta be a better way
for creative people who were reaching
millions of people online to make a living from that.
I have a snapshot from my 2014 dashboard on YouTube,
where, you know, it had 1,000,000 views in a month,
and it translated to $166 of ad earnings.
New Year's Eve 2012, 2013,
I sketched out this idea for a music video
that involved robots that would be playing music with me.
And at some point, in the middle of the year,
I decided to build a replica of
Millennium Falcon cockpit behind us,
so we were all hanging out,
playing electronic music together,
in front of the Millennium Falcon cockpit.
And at some point in the middle of this video,
I had that same sinking feeling that I had years before,
'cause I could see the next three months
right in front of me.
I knew I would upload this video to YouTube,
and I knew it would get a million views,
and I knew that I would get paid
a couple hundred bucks for it.
Meanwhile, I was taking daily trips to Home Depot
and racking up bills on my credit card. (laughs)
I maxed out, I think two credit cards along the way.
And it was this horrible,
I'm laughing about it now,
but it was a terrible, terrifying sinking feeling,
and the real dark moment for me was not,
"Oh gosh, poor me," you know,
"I'm not gonna get paid for my video,"
it was, "Holy shit, all of these people
"who are doing this like I am,
"podcasters to journalists to video creators
"are in this same sinking ship
"of lowering digital CPMs of getting millions of views
"and not getting paid for it."
And that's when I drew out this idea for this website.
Originally, it started as a website for me. (laughs)
It was, "Okay, fans, you know what I'm doing.
'What if you pay me five bucks a month
"so I can keep doing it."
So I sketched out this idea on 14 pieces of printer paper.
I gave it to Sam Yam.
Sam Yam was my roommate in college, serial entrepreneur,
had started a bunch of companies,
and seemed like the perfect person to work with.
So he was the only person writing any codes,
so he was building all these features,
answering customer service,
we needed help.
It was more than we were able to keep up with.
We decided to raise money.
We raised two, little over 2,000,000 bucks,
from a couple different VC firms.
Yeah, you can imagine, it was a little weird for me,
'cause I'm an artist. (laughs)
And never built a business before,
and I find myself across the table from venture capitalists
pitching them on Patreon.
So six years later,
Patreon is a little over 200 folks.
We are gonna send half a billion dollars this year
to creative people in over 100 countries around the world,
from over 3,000,000 paying members,
who are in almost every country around the world.
Those folks are paying on average
somewhere around 11 or 12 bucks a month
to the creators that they support.
It's still very hard, I mean not a lot has changed
in terms of what it, what it feels like.
It feels like pushing a boulder up a hill,
and there's like three moments a week where you think,
"Uh, well, I guess we're fucked.
"I guess this is it."
Oh man.
And that like never goes away,
at least for people like me.
And I think that's, you know,
if you're really passionate about something,
you kind of retain that feeling over time.
And so it's always little bit scary, and at the same time,
it's definitely the most rewarding thing
I've ever done in my life.
And it's fun,
it's really fun to be sending creative people
paychecks every month.
Honestly, it's kind of a dream come true.