Streampunks by Robert Kyncl

Author:Robert Kyncl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-07-25T04:00:00+00:00

9

Revenue Streams

Funding Creativity in the Digital Age

IF YOU WERE walking quickly down 9th Street in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, you’d probably miss the offices of the crowdfunding start-up Patreon. The company’s three-story building is painted dark gray and the windows facing the street are frosted, only letting in light, betraying no hint of the creativity inside. But inside the lobby is filled with an unmistakable energy. Young software engineers in hoodies and leather jackets sit on stools and flit between Slack channels, Javascript code, and YouTube videos. The building is full of the usual tech company conveniences: bikes are hung on the wall, and just off the lobby there’s a kitchen with the requisite espresso machine, a fridge full of free drinks, and a massive jar of protein powder atop a shelf of snacks, a common sight in typically male-dominated tech start-ups. A less common sight are the guitars hung up across from the bikes, just a few feet from a drum kit, a grand piano, and a keyboard. If there are brogrammers who work here, they can probably read sheet music.

Patreon was founded in 2013 by the musician Jack Conte, who is by turns earnest and energetic when describing the company’s founding. Jack, who is tall and slim with a shaved head and a bushy brown beard, wore a hoodie when we met. But despite dressing like a founder, he said he had never had any intention of starting a tech company. He graduated from Stanford in 2006 with a degree in music and subsequently moved in with his father to follow his dream of becoming a musician. While his friends applied to medical school or found high-paying tech and finance jobs, he played local music venues in San Francisco for “pizza and beer” and had to beg friends to come see him play. He had a semiregular gig at a laundry called BrainWash just a few blocks from Patreon’s headquarters.

“That was a really dark, dark time for me,” he said, “just because it’s scary to not know—to choose to be a musician and to not have a 401(k) and all that.” He talked about the early tours he went on, each story worse than the last. In one instance he was touring with a band who were all under twenty-one. The bouncer of the bar where they were scheduled to perform confiscated their fake IDs on the way in, leaving Jack to play the show alone. “I got in, and there was the bartender and me, the two of us. And about ten minutes into the show, the bartender left. I was playing this show with nobody in the room. That was the low point for me.” He ended up losing money on the tour.

Still he kept following his dream. He did two more tours and played both solo and together with his longtime girlfriend Nataly Dawn as the band Pomplamoose. Early in 2007, Jack stumbled on a YouTube video of a kid playing an acoustic guitar and singing a song.

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