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MR. JORGENSON: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Dave Jorgenson, senior video producer at The Washington Post.

Today I'm joined by Jack Conte, co‑founder and CEO of Patreon, to discuss the growth and future of the creator academy‑‑excuse me‑‑the creator economy, but there might be an academy lesson later. We'll see.

MR. CONTE: Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

MR. JORGENSON: Of course. I like the background. I hope we get some music from you later. We'll see what happens.

And remember we always want to hear‑‑

MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. We always want to hear from you, our audience, so you can share your thoughts and questions for guests on Washington Post Live by tweeting @PostLive.

So, Jack, before I get you to play the keyboard, let's start with some basics here. How would you describe the creator economy?

MR. CONTE: I think your intro clip described it quite well. The creator economy is this birth of, you know, now hundreds of millions of people who are taking advantage of these wonderful creation tools that are now available to so many people at a scale that I think we never have seen before, you know, in our history. This camera is a higher‑resolution camera than the one used to film some of my favorite movies, and now billions of us have these in our pockets, and we get to make videos. And this microphone, you know, showed up at my doorstep in less than 24 hours from an order from Amazon. Like, it's easier and cheaper and faster to make things than it's every been in human history, and there's now hundreds of millions of people making things. And then if you combine that with the fact that we're all now connected because the last, you know, 20 years or so of the internet, you get people who are making things and then reaching others with the things that we make. We call those people "creators."

And it's‑‑you know, it's gotten kind of a name for itself over the last year and a half, but the truth is, you know, there's been many creator economies, you know, over hundreds and hundreds of years as sort of different mediums have come to the forefront of creation.

MR. JORGENSON: Well, you're absolutely right because I've been using this phone now for three years to make TikToks for The Post. I used to have a nice Sony camera I would use, but I don't need it. This works fine, and I shoot them vertically. And it's a lot cheaper for everyone, so you just kind of‑‑

MR. CONTE: And, by the way, your TikTok videos are‑‑your TikTok videos are incredible. I mean, you have an amazing TikTok game, and I saw that you have a book too on TikTok. So, anyway, I'm following now. It's really wonderful what you're doing.

MR. JORGENSON: That's very kind. In fact, I've done a few of these Washington Post Lives, and this is the first time anyone has any remote idea who I am, so I'm already‑‑you're already my favorite. [Laughs]

MR. CONTE: I mean, the truth is‑‑not that I'm‑‑not that I'm trying to get on your good side here, but seriously‑‑

MR. CONTE: ‑‑the videos, the videos are crushing, and the most recent one, I thought, was so funny about the Founding Fathers. And which amendment was that? Oh, yeah, it was the first one. I was right. It's the first one. Just cutting and genius and I'm a fan.

MR. JORGENSON: I'm so glad you liked it, and I could talk about those for hours. But I'm not‑‑they're not paying me right now to do just that. Maybe later, but I'm glad you liked that one.

MR. JORGENSON: I have to move on, though, and talk about Patreon, which you founded back in 2013. How did being a musician and filmmaker on YouTube inform essentially what was the thesis behind Patreon, and what was missing in this ecosystem that translates art to dollars?

MR. CONTE: Yeah. So I'll correct one thing about the intro video which said, you know‑‑

MR. CONTE: I think it said "Jack Conte, former YouTuber." I'm still producing a hundred music videos a year on YouTube. So I'm still active and putting out lots of music and lots of videos and a current‑‑a current YouTuber.

So informed, you know, Patreon, nine years ago when we launched, and it continues to inform Patreon today, you know, every day.

And maybe a couple things stood out to me. You know, as a YouTuber, I was‑‑you know, when Patreon launched, I was reaching‑‑I don't know‑‑a couple million people a month with my YouTube videos, had 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. That's like a‑‑you know, I'm not like PewDiePie. I'm not playing Staples Center, but, you know, 100,000 subscribers is a football stadium full of humans looking forward to my next thing. And I had this feeling that that should be enough. Like, that should work. If I've got a football stadium full of people who want to see my next video, like, on what planet is that not enough? You know, in what world is that‑‑does that not translate to making an income?

And, you know, no one else was really thinking about that or doing that nine years ago. It's only in the last couple years, I think, people have really started to wake up to the fact that creators deserve to be paid for the work that they're contributing to the world. I mean, creators make our lives better every day with their work and insight and holding a mirror up to society. It's an important function. Creativity is‑‑it's not just beautiful, but it's an important function for‑‑you know, in the world, and creators ought to be paid and compensated for doing what they do.

And, yeah, I mean, nine years ago, you know, when we launched, I was getting‑‑I was reaching a million people a month and getting paid $166 in ad revenue, and that felt awful. It felt unfair.

MR. CONTE: It felt‑‑it felt like it wasn't reflective of my impact.

MR. CONTE: And so that was when, you know, I sort of sketched an idea on a few pieces of printer paper and launched Patreon.

MR. JORGENSON: I have an extremely unimportant follow‑up question. Did PewDiePie really play Staples Centers, or is that‑‑

MR. CONTE: No, I don't think PewDiePie has ever played Staples Center, but maybe I should have said‑‑

MR. CONTE: Who's played Staples Center? Lady Gaga. There you go. Lady Gaga.

MR. CONTE: Okay. She's probably five years doing that.

MR. JORGENSON: I was just trying to imagine him like streaming a game in Staples.

MR. JORGENSON: All right. Cool. It's already in my head, though. So it's never going away.

Okay. Well, I've got another one for you, though. This is a real question. Patreon is home to over 250,000 creators, and they have earned $3.5 billion, much more than that measly‑‑I think you said 166 you were getting earlier‑‑from eight million subscribers. Obviously, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, they can all offer a lot more eyeballs. Is that the value proposition to artists, like consistent income that you're getting?

MR. CONTE: That's a key thing for creative people. I mean, as a creator myself, you know, nine years ago, money was kind of coming in chunks. I would do a licensing deal and get a big chunk of money and then have to kind of make it last for however long until the next thing happened, but that's not how most of the world operates. People who have jobs and who provide consistent value, you know, get paid every month. Why shouldn't creators be paid every month? So, yeah, that was absolutely a big piece of, you know, what informed Patreon was the fact that subscription income just means reliability and predictability for creative people. So it means that creators can have that ongoing living and plan and budget and forecast and better run their businesses.

MR. JORGENSON: And you called Patreon itself a membership model. So can you elaborate more on what that means?

MR. CONTE: Yeah. Membership is actually quite a simple concept. There are, like, real‑world versions of memberships, but this category of membership to a creator is something that we've been working on now for, you know, six, seven years. And, essentially, what that is is a subscription payment in exchange for exclusive content and community. It allows a creator to run a subscription content and community service where they can, you know, give their fans extra content, extra access, you know, a behind‑the‑scenes glimpse at what they do, some extra videos, some extra episodes, whatever it is that their fans want. And we provide the infrastructure to creative people to do that.

MR. JORGENSON: So I use Patreon myself very specifically to follow a "Survivor" podcast. That's a very small group of very passionate fans, and it's really fun. So I have a pretty good sense of Patreon, but maybe for the viewers, you can give a sense of what it looks like inside Patreon in case they've never been.

MR. CONTE: Sure. So a creator signs up, and then they start a page. That's kind of a landing page for their fans so fans can come and decide whether or not they want to be members, and then when a fan does and when a fan becomes a member, the creator gets a suite of tools, including like a CRM and posting tools so they can communicate with their fans, they can communicate with their members, and then it allows them to make posts and, you know, fulfill the benefits of their membership with their patrons.

MR. JORGENSON: And you already talked about this very briefly, but what are the drawbacks of the advertising model for artists on YouTube? Is it just‑‑are you just not‑‑you know, you're not getting a bang for your buck, but what's going on there? How is it so little compared to, you know, what Patreon might be offering?

MR. CONTE: Well, you know, in all seriousness, I think there are actually a lot of drawbacks, and I know I'm‑‑we all know about many of them. There's serious side effects on privacy, on security, on how‑‑you know, on our relationships, on addiction. There's some serious problems with the advertising model, I think, for society as a whole that we've really woken up to over the last, you know, five, ten years in particular.

But I think, you know, even worse for creative people, there's a problem of efficiency. Specifically, if I‑‑say I'm a super fan of a particular creator, and say, you know, I follow them on Instagram. I watch every YouTube video. I go to all the concerts. I have the T‑shirt. I'm a super fan. I love this creative person. You know, they make stuff that I enjoy every day, and when that creator releases a new video, for example, and I watch that video, under an advertising model, my view of that video translates to fractions of a penny being transferred to that creator. It's like one/one‑thousandth of a CPM is what my view is worth in an ad‑driven ecosystem.

But that's ridiculous. If I'm a super fan and I love this creator and I love everything they do, this video that they just made might be worth $10 to me. It might be worth $20, and yet in this advertising system, it's worth, you know, less than a thousandth of a penny. That's crazy to me. It doesn't make any sense. It's not good for creative people. It's not what fans want, and there needs to be more models.

Now, you know, I actually think it's really important for creators to like diversify their income stream. So we don't advise creators to turn off ad revenue unless they want it. Like, it's actually helping to support a lot of creative people right now. It's just not a very efficient way to do it, and it's certainly not enough to build a, you know, full creative business.

MR. JORGENSON: And you're helping them build these businesses, obviously, and I'm curious. And tell me if I'm off here, but it seems like you don't necessarily prioritize audience building. Is that correct, and can you tell me about that as well?

MR. CONTE: What we prioritize is a direct relationship between a creator and their fans, and so I'll give you an example of how that translates into the product. When a creator makes a post on Patreon, we deliver 100 percent of those posts to 100 percent of their patrons, 100 percent of the time, no questions asked.

That's very different from when I make a post on Instagram or Facebook or anywhere else. When I make a post on Facebook now, a little popup comes up and says, "Congratulations. You've reached 2.5 percent of your audience. Would you like to reach 3 percent of your audience? Pay $200 to boost this post." Oh, God, that is the opposite of a direct connection with your fans. That sucks for creative people. That is mitigating the relationship.

Sorry. I'm getting frustrated because it's‑‑it is frustrating for me as a creator‑‑

MR. CONTE: ‑‑because I've invested for, like, decades in these platforms, and then to have them basically cutting off my relationship with my fans, that's the opposite of what's good for creativity. It's the opposite of what's good for creative people.

And so the way we view it is a creator ought to own that relationship. A creator ought to have a pipeline to their fans, no questions asked, and that's what we prioritize.

Now, the reason these other platforms mitigate that relationship is because they prioritize, like, audience building and personalization and discovery and those sorts of things, and I actually think that's, like, an important‑‑obviously, it's a very important thing for creative people, and I think they need‑‑they need that. We need that. We need to be able to reach our‑‑you know, reach new fans and new audiences elsewhere.

But it's not the focus of Patreon. The focus of Patreon is providing that connection and providing that ongoing relationship and ensuring that that relationship is owned by creative people.

MR. JORGENSON: And this economy has changed a lot, as we've talked about, just in the last five years and not decade, however long, in part, thanks to Patreon, but today when you hear from content creators, what are they saying that's missing today in the equation?

MR. CONTE: So many things. There are so many things that are missing for creators. You know‑‑

MR. CONTE: The best way, I think, to think about this is, like, what is happening right now is a creative renaissance, right? Like, for the last 20 years, you know, with the advent of the internet and, you know, low‑cost and ubiquitous creation tools, we've seen so many people start to do creation as a living. But it's still a very young industry, right? It's still like small, and so most of the problems for creators to build‑‑if you think about it this way, it's like problems around creators building online media businesses. That's essentially what creators are doing, building their‑‑and there's kind of no infrastructure for creative people to do that. There's no‑‑if you need to hire teammates, if you need to‑‑you know, if you need health care, if you need, you know, to have business intelligence, if you need, you know, 3P and distribution for physical goods. There's so many problems that creative people have, and they're kind of having to cobble together all of their own solutions to kind of build their own media companies, and that's hard. Like, creators have their work cut out for them just making, you know, their art for the world and producing their art. That's enough of a job, but now we're expecting them to be CEOs of their own media companies, and that is‑‑that's a hefty job. That's a hard job, and so there's a lot of problems associated with kind of scaling and just keeping that, you know, keeping going, building your own media company as a creator.

MR. JORGENSON: We talked a lot about this relationship that the creators have with YouTube or wherever else they're posting and then, of course, the relationship with Patreon. We just had this Twitter question come in from Phil Parkman. It says, "What responsibility does Patreon have to censor their creators?"

MR. CONTE: It's such a good question. So the way‑‑the way we think about this is essentially content policy and trust and safety are, like, very important functions, and I don't think many companies are doing that well right now, largely because I think it's a burgeoning field, and obviously, there are, like, very complicated issues around what is okay to say and do on the internet and what is not okay to say and do on the internet.

And I am incredibly proud of Patreon's content policy. I think we've invested deeply there. Ten percent of our team is devoted to this problem, to content policy and trust and safety and making sure that we're making the right decisions, and it's particularly important for Patreon because we're talking about a person's living here. So we don't take that responsibility lightly of having to remove somebody's Patreon page from the service because, again, this is a person's income. This is a person's livelihood.

That said, there are cases where I think it's the right thing for us to do, to act and take down a page. If a page is, for example, spreading instructions on how to pour concrete on railroad tracks, we can't allow that on Patreon. If a creator is spreading instructions on, you know, how to manufacture guns and bombs, like, we‑‑obviously, we can't‑‑we can't allow that. So, you know, we have a very thorough content policy that we've invested a lot in, and we‑‑you know, it's a living, breathing field, so we're constantly iterating on it and adjusting it to make sure that we're keeping up with the pace of the internet and keeping up with the pace of culture. But it's a responsibility that we take, I guess, very seriously because it's such an important problem, and I think getting it wrong in either direction has so many, you know, clear consequences. So we have to be really careful and thoughtful as we‑‑as we approach that question.

MR. JORGENSON: Who at Patreon is arbitrating that? Like, who is kind of making these decisions about those policies?

MR. CONTE: It's a team of people called our "trust and safety organization." Content policy team writes content policy, and those are, you know, experts in the internet and culture and policy and law and kind of what's happened over the last 10 years online with other companies, and then there's a team‑‑that's the content policy team. Then there's a trust and safety team. The trust and safety team is responsible for enforcing the content policy, and it's those teammates that are making decisions about each piece of content on Patreon, proactively and then responsively as well.

And that's a very hard job, right? Those teammates are constantly evaluating the edge and, you know, being exposed to, you know, sometimes very disturbing things that are on the internet. So I have a lot of respect for our teammates who are working in trust and safety. It's a really tough job, but it's that team that's enforcing the content policy.

MR. JORGENSON: And you talked about sort of the flow of the internet and how fast it goes. I don't envy you trying to keep up. I've noticed a lot. Even with TikTok, I mean, it's just constantly changing.

And there's actually‑‑we have a question here that kind of reminds me of how quickly TikTok and its policies are changing. It's another Twitter question from RockDots. That's the handle. "Jack, with respect to music, in particular, there's a large established music business with its own rules and flow of money. Can creators participate in that and Patreon? What are the challenges there?"

MR. CONTE: Yes, absolutely. Creators‑‑I mean, we don't have restrictions on what‑‑you know, what types of industries you can and can't do. If you're‑‑you know, if you're working with a management company or if you're assigned to a label and you're not happy with the deal, we're not going to stop you from launching on Patreon. Of course not. I mean, in many ways, we are there to support creators who are unhappy with their current business arrangements and are looking for a‑‑for a better route where they have autonomy and control and where they don't have somebody telling them what BPMs to write their songs at, which, you know, I think is a frustrating thing for a lot of creators who are kind of in the establishment, feeling like they don't have full creative ownership of their work.

A lot of the creators that we see on Patreon are, you know, joining the platform because they want creative independence. They want creative control, and so, absolutely, we allow those creators to join the platform and to, you know, build their own businesses and have their own sense of autonomy and creative control.

MR. JORGENSON: And there are all kinds of creators and artists on Patreon. Do you have a sense of what genre of artists seems to perform the best?

MR. CONTE: You know what so interesting about that is it has nothing to do with genre and it has nothing to do with, you know, the medium that the creator is working within. It is‑‑ah, it is just how much do you love your fans and how much do your fans love you back. It really is that. I know that's funny to say, but it's‑‑

MR. CONTE: It's the truth. It's the truth, and we've seen that. You know, there are some podcasters who just have this incredibly strong tight relationship with their fans, and then there's some TikTok creators who have that, and there's some video creators who have that, and at the end of the day, it's that two‑way street and that tight engagement and that feeling of mutual love that, you know, is kind of a predictor of a creator doing well in the platform.

MR. JORGENSON: I think that's absolutely right. That rings true with my experience. We have something we call the "Washington Post TikTok Cinematic Universe," which is just basically that there are Easter eggs and inside jokes in every TikTok that are referencing something from 50 TikToks ago, and that seems‑‑that community building seems to be what works more than anything else for sure.

MR. CONTE: That's such a good idea. Yeah. Just I can imagine people seeing that and feeling like they're a part of it and feeling like they're along for the journey.

MR. CONTE: And so it makes a ton of sense.

MR. JORGENSON: Yeah. And, you know, for me, it is a full‑time gig, but I'm curious, the sort of makeup of the creators you have on Patreon. Are a lot of them full‑time, or is it kind of supplemented incomes? How does that work?

MR. CONTE: So the goal of the company, you know, what we want to do is provide infrastructure for creators to quit their jobs and do their businesses and their creation full‑time.

Now, the platform is open, which means that we don't stop people from setting up a Patreon page. So, as you can imagine, there's a lot of people who launch a Patreon page who are kind of aspirational. You know, they want to eventually get into creation, but they haven't yet, and we're not going to stop those people from launching a Patreon page. But there are a lot of those pages on Patreon.

It doesn't change the fact that, like, who we're building for and the kinds of things that we build are things for people who want to be a creator full‑time, things for people who, you know, want to build a creative business, want to reach their fans, have that be the thing that they wake up every day and do.

MR. JORGENSON: So I saw on the Patreon website‑‑or I think it was the Patreon blog page related to the website. Basically, it was a really helpful page on here's how you can get health insurance, here's the myths about health insurance, all that kind of stuff. For the people that are full‑time, using Patreon for their full‑time income, is there any consideration by Patreon that you might actually have access to health care provided by Patreon?

MR. CONTE: This is something I am so excited about and I want to do in the future. We don't have a timeline on it or a time‑‑or, you know, any sort of horizon. It's not currently on the roadmap, and the reason is because there's actually a lot of work to do on just the core of membership with regard to helping creators showcase their work and build communities on the platform, and so we're prioritizing that.

But, gosh, I want a world where, you know‑‑where creators don't have to choose between, you know, benefits and the steady desk job or full‑time creation, and so, yeah, whether we kind of build it natively or partner to make sure that it happens, it is something that I am really excited about.

And, yeah, that's‑‑you know, you mentioned problems previously. I mean, quitting‑‑quitting the‑‑quitting the job where you have the benefits and the‑‑you know, and health care and retirement and savings and all those sorts of things, that's a hard thing to do, and so, yeah, I absolutely want to solve that for creative people at some point.

MR. JORGENSON: Well, I think you would‑‑you would be ahead of basically the landscape as it is right now, but I would like to talk more about that landscape. You know, we have these media giants that are now kind of doing the same thing you started many years ago. There's Substack. I think the Jonas Brothers have something called Scriber, I think, and you were early and you are right, but are you concerned about the other companies entering this space?

MR. CONTE: It is my job to be paranoid as a‑‑you know, as an owner of a platform, about competition. That said, I'm not losing sleep over it, and I guess there's two reasons. One, so many people ask me about, you know, the fact that "Well, you know, Instagram has got subscriptions now and YouTube is, you know, trying to get creators paid and all these people are trying to get creators paid. Like, Jack, aren't you worried about this?" And my response is hallelujah. Like, finally the world is waking up to the fact that, like, creative people should be paid for their work. I'm so grateful and thankful that we're entering a new phase.

And what's even better is that it's not going anywhere. Like, there's so much momentum and excitement about the creator economy now that all these big companies are vying to be the best company at getting creators paid. That is great. I'm very happy about that as a creator myself. We couldn't be in a better position. I think over the next, you know, couple decades, there will be billions and‑‑tens of billions of dollars sent to creative people, and that is going to accelerate, you know, this coming renaissance that we foresee. So I'm very excited about that.

And then in terms of, you know, competition and what it means for Patreon, we do a lot of things differently that I think give us an advantage, and that's another reason that I'm not worried is that, you know, one, creators are who we're serving and that's it. We are serving creators. They are our priority, and on, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all these other platforms, creators are one of 50 constituents in their massive ecosystems, and they're constantly making tradeoffs that hurt creative people. And it reduces trust in those platforms, and it reduces my ability to, long term, bank on those platforms to do my thing as a creator.