The Wrongness Playbook, part 1, w/Patreon's Jack Conte

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I was touring up and down the West Coast. Playing for empty bars. Empty. And when I say empty I mean

Empty. Zero people, bartender leaves halfway through the set. I am alone playing in a five hundred person room. By myself. Oh man, I did four tours like that. It sucks, let me tell you, that is the worst. That's Jack Conti.

He's the co-founder and CEO of Patreon. He's also a working musician. and the start of his career. This was about three years into my career as a full-time musician.

I had not yet quit my side hustles. I was actually working as a contractor doing corporate background music. For in house Google videos. No offense to the Google In-house video department. But this wasn't Jack's dream.

He wanted to be a full time songwriter and musician. He wrote prolifically. Publishing original songs to the premier music discovery platform of the day. My space. I upload a song and it get five plays and

I was feeling like I was just beating my head against a wall. I'd spent six months working on this album. It had hundred tracks. I EQ'd the crap out of it. I was meticulous about crafting this thing. I spent 10,000 hours on this album. And I felt like I was making good music. I didn't feel like my music was bad. I didn't think I was prince or anything, but I felt like the music was good. Like there should be people who would like this.

The signs were clear. Something was wrong. But Jack didn't know what. Until someone send him a link to a video on a different platform.

YouTube. Somebody sent me this video of a kid. playing acoustic guitar and singing in front of a camera. It was like a webcam. And his voice was okay.

And his guitar playing was okay. I didn't think like, oh man, he's so much better than me. And his video had three hundred thousand views. I didn't know the word for it, but like I remember thinking essentially I have a go to market problem. I think my product is pretty good.

But I'm using the wrong website. to distribute my music. I'm using the wrong tactics to get my stuff out there. Once Jack spotted his mistake, he leapt into action. He pivoted to YouTube. And through time and painstaking effort.

Built a following of millions of subscribers. They bought his music. And went to his shows. The next time. He'd play at a bar. It wouldn't be empty.

Jack found success by diagnosing exactly what he'd been doing wrong. And then acting decisively. That's why I believe you need to become an expert at being wrong. The better you get. At leveraging mistakes.

The faster you can get to scale. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this 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. Working out of three bedroom apartment. Just how you do it. This is masters of scale.

I'm Reed Hoffman. Co-founder of LinkedIn. Partner Greylock. And your host. And I believe you need to become an expert at being wrong.

The better you get at leveraging mistakes, the faster you can get to scale. If you're a founder, you've probably already heard these two magic words. Fail fast. You might have seen them painted on the walls of a co working space. Or printed on a mug in the office break room.

Especially in Silicon Valley. This mantra, fail fast. is a pillar of entrepreneurship. Because the faster you learn that you're wrong about a thesis, the faster you can shift your energy to a new idea.

That could be right. What's secretly tricky about this is that it's not always obvious when you're wrong. Or how to fix it. Because alongside Fail fast.

We have other mantras like Trust your gut. And Follow your vision. Even

If no one else sees it. If something isn't working Is it time to trust yourself? And double down on your instincts? Or time to open yourself.

The critical feedback you've been ignoring. I wanted to talk to Jack Conti about this because Few entrepreneurs have more joyfully embraced the illuminating power of wrongness. Jack co-founded Patreon with his former college roommate. S.

It's a platform. That helps independent creators connect with their most passionate fans by turning those fans into patrons. Fans contribute small amounts to their favorite creators, like a subscription. One, five, or ten dollars a month gets these Patrons.

Special access. To creator content made just for them. since its launch in twenty thirteen. Patreon has grown to over two hundred thousand creators and six million active patrons. And in twenty twenty one.

the company hit a massive four billion dollar valuation. Because of Patreon. Artists and audiences. Are deepening their relationships. And creators are sustaining themselves through their art.

Just as Jack dreamed of doing with his own music. Patreon scale journey is full of moments in which Jack Trust it is God. And it paid off. Despite everyone who said he was wrong.

But It's also full of truly humbling moments where he was wrong and he needed to listen to others. In fact There were so many of these moments that were telling Jack's story in two parts. Part one will focus on the disruptions and discoveries that led to Patreon's founding.

And in part two, we'll hear about the biggest challenges Jack faced as Patreon scaled. Along the way, we'll be building a sort of Wrongless Playbook. filled with lessons on how to leverage mistakes into expertise. But first, let's start with one of Jack's earliest recollections of being really wrong.

It's a situation. many of us might relate to. He chose the wrong major. Most people don't go to Stanford to major in music. Yeah, I also didn't go there to major in music. I went there to major in

In uh physics. Jack had loved physics in high school, and had thought it would be his calling. But he remembers the day. It started to seem wrong. I remember coming out of a class once and feeling relatively uninspired and feeling like this is not.

Why I'm on this planet. Just to be clear though, that was a very painful realization. This pain was because a career music has drawbacks of its own. I had a family member

who had a conversation with about choosing to be a music major. And this family member was a jazz guitar player. And he said to me, Jack, it's crowded at the bottom. If you can do anything else.

Do that. Please. He said you're a smart guy. You can do anything you want in the whole world, just don't be a musician. I remember that night.

sitting on this concrete slab outside and literally head between my knees, I was feeling nauseous and sick about this path that I was about to choose to basically commit to a life of poverty and being a musician. But I also felt like There is no other option for me. I have to do this. This is what I love. And I felt like if I did that

good things would happen. And I didn't know what and I didn't know how But I felt like if I just did the thing that I loved most, I'll figure something out. Jack made a decision based on his own internal compass. He knew he'd been wrong to choose the physic major, no matter what warnings. His uncle gave.

So his path forward. He may not have known it at the time, but This moment of clarity. was foundational.

to Jack's development as a future CEO. He felt what it was like to be so compelled. Towards a path. that nothing else would do. Learning how to trust

These instincts is a critical skill for any leader. It helps you be decisive. and to not look backwards once a decision gets made. So make that. Page one.

of your wrongness playbook. Being wrong. often put you on the path. Of being right. Just remember that your gut instinct is

isn't your only navigator. It's one of several guidance systems you rely on. In your journey to expertise. Jack didn't look back. Once he decided on music as his career.

He graduated from Stanford and started composing. Playing gigs. And touring. And as you heard at the top of the show. It wasn't always smooth sailing.

I was touring up and down the West Coast playing for empty bars. Empty. But eventually. Jack worked out a system. For building his fan base.

It began with a platform shift. From my space. to YouTube where he noticed a pattern emerging. I started seeing video taking off, and all these low five videos. of creators making music in their kitchen.

getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views. Jack observed. That is. Lo fi approach. was appealing to audiences.

It narrowed the distance between creator and fan. as though they were sharing home movies with friends. Jack took note. And then he got curious. about what else these YouTubers were doing right.

When I would see a creator who seemed to be doing a great job, I would go look at their video catalog. I'd sort by oldest and I'd Just go one by one through the last videos all the way up to the current videos. And what I was trying to do is see their journey and see what they learned. This is a great way to develop an audience strategy. No matter what your product.

Call it. Page two of the Wrongness Playbook. If you can start to pattern match what someone else has gotten wrong. You can leverage. Their learnings and skip past.

Certain rookie mistakes. Diving into the histories of creator channels, Jack realized there was another reason this homie Making music in the kitchen style was working. Lo-fi production values allowed creators to post a lot. And as a platform.

YouTube seemed to favor channels that posted content frequently. Jack. Now had a challenge. He wanted to follow the right patterns that would make his channel successful. But to scale fast.

He also needed a way to stand out. He couldn't get lift off by simply copying the others. And he didn't want to. He wanted his videos to be innovative. And to showcase the intricate craftsmanship.

Of his songs. His solution? A new format. I started doing this concept called a video song. which was essentially like a multi-track audio recording, but with a video component.

Jack's video songs have two rules. Number one. No hidden sounds. So if you hear a snare drum, you see the snare drum being recorded.

If you hear a bass, you see the bass being recorded. Oh. And the second rule was there's no overdubs. So if you see a base That is the bass that was used in the take. That is the recording of the bass that you hear. And what it did was it it kind of demystified the recording process.

because you could see the creation of all these interesting sounds in real time as you were watching the video and listening to the audio. Mm. The rules provided Jack's videos with a style that set him apart. It was both. Strip down?

And More interesting. than just recording himself on a webcam. The video song rules also gave him a template. he could replicate week after week.

and post as frequently as his competitors. It didn't take long for Jack to see results. They started getting thousands and thousands and then eventually views. And I started selling

hundreds of MP3s, and then I started making five hundred bucks a month selling MP3s and posting these video songs on YouTube. And that's when I finally realized, oh, there is a business here. I could become a full time musician. Even if it's not sex, drugs, rock and roll, private planes, lady gaga, staples center. I don't care about that. I just wanna play guitar and write songs and make a living doing it.

If you'll remember from Jack's story at the start of the episode, this Had been his goal all along. But like any good entrepreneur, once he achieved one goal, He set a new one. Jack was soon developing a new YouTube channel.

with an unusual name. Pomplamous What was the origin story of Pomplemoose? What was the okay, this is what we're gonna do. From music initially. Papalo Moose came about as an accident.

The word means Grapefruit in French, but is deliberately spelled. The wrong way. It started out as a funky little side project between Jack and his girlfriend. Now wife.

Natalie Dawn Natalie and I had been together and had tried making music. about two years previously, and we tried to date at the same time and it didn't work. We ended up breaking up. I was so infatuated with your music and with her. And it was just too much at the beginning of our relationship. And so it fell apart. But then we got back together and we decided, okay, let's just Love each other and not worry about the music thing together. For a while.

Jack and Natalie Set up some smart boundaries. But the longer they stayed together. the more curious they got about testing the creative waters. About two years into the relationship, we had a solid foundation going and we're better at communicating with each other. And we decided that I would produce one of her songs called Paz Encore.

It was meant. To be a one time exemption to their No working together rule. But when they finished. They could tell right away.

They'd made something special. We looked up and realized this. Thing that we made is something new. It's something else. It is a combination of me and Natalie. And it is both of our weird idiosyncrasies and bits of artistry popping up in different moments. They launch the song on Jack's YouTube channel.

And included a URL for their brand new one. Pomplomus music. This presented an easy litmus test as their new song. Met the world. If people liked it.

They would follow that link. And like it, they did. Subscribers not only flocked to the new channel, but They engage with a song. At a much higher rate.

than any of Jack's previous video songs. Jack and Natalie were happy with the results. And their relationship wasn't dacked. Jack and Natalie had been wrong about whether they could be bandmates and partners. But they'd also been right.

To give themselves time to mature. Add this. on the next page of your wrongness playbook. A decision. can be absolutely wrong.

For one phase of growth. But right. For the next. as Pomplemus grew. Jack and Natalie strategized on building their audience base.

Continuing. To study what other creators were doing. A critical unlock. Came when Jack noticed a musician. Whose channel had done so well, she was featured.

on YouTube's homepage. I think the first ding moment for me was when on the YouTube homepage I found a singer songwriter named Julia Nunes. While Julia had original music. She was mainly known for her covers of songs by the Beach Boys, The Killers, and especially The Beatles. What I found with Julia

If you searched the Beatles. T H E B-E-A-T-L E S. If you put that into YouTube search. Two thousand nine. Julia's video was

Number one. And that was the moment where I was like, Oh my God, this is a search engine. This. Ding moment, as Jack calls it. Open up a whole new avenue for him and Natalie.

Their main goal. was still to write and produce original music. But seeing the SEO power of cover songs. shaped everything about their strategy. In between video songs of their own original music, they started posting smart, surprisers of the most searched titles on YouTube.

And then one day in 2009, they got a little lucky. When they posted their cover of an iconic Beyonce track. Beyonce single ladies. Got half a million views.

literally overnight in one night. It was it happened to be at the VMAs when Kanye stole the mic out of Taylor Swift's hand and said, Beyonce had one of the best music videos of all time. So everybody went to YouTube the next day to search Beyonce single ladies and Pomp Luce's video popped up. And so we got this huge influx of fans and traffic, and then we started playing theaters and then the rest is history. It wasn't. Just luck. That had given Pamplamous this amazing lift off.

It was learning. From every post. We learned the most critical thing. You can make these small iterative adjustments. On YouTube.

that compound over time. And now, of course, that's like such a common thing to do on YouTube, but that was when I first realized that oh, we can make these small little iterative changes and it has a massive effect. on our trajectory on the platform. And by the way, that last piece is the physician. peeking out behind the musician in that combination. This iterative approach

To product building. Is smart not just for YouTube. but for building just about anything. So many products and companies fail. Because they delay.

Putting their hypotheses to the test. Business plans can be written and rewritten for years based on completely wrong assumptions. Iterating Means

Testing ideas and discarding the wrong ones. It's a core principle of entrepreneurship. I discussed this with author and founder. Eric Reese. You may know Eric from his book.

A lean startup. Or From his own episode. of masters of scale. Which you can find in our podcast feed.

Here's a taste. First business plan I ever wrote for a startup, it was beautiful. was like fifty pages of just the most eloquent prose. The data in there was sourced from the US Census and all this analysis. It was just like you would weep to read it.

And small problem. Tiniest little detail is the customers didn't read it. So they didn't behave the way it said, but the analysis wasn't wrong, the facts were wrong. Eric learned more than he ever wanted about being wrong.

At the age of twenty five. when he was co founder and CTO of a three D avatar company called ImVoo. Eric and his team spent six months pushing themselves to the limit. Trying to get their first product. Just right.

I remember the night before it was gonna become live. I was like, Oh my god. Tomorrow, some journalist is gonna download this software. It's gonna crash their computer. And the headline in the newspaper the next day is gonna be Idiots at that company.

Don't know how to build quality software. Subtitle. Never hire that guy again. Big arrow pointing to my mugshot. And my career was over. And what's so funny about it in retrospect is Good news.

I was actually relieved. When we didn't crash a single computer. Because nobody downloaded the software. We didn't sell a single copy. Nobody even tried it for free. Eric had made a value proposition. So wrong.

Six months of coding. was wasted. But It helped him develop his signature theory on getting user feedback early. And often.

If the thing is so wrong that like that product I remember we couldn't even pay customers in a usability test to use it. They would give us our money back. It was that bad. But If you don't get that feedback, you can't learn. Exactly. Feedback.

Good and bad. Is the engine. That powers your learning process. So even if the feedback is Your product is wrong.

And you're selling it wrong. And in fact You should start. All over. This is still Precious.

information. Keep that in mind. As you listen to Jack Conti's next story. After the break. 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

The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wire's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance?

Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna 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 Chayubi. 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 of Patreon. Talking about how to get great.

At being wrong. If you're enjoying this episode. Be sure to share it with friends. You can do that right now. Just hit the share button.

In your podcast app. And to listen to my full conversation with Jack. Become a Masters Scale member at masterscale dot com slash membership. There are so many topics we couldn't fit into this episode, even in two parts. Like our chat about NFTs.

OpenAI And what a brand new John Lennon song. would sound like today. You won't want to miss it. When we left off.

Jack and Natalie were finding great success with their band. Pomplamous. They kept building their channel and their audience. For more than three years. End of two thousand twelve.

Pomplus was doing very, very well. We're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. We bought a house off of our MP3 sales. And then streaming came up, Spotify came up. The rise of Spotify and other streaming services drastically changed the economics of musicians putting their work online. Suddenly, instead of ninety nine cents per song in the iTun store, musicians were making pennies per play. Combine that with thin ad revenues on YouTube and other platforms that drove musicians at all levels to reassess the economics of their business.

They hadn't done anything wrong. But there's circumstances. had completely changed. Remember What might be right, one minute.

Camp. Be wrong the next. When that happens. The only really wrong thing to do is nothing.

Jack and Natalie decided to pause the Pomplamous channel. I started working on this solo record. Natalie signed a solo deal with Warner. And went out on a world tour by herself. And I was getting obsessed with E DM.

E DM Electronic dance music Skrillex in particular. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm a huge Skrillix fan. Once he finished his solo record, Jack started thinking about how to launch it into the world. Because essentially, this was a product launch.

As a YouTube creator, he knew this would come in the form of a video. Not just any video. Something epic. I wanted to make a music video that kind of reflects the wildness and chaos of bass music. I spent about three months making this robot music video. The video was for a song called Petals, named for all the effects pedals Jack had in his studio.

It involved an animatronic head that was programmed to sing lyrics to the song. I'm a three D printed hexapod robot designed by this fellow from the University of Tucson. And I built a replica of Millennium Falcon cockpit in my studio by myself. It took me three months. Nineteen hour days of hot glue and crafting and silver sharpie on spray painted cardboard torn out from Amazon boxes. It was Popscull sticks and glue, but it looked pretty cool. About halfway through this process, I decided I'm going to bury my good judgment.

For a couple months. I'm going to be completely unstrategic. I'm going to not worry about the return on this. I'm gonna make this

Great thing. That I'm proud of. I'm not gonna budget for it. I'm just gonna do it until it's great. The moment Jack decided to bury his good judgment may remind you of a horror movie.

when the unsuspecting team creeps down into the basement. Because taking a leap Based on instincts. Can be terrifying. My wife was away on tour. I was home alone for months. And I just wanted to just be an artist. It was deeply fun and also very scary.

I was going to home depot every day and spending a hundred dollars, hundred fifty bucks, getting parts, getting lumber, getting pieces for these elevators that I built in my studio. Think back to what Jack had learned. about success on the YouTube platform. Make it fast.

Post often. And when in doubt? Do a cover. Petals. was none of those things.

In fact, it was a risk. But I'd argue it wasn't. A blind risk. The mission of this epic video was something that inspired Jack as a creator. And he knew that if he pulled it off.

It would surprise and delight his audience on a whole new level. This page. In your wrongness playbook echoes our first. There are some projects you may find yourself. Compelled to pursue.

That seem wrong on paper. They may not. Make short term financial sense. But Just like when Jack was compelled to change majors, he felt driven towards his epic new goal.

When you feel this level of energy and inspiration. Respect that instinct. So we kept going. Three months and Ten thousand dollars later.

Jack shot the pedals video in a blur. Oh. Of his hard work. Shut up. On screen.

The elevators rotated. The robot danced. The animatronic head saying. Turn out great, I was very excited about it. It was like the best thing ever made. But this moment of pride. Faded.

When Jack started doing the math. He had taken a deeply creative But non strategic leap of faith. Then cold hard reality. Set in.

And it dawned on him. that the best video he'd ever made might also be his worst mistake. I woke up at the end of this where you know, thought, Okay, now what? I was gonna upload this video to YouTube. It would get about a million views. And

I would be Left with hundred and fifty dollars of ad revenue. Jack had been sure. in his gut that making pedals was correct.

But now His gut was suffering. A different feeling. I was feeling sick. I was feeling nauseous. thinking about all that work and all of that time.

Ten grand on this video. Max out two credit cards. and was looking forward to one hundred and fifty dollars of ad revenue. How? Could his instincts have led him?

To this grim place. Well, for one. Jack had developed those instincts. under an old financial model. When Jack

First started his YouTube channel, lots of views translated into lots of MP3 sales. Remember, he and Natalie Had bought a house. with their iTunes revenue. But the economics of streaming services had changedally.

From now on, he could expect more. One hundred and fifty dollar checks. No matter how epic. His video creations. Then

Jack started thinking. Wait. That feels wrong. It was then where I kind of came out of this creative coma, I guess, and realized The economics of that are

Unacceptable I had this stip feeling of injustice. And sense that This overall system. that humans had designed and deployed over the last eight years. To

Get art on the web. That we had missed The economics of that. that in putting these things online and digitizing these things and in this world of infinite replicability and lack of scarcity. We forgot about the economics.

For artists. The ecosystem of Tech companies were not Valuing me as an artist. I felt like I was

A legitimate member of the workforce contributing to society. I felt like I was doing good things and having positive impact on the world, but not being paid for it. It was another one of those moments where I felt like I had been using the wrong platform. As opposed to

a core problem with what I was making. There was a problem with the system, not a problem with the output. Suddenly. Jack's perspective. Shifted. Maybe he hadn't been wrong to make this video.

Maybe. The system itself was wrong. It wasn't like I wasn't having impact. I'd upload a video and I'd reach a million people. That's ten football stadiums.

Full of human beings. Watching this thing that I made. How is that not enough? In what world? What planet am I on?

We're ten football stadiums of humans watching my art. Isn't enough. That felt Crazy to mi, it felt crazy. That's when Jack had the thought.

So many entrepreneurs have had before him. I just felt like there's gotta be a better way. Remember, if something isn't working, it may not be obvious what's wrong. Or how to fix it. Sometimes.

You need to tweak. Something small. Other times, need to scrap everything you're doing and start over. Jack decided if the right platform wasn't out there. He would just have to build it.

He started with what he knew. He had a lot of fans. They were passionate. And he had a theory they might pay to get greater access to his content. Why?

Because they'd done it before. I used a platform called Stage It. with Pomplamoose in two thousand eleven, which was like the first version of paid live streaming. Pomplice used to play a concert thirty minutes. And we would make two thousand dollars playing an online concert. Anytime we got the fans involved.

Fans Valued us. If somehow He could figure out how to leverage that depth of love from his audience. He could rebalance the ecosystem. He started thinking about other examples where fans paid artists directly.

Like the crowdfunding platform. Kickstarter. I had a conversation with my roommate at dinner. She had used Kickstarter.

And had made a record. And made twenty four thousand dollars. The only problem? Kickstarter was aimed.

at one off projects. Jack might have financed. His cool pedals video with a campaign like this. But what about the next awesome video? And the next.

I don't want to like invent a new project. to do with a Kickstarter. Where I'm go to my fans and say, Everybody, I want to make a movie now, because that's not what I wanted to do. I just wanted to keep making music, but I wanted to be paid for it. Okay, so Kickstarter and platforms like it were the right idea. But the wrong structure for his goals.

So we went back to the drawing board. Or in this case. The page. I sketched out this idea in a little black book that I have. The idea was What if I had like a membership, like Spotify or

W NYC. Or Any of these membership organizations. Where people paid a subscription fee. And they get access to behind the scenes stuff and

exclusive live streams and all that kind of stuff. What if it was just like a membership? But for a human, for a creator, instead of for an institution. And so I sat down one Sunday afternoon in my kitchen and drew it out on fourteen pieces of printer paper. With a horrible design. There are certain things it's fine to get wrong.

Like the quality of the paper you write on. Or the crudeness of your sketch. But one thing, it's vital to get right. Who you call to help you build it. In Jack's case.

He had only one name in mind. I called up my freshman year roommate Sam. Jack's former roommate was Sam Yam. an engineer who had previously founded and sold the company Adwirl. Hit Silicon Valley Experience.

And the technical know how to bring Jack's fourteen pieces of paper to life. In short. He seemed like the right co-founder. For the job. When I pitched him the idea, he started building it that night.

And he built the whole thing by himself in the following two and a half months. The site they were building. For a simple concept. Patreon.

dot com We launched the first version of Patreon. with this very simple model. It's just, hey. Fans can pay five bucks a month, ten bucks a month. twenty five, hundred, whatever the creator wants, they can build their own tiers.

And then fans can sign up and they get Whatever the creator. Has said they're gonna get. Jack used his own YouTube channel to announce This new patronage site.

He thought the announcement deserved. Some fanfare. So that pedals video? The one Jack knew would be seen by football fields of fans, but couldn't pay for itself? He wisely held it back.

Until it was time. for this announcement. and its dazzling creativity, dancing robots and all. For Patreon's launch.

He was officially Patreon's creator number one. Number two and three. or Jack's partner Natalie and the roommate. who had launched the Kickstarter.

They'd be the first to learn whether Jack's thesis had been right or wrong. So how long? Did it take to find out? Within about two weeks of launching.

I was making six figures as an artist. As proof of being right? This is about as irrefutable as it gets. Not only. had Jack's theory been correct.

It was clear. That's Sam Yam. was the right co-founder to bring it to life. Sam was able to build fast and get Patreon in front of customers quickly. And the customers told them they were on the right track.

This is a heady moment for any entrepreneur. And it's one worth savouring. Because these moments of validation become the fuel that help propel you up the hill. But once you make it to the top of that hill.

You see that's only the first Of many. As you scale. the degree of difficulty increases. Not only.

Do the problems get harder? You'll have to solve them faster. The work is just beginning. That's why it's so important to get better and better at being wrong. You need to leverage.

Every mistake into something that builds your expertise as an entrepreneur. So when you make your next big mistake Don't just fix it. Embrace it. and keep adding new pages to your wrongness playbook.

Well here. What new pages Jack added to his playbook? In part two of this episode. Get ready. A few of those lessons.

Will be harsh. Worst product roll out 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 couple days of my life as an entrepreneur. I'm Reed Hoffman.

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