Transcript

The Wrongness Playbook, part 2, w/Patreon's Jack Conte

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but companies like Eleven Labs are scaling effortlessly with deal. They quadrupled their workforce in twenty twenty five. Without hiring an HR team. Build your global team with deal. Visit deal.com slash MOS and start expanding your business today. That's D E L

dot com. Slash M O S. Hey, folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more.

Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too. Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscot com slash apply. Twenty six.

Welcome to part two. of our series on how to become an expert at being wrong. With Jack Conti a Patreon. If you missed part one, go back and listen. It's in your Masters of Scale feed.

As you might remember. Yeah. Patreon is a platform that helps artists and makers known as creators get their support from their communities of fans. Yeah. Yeah.

These fans or Patrons pay creators anywhere from$1 a month to hundreds. What do they get in return? We've had just the person ask.

I live near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Which is now decommissioned, but I thought, well, what if before they had a Wegmans, they had a secret laboratory. And they engineered one Goat human hybrid. They lost funding.

and she got adopted out to some of the scientists. and she led a pretty conventional life in New York City. went to a private school and tried to kind of figure out who she really was. Mm-hmm. That's author, Sarah Benin Casa.

She's written books, articles, TV shows. And Stand up. But the project she's describing Isn't any of those.

It's an experimental fiction project called The only goat girl. I wanted to write an homage to horror films that typically involve a hybrid human and fill in the blank alien animal. But I wanted to place her in a very recognizable New York City.

So I purchased this wild goat mask from an artist in Latvia. And I worked with my friend Robert Hack, who does a lot of comics for the BBC. We did a combination of self-portraits that I took. and illustrations that he created.

I went to my friend Sarah Hayden Werka's goat farm in rural New Jersey. Took some photos. I mean, it's ridiculous. This is so weird. Nobody would pay me to do that. I just felt like doing it. And the patrons were down for it. Those patrons are Sarah's fans. And

Her financial backers. Some have been with her since she started her Patreon in twenty eighteen. When she first set up her page, Sarah faced the same decision as every Patreon creator. How much money should I ask for? And what should I offer in return?

The nuances of this equation weren't always obvious. And Sarah can point to one way she initially got it wrong. I was wrong. In thinking that Patrons would want

Tangible items from me. I thought they would want swag. a sticker or a T shirt or a tote bag. You know, we all know the classic PBS, right? But in fact, these were the least popular items I offered.

We should mention that Sarah is also a digital marketer for a non profit. So it makes sense. she thought her patrons might crave. The classic. Tote bag.

Treatment. But then I'm not a non profit entity. I'm an artist and these patrons were giving me money because they believed in what I did and they wanted to support it. So I made the mistake of not

really polling and inquiring of my patrons. Mm. what they would want. Now I regularly pull them. What would you like more of? Because

In any business. Data tells the truth. Now. Sarah's patrons receive intangibles they actually want, like shout outs in her newsletter. Or spotlights on their social media accounts.

And of course, they get early access to more weird and wonderful stories, like The Only Goat Girl. That's where I believe. You need to become an expert at being wrong. And the more wrong you are the more you stand to learn about your business.

But You must be willing to look at the data. Take the hard lessons and implement solutions fast. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Like this gives a huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing.

There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Ten years later and be like, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This Is masters of scale. I'm Reid Hoffman. Co-founder of LinkedIn.

Partner at Graylock. And your host. And I believe you need to become an expert at being wrong. And the more wrong you are. the more you stand to learn about your business.

But You must be willing to look at the data. Take the hard lessons. And implement solutions. Fast.

If you think back to part one of my conversation with Jack Conti You remember us building a wrongness playbook page by page as he told us the story. of co founding Patreon. In part two, we're gonna step out of our imaginary classroom. And look at how Jack and his team grew the platform into a thriving company.

Worth four billion dollars. Hosting. hundreds of thousands of creators. Consider this a field study. In a sum of Patreons.

Biggest learnings. Derived from their biggest mistakes. Including one so harrowing, you might feel yourself panicking. out of sympathy. We'll pick up right after Jack launched Patreon with his co founder, Sam Yam.

The platform allowed Jack to connect with fans of his music and convert them into patrons. Just like Cyrus Patrons. From the top of the show. Jack's fans paid him a few dollars a month. in exchange for exclusive content.

It also Let them feel good. About supporting one of their favorite musicians. Within weeks. Jack was on pace to make six figures as an artist.

Other creators. Took notice. When we put it out there. It really resonated and very quickly thousands of people. needed this thing and wanted this thing.

To Jack. These thousands of new creators and patrons. Flooding the platform. Proved Patreon's thesis was correct. What were those first few months of launching Patreon like what was the beginning of the entrepreneurial drinking through the fire hose?

totally beautiful and magical and totally overwhelming and terrifying. I had no idea what I was doing. Uh No idea. We didn't have a business plan.

We were flying a thousand miles an hour by the seat of our pants. I mean, there was not. a big strategy at the beginning. We were just trying something. This jumping off a cliff moment. is one of the most exhilarating.

And stressful. Moments of the entrepreneurial journey. It's a time of trial. And error. And that error part.

is key. Some of the choices you make will be wrong. But even those wrong choices can lead you closer to the mission and values of your company. as Jack can explain. I think we solve problems in a different sort of way at the beginning, which

informed the culture of the company and how we did things that I think we're probably for the best. Say some more about how you solve those problems. I'll give you an example. We wanted to

launched this creator and we wanted them to have a really great experience on The site. It's a creator named Smooth McGroov who makes a cappella music videos. They have a beard down to their knees. And they have a cat in all their videos and it's A capella covers a video game music. It's like the most beautiful internet thing in the world. I love it to death.

Jack and his team. Want it smooth, to have a great experience on the platform. And make him feel like he'd made the right choice. The whole team it was I think it was at that point, maybe five of us. We ordered

Poster tubes we contracted with an artist on Deviant Art to do a special portrait of Smooth. Five of us probably spent three days fulfilling posters and Just putting a really personal, nice touch on everything. And

I think had we been more strategic about it. You know, we probably would have worked with a three P firm, which I didn't even know what that was back then. If you don't know what that is either. Don't worry.

It's a fulfillment company. They can help process orders. And it might have been a little less personal and it might have been a little more Process driven and systematized. But there was something very

human about writing emails and forth with Smooth and sending him JPEGs of the rendering from the artist over Deviant Art and the relationship building from that. It was just really Beautiful. And I think it set the tone for what became this huge cultural value at the company, which is put creators first. That cost the full team three days of time stuffing poster tubes. But also was what we felt was right and personal and creator focused and creator centric. You may be a surprise, but it's actually kind of a classic

story on the journey to scale because that handcrafted and the discovery of the magic is actually so important to figure out what to scale and what to do. So actually in fact that is a essential lesson. But also, by the way, classic. You might remember this classic lesson. From our very first episode of Masters of Scale with Airbnb's Brian Cheske. Sometimes to scale.

You have to do things. That don't scale. Inefficiency. can feel wrong in the moment. But if it's helping your company to find core values.

It's not really inefficient at all. In fact. Cementing these values. is easiest. When you're still small.

The more you scale. The harder it gets to experiment. And to change directions. As an organization. This lesson

was proving especially relevant. As Patreon's user base grew. And soon. Demand was outpacing. Patreon's capacity to meet it.

In the first month or two, we realized we're not gonna be able to literally answer all of the inbound Requests. There were thousands of people using the product. And we needed to hire people. We needed support. And so we decided to

raise around a financing. Just to keep the lights on, I guess. This. By the way. was exactly the right move.

In the early days of your company. One of your most important jobs is to get users in the door. Even when you're taking a steep loss. To sustain that.

You'll need capital. But to secure that capital. Jack worried he might be. The wrong messenger. Оно в фести бій момент фі.

Was Feeling nervous about Sitting down at a table with eight VCs And pitching them. On

This company. As an artist What business do I have being in one of those rooms? As Jack started to meet with investors, he could feel the pitches going sideways. And he didn't know enough.

To diagnose what was wrong. Felt like there was something here. But I was unable to describe it and unable to describe why. And I was desperately trying to be a smart MBA strategy person in these pitches. I was pitching people on cohorts and I was pitching people on the retention on the creator side and I was pitching people on the marketplace dynamics and the creator ecosystem and

We couldn't raise money. I don't know how many people we pitched. We pitched a lot of people. It didn't work. It wasn't landing. Pitch after pitch. Was falling flat.

And imitating. A smart MBA person. Wasn't helping. Finally somebody was asking me about the company and it was an investor. And I told them the robot story.

You remember the robot story, right? In part one, we heard how Jack had created an out of this world music video called Petals. Complete with dancing and lip syncing robots. In the Mainly creative, it was making this video that inspired Jack to create Patreon in the first place.

And now. Jack found himself telling the story to a potential investor. Told him about this animatronic head and this three D pinted hexpod robot building a replica of Money Falcon. Yeah, I told him this whole thing. And they said Jack That's the pitch!

You need to start every investor pitch with that. And I was like, wait a minute. This is like You to be crafts person stuff. This isn't business and they were like no no no no no That's the pitch!

Be yourself. Be who you are. All of a sudden. Jack realized what he'd been doing wrong.

He had misjudged his value. to the VC sitting around those tables. He thought his job. was to know everything. They knew.

And when he didn't. He tried to fake it. Believe me. VCs are good at spotting this kind of gambit. But Jack's actual value to investors.

was his deep knowledge of the community. He was trying to serve. He understood. How creators think. Because Jack was and is a creator.

His own authentic story in his own voice. crisply demonstrated the problem Patreon was trying to solve. Once Jack recognized his error, he pivoted fast. I switched the pitch. I started doing all of my investor pitches with

The fifteen minute robot music video story which at first felt so awkward But like that, we raised money. It was such a valuable lesson to me in Being myself.

And letting that come through. And embracing that side of me. Because It is who I am, and it does make us different. Yep. Well it's also be yourself, but be yourself as a learner. So it's yes, me and me as core, but also learning and adjusting.

Being willing to adapt. And adapt quickly. to advice and critique is part of the infinite learner mindset. That helps you leverage every mistake. But this

Brings us back to a question we posed in part one. How do you balance the advice of others with your own gut instincts? Because for founders, there's no shortage of free advice floating around. Sometimes As in the story you just heard.

The advice will be spot on. Other times, it might come from a place. Up catastrophically. Outdated thinking. After all.

There were plenty of smart investors who warned that no customer Would ever rent a room from a stranger or take a ride in their car. So when is it time? to double down on your instincts and when is it time to open yourself up to feedback that could change everything. The answer of course.

is it depends on the situation and the data in front of you. And sometimes it's just going to be a hard call. But you must start with a mindset that's open to the fact that you could be wrong. This is something Jack brings to each major decision he makes as a founder. This is the tricky part.

There are times where the answer is, Oh, I need to be myself. And there are times where I'm wrong. This thing that I've been holding on to is just wrong. And I can't keep doing that. Jack has a perfect example.

To demonstrate this quandary. And it has to do with one of Patreon's More prominent features. the ticker on a creator's page that shows their number of patrons. And the amount of money those patrons contribute each month.

Very early on I Felt like transparency with the fan community about the earnings of the creator. Was mission critical.

to the company and business. If you're gonna accept fan payments, you gotta Have How much you're earning on your creator page. On my page, it literally said.

Jack Conti. Five thousand dollars. Per month. And then underneath it had the number of patrons. And this

Was Dogmatic for me. Jack believed in this transparency for a couple of reasons. And let patrons see the real effect. that their one, two, and five dollar payments we're having.

And I let creators who are thinking about joining a platform. See its full potential. When somebody landed on a page If they saw how much money a crater was making

they were more likely to become a creator. Oh my gosh, this creator's making$5,000 a month. This creator's making$15,000 a month. I should sign up for Patreon. And it turns out that was like most of Patreon's growth. Patreon had metrics. that confirmed their growth strategy was working.

But the pointed feedback they were starting to get from the users told a different story. All these Creators said, I don't want to show my fans how much money I'm making. That's weird. It makes it about money. Instead of about my work. And

I don't like that, so I don't want to launch a Patreon page. We ignored that feedback for a couple years. Jack. Wasn't ignoring Patreon's users. At a pure hubris.

Or. A lack of empathy. He had a strong theory. Based on the data. All the same.

Patreon creators kept saying it felt wrong to them. And This feedback started to take on its own gravitational pull. After years of this feedback. from the creator community.

I think probably at this point where maybe forty or fifty people. The organization was feeling blocked. on launching creators. Because of this problem. And I had data scientists coming to me, I had researchers coming to me and saying, Jack, we're hearing this in all of our conversations. We've got to change this. And I said, nope, we're not changing it.

The pressure grew. The longer Jack waited. It spread from Patreon's users to the data scientists. Study their behavior. Finally.

One day Jack found himself in a conversation. That shifted his perspective. I sat down with a data scientist named Mara Church. And she laid out this very compelling argument. We had A B tested a bunch of different types of language on the page.

Quantitatively. We would see a hit. in creator conversion. with this major growth loop where a creator lands on the page, they see how much money a creator is making, and then they sign up themselves. But

Хер хайпотезис вас деспоть да. We have to give creators the option to launch a page without showing everyone what they're making, because otherwise it's the equivalent of walking into a doctor's office and seeing the doctor's salary above their door. Put in that context, it immediately sounds wrong. Doesn't it? Paging Doctor Hoffman. Dr. Hoffman, your patient will see you now. That's Dr. Hoffman. 55 patients,$160,000 a year.

And why should creative people Have to do that. But not doctors and lawyers and everyone else who's contributing to the world. That really resonated with me and eventually got me over the line and we decided to release this feature work creators

could choose whether or not to show their public earnings. And then eventually the same feature with the number of patrons that they had. And now Over half. of Patreon creators are doing that feature. And it was this huge unlock for the company.

Seeing the difference it made, To give creators more autonomy drove home a major realization for Jack. Preferencing. This one specific lever of scale. had been limiting Patreon's growth in unseen ways.

It's easy. To count the new users you get each month. It's harder. to tally the ones that never sign up. As an entrepreneur.

You need both a clear vision and mission. And and intense flexibility in the face of data. Or in the lightly paraphrased words of another master the scale guest. Mark Pinkus.

Keep your good instincts. Hill. Your bad ideas. It was another moment where I just basically realized I've been wrong about this.

I needed to adapt and change how I was thinking about the world. to do the right thing for creative people and do the right things for the company too. Changing your mind about a deeply held belief. Isn't easy. But if you can bring that adaptability into your thinking.

You'll be able to pivot and change course when you need. That's The good news. The bad news is You may end up having to learn that lesson.

More than once. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building.

Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There can be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi.

And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. We're back. With Jack Conti a Patreon.

If you're enjoying this episode, be sure to share it with friends. You can do that now. Just click the share button. In your podcast app. And to listen my full conversation with Jack, become a Masterscale member at masterscale.com.

Slash membership. There's a lot we couldn't fit into this episode. Even in two parts. Including How Jack hacked his own calendar to record four songs every month.

With his bands. Pomplamoose and scary pockets. It's a wild story. That shows how resourceful and creative. You can be

with an entrepreneurial mindset. You won't want to miss it. In building Patreon. Jack has learned how to be wrong. Like an expert.

Which means asking questions, moving past assumptions. And occasionally. Checking your own ego. But this is a practice. Not a skill you master once.

and then stick into your utility belt. Or if it is a tool, think of it less like a hammer. And more like a blade. You have to keep sharp. At all times. Before the break.

You heard out Jack and his team. cemented their values at Patreon early. As a small team. They once spent days. Handcrafting the patrine experience.

For a new creator. Five of us probably spent three days fulfilling posters and Just putting a really personal, nice touch on everything. It was just really beautiful. And I think it set the tone for what became this huge cultural value at the company, which is put creators first. I admire Jack and his team for articulating early.

For themselves which of their stakeholders were paramount. Because at essence, Patreon is a two sided marketplace. On one side you have creators. The people making music videos, podcasts. Visual art.

And all the other content people love. On the other hand. You have patrons. The people paying those creators. And Patreon determined.

That serving creators was their primary job. And actually Let's take a moment to dig into this a little. When you're building a multi-sided marketplace, you might assume that your job is to try and serve all sides equally. But it's not.

While you do want all of your users to be happy. Prioritizing all sides equally is rarely If ever. Possible? or desirable.

I talked one of my producers about this recently. Here's a taste of that conversation. I don't know if you can perfectly Or kind of call it evenly support. different sides. I actually think one of the expert questions around marketplaces is

You actually have to somewhat Force rank your customers. Right. And part of force ranking your customers is Okay, in trade offs between these We go with these folks rather than those folks.

So like for example on eBay you go with the sellers versus the buyers. Because the seller is ongoing and putting the things there are the thing that make it attractive to the buyers. So if I'm selling collectibles, used goods, other kinds of things, I'm just gonna go list them on eBay because that's the place where it is the best marketplace for that. And so The buyers are there, but you gotta make sure that you keep getting

the things listed. And by the way, sometimes It bounces as you're scaling sometimes. It's a buyer oriented one, sometimes it's seller oriented one, sometimes it starts as a seller, goes to a buyer, and then changes it. different mark conditions, different levels of scale. Now having said that, ideally the different sides of your marketplace will be aligned in their interests.

In Patreon's case. Both patrons and creators want their ecosystem to thrive. That way. Creators can keep making great content. And forging deeper connections with their fans.

So focusing on creators benefits patrons too. But even when your intentions are totally in line with serving your key customers, you can still find yourself on the wrong side of a decision. And to demonstrate this. Jack, unfortunately. Has the perfect story.

It begins. With Jack and his team trying to solve a persistent problem for their creators. Variable. Month credit card fees. Creators saw their fees fluctuating.

Because Depending on how many They shared with other creators. The way we structure processing, we could basically give them a break on fees. And so a creator would see somewhere between five and eight or twelve percent fees, depending on how many multipaters they had, where those patients are located, where they're in different parts of the world.

This was really bugging creators because their income was changing. It was confusing. And they didn't like it. And so our idea was Let's pass the fee on to patrons. Patrons will pay the fee, creators take a clean ninety-five percent.

That way the creator knows exactly how much they're gonna be making every single month and we solve this fluctuating problem. Remember. Patreon's internal mission has been Put creators first. So naturally

They wanted to keep improving the artist experience on their platform. But they worried that shifting credit card fees to patr might be disruptive. So they tested it. Mm. We did quantitative research.

We added this fee in the checkout flow, even without charging it. We just wanted to see what patrons feel about this. And there was no pushback. And we rolled it out. I didn't ask Jack what he expected would happen after the change was made. Maybe some messages of thanks for creators for solving this nagging problem.

Or maybe they expected nothing. Just a silent hum. of a well oiled machine getting ever so slightly more efficient. Here's What happened instead.

Worst product rollout in the history of Patreon. Absolute disaster. I was getting three or four tweets a second. For twenty four to forty eight hours. It was

One of the worst каплдаys my life. As an entrepreneur. Patrons got really upset about The feet. And the dynamic was they then

messaged creators. And said, Do you know about this? Patreon is charging us a fee. To pay you? Creators were

Furious about this. And then they started tweeting at us and emailing us saying this is unacceptable. You guys can't do this. And then that snowballed for forty eight hours until it was just chaos and the worst thing, and I was just feeling terrible about how we had rolled this out and handled it and it was a disaster. Even though Patreon had pre tested the change. That test didn't accurately predict user behavior. And however right they thought they'd been.

There was no arguing with the situation on the ground. But if these two days represented the worst decision of Jack's life as an entrepreneur. What happened next? Reflected one of his best. We made the tough decision to roll it back.

Which was a hard decision'cause we had been working on it for months. We said to the community. We f this up. This was poorly done. We are very sorry.

This is not How We operate as a company, it's not who we want to be. We wanna be collaborative partners with you as you build your businesses. This is not who we are. We're rolling it back. We did that immediately, I think within two days.

This fast reversal. was critical to Patreon rebuilding trust with their users. They didn't have months to talk to data scientists and eventually come around. Their users needed immediate assurance that they were being heard. So Patreon followed the rules of effective crisis management.

Be clear. Be contrite. Be thorough. And act fast. As lessons go.

It was a brutally hard one. But critically. Jack and his team learned from it. What we learned was when we roll out things that are going to affect patrons. We don't go to patrons, we go to creators. We say, Hey, creators, we're about to roll out this thing.

We think some of your patrons might feel this way, some might feel this way. Here's the tools that we've built to mitigate all this, but this is within your control. You can choose to do this or not do this. We're giving you this opt-in thing. And here's the messaging we suggest with your community. If at the end of the day people don't want to do this, great, they don't have to, but we're gonna tell you about it first. because we want to be partners with you in building your business.

That philosophy of not being the arbiter and mitigating the relationship between a creator and their fans was such a critical lesson for how we address communications. In the future. Our patrons are not our patrons.

They are our creators customers. They are not our users. We must help our creators. Manage and deal with and build relationships with their customers. We must empower them. to be able to do that. It was a critical lesson from this roll out.

Jack also learn a lesson about the difference between quantitative versus qualitative data. Quant is not enough. We will miss things if we don't talk to people and look at them in the eye and show them. the product and hear what they think about it. You can read so much in a person when you show them something, and you miss all of that with pure.

Quant research. These moments of being not just wrong, but But massively wrong. Are certainly not what you wish for as an entrepreneur. But the bigger the mistake.

The more you stand to learn. Yeah. You can leverage that learning fast. I think really what I've learned is Rapid, insatiable curiosity.

Is one of the most important things. hunting for problems and running at them a million miles an hour. With openness. And a willingness. to have been wrong about the world.

Sometimes when you dig in, you'll realize you were wrong about the world. Sometimes you realize you weren't, and actually you need to keep going. But if you don't approach everything with rapid, insatiable curiosity. Then you don't know fast enough when you were wrong and when you were right about things. Exactly. Moving at the speed of curiosity.

is how you keep driving your business forward. And Patreon. has adopted this approach to growing their creator communities. In fact, they put so much faith in their relationship with creators, it's led to a policy. Several of Jack's advisors told him was

Existentially wrong. So when we launched in twenty thirteen We gave craters A CRM. CRM

A tool for customer relationship management. And it had the email addresses of their fans. This was against the advice of A lot of people that I talk to. They said, Hey Jack, YouTube doesn't give people email addresses of their subscribers. Facebook doesn't give people email addresses of their likes and followers.

That prevents the platforms from having lock in. That is the network effect of those platforms is that you can't take your fans Elsewhere. So Don't give

creators' email addresses, then they can just take their fans somewhere else and you're You're putting the company at risk. Our standpoint on that was This is right for creators. I hold

problem with YouTube and Facebook is that they Frickin lock in creative people and don't let them own their relationships with their customers. The world moves in favor of individuals over time. There is power shifting from institutions toward people.

Right now. That is a long trend. That we decided ten years ago. we're gonna be on the right side of history of that trend. We are going to give creators The email addresses of their fans.

Because we believe that creators should have control Of their audience and Eventually the platforms that they use. If they're unhappy with Patreon, they should email their fans and say, Everybody, we're going over here instead.

That put our ass on the line. It put a fire under our butts to serve creators in the best way possible. And I think that was a very Important good Force. For creators.

And also for Patreon. Time will tell. Whether Jack and his team are right about the strategy. But they pursued it consistently. since the day Patreon was founded.

Now, with over 200,000 creators on the platform. Around six million patrons. And a four billion dollar valuation. For the moment. They're proving their critics.

Quite wrong. And that The point. There are no guarantees in entrepreneurship. Except.

The guarantee. You'll definitely be wrong about something. But the bigger you fail. The more you stand to learn. The key

is to be curious. About your mistakes. And rigorous. About deploying solutions. Do that.

and you'll become an expert in wrongness. A master of mistakes. A doctor. of wrongology. At least

I think that's what you'd call it. I could be wrong. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thanks for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wakewater original.

Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Triff, and Jordan Cloud. Our head of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producers are Adam Skus, Catherine Clark Gray, Marie McCoy Thompson, Alex Morris, Tucker Legersy, and Holly Bondi. Our editor at large is Bob Safia. Our music director is Ryan Holliday. Original Music and Sound Design by Eduardo Rivera.

Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson, Steven Davies, Andrew Naught, and Mike Gallagher. Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chris Shay, Elisa Schreiber, Aria Finger. Say this up here. Greg Beato.

Adam Heiner. Colin Howard. Willem Crowells, Pim Cronin. Kelsey Capitano. Sammy A Putta.

Anna Pizzano. Sarah Tarter, Lear Sarmentis. Charlie Meneses, GMA Ezequena, Emily McManus, and Mina Kurosawa. Become a member of Masters of Scale to get access to a year's worth of courses and content on the Masters of Scale Courses app. Find out more at masterscale dot com slash membership.