
Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor - artsandsci
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/15/16652582/kickstarter-drip-creator-subscription-service-announced-perry-chen-interview
======
zanny
Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most
fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service
operated by a for profit company that now controls the incomes of thousands,
ranging from hobbyist artists to major productions like Crash Course.

It is like everything that is wrong with Facebook (the lock in from networking
effects to a closed ecosystem) but made even worse by making peoples
livelihoods depend on it. If there has ever been anything more deserving of if
not full decentralization some protection from the controlling interest
destroying people on a whim it is Patreon.

The PBC nature of Kickstarter doesn't wholly solve this, not even close, but
it implies they at least cannot do unethical things to try to increase revenue
on the platform by exploiting its dependent creators. Thats a small step in
the right direction.

~~~
quadrangle
To be clear:

A PBC just means they have _some_ value that they will _not_ sacrifice for
profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are
democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. _Not_ being a PBC is
basically unethical _always_ (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to
NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or
non-profit.

Also, even with Patreon being _not_ a PBC, it's horrendous to compare them to
Facebook. Facebook is an evil corporation that spends tons of resources
promoting surveillance, advertising, and manipulation (and gaining power to
dramatically influence politics etc). Facebook is exploitive and actively
malicious. For all the real complaints about Patreon, they are doing stuff
that is largely positive at least and is in direct opposition to the
surveillance-capitalism of Facebook. There is NO COMPARISON. Facebook is
plainly awful. Patreon is a good concept run by good people with some _real_
problems that make it worth looking at the competition.

~~~
zanny
Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to
exert real political influence. I'm not a fan of putting the future of content
creation into the hands of the founders or eventual investors when Patreon
inevitably goes public because they are just as likely to turn just as evil as
Facebook if you gave them the same colossal war chest Facebook has, and
Patreon has a much more reliable revenue stream to fund such endeavors - their
whole platform is about transferring money and they just take a cut. By
comparison Twitter could easily have turned out as hostile to personal privacy
as Facebook if they had won the advertising lottery that Facebook did to
become so valuable.

In general you simply don't get ethical corporations. They have no reason to
be, and ethics hurts profits and produces vectors for competition to capture
your market through predatory behavior. That is why I said I _only_ like this
_because_ of the PBC - it is barely better than Patreon, but it _is_ better
than Patreon, and we don't have a viable freedom respecting alternative yet
and going forward its going to just get harder and harder if Patreon is
allowed to amass network effects the way it has in the last few years.

~~~
quadrangle
> Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to
> exert real political influence.

This evaluation is very shallow. Facebook has been a manipulative and
unethical corporation for years, maybe forever. It's _true_ that lots of
companies start out fine and _then_ start abusing their power once they get
big. But Facebook is that _and_ is unethical in other ways _also_.

By design, Facebook is about collecting deep personal info, capturing
_attention_ and then _selling_ your attention to the highest bidder. The very
design of Patreon is in opposition to this. Even if Patreon were the most
unethical abuser of their power, they would then be the worst in the basically
ethical market of funding creative work directly. And Patreon isn't abusing
their power dramatically right now and may never get there.

Facebook is already being the worst in a fundamentally unethical market based
on getting attention and selling it to advertisers.

Your points about corporations and ethics are broadly true. But that doesn't
mean that there aren't better and worse. We should be skeptical of all for-
profit entities, especially VC-backed and stock-based ones. But they aren't
all equal. Some are worse than others and some are by-design worse.

It's basically impossible for Patreon to turn into something as horrendous as
Facebook. Patreon could get pretty bad and that would still be true.

~~~
zanny
Patreon has been pushing features to publish content on their platform. They
already have correlated user data not only between what people like, but what
they are willing to pay for, and have mounds of comments and pledge data about
all that behavior.

Patreon isn't _about_ collecting personal info, but people are giving them
personal info by the boatload and Patreon remains a private corporation at the
end of the day. If they get big enough they will be presented with an
opportunity to exert Facebook class influence, especially if (this is my fear)
content creators start using patreon as their _only_ platform, where they
don't release their creative endeavors on other sites and services, the same
way a lot of people _only_ interact with others online via Facebook. The
difference is good content creators are making legitimately valuable
information unlike what the vast majority of Facebook is.

The crowding out effects of Facebook just limit access to insular echo
chambers. The crowding out effects of Patreon, taken to the scale of Facebook,
crowd out the market for artists, musicians, animators, game developers,
software creators, almost any creative profession that gets so centralized on
Patreon that operating in that industry de facto requires using Patreon. We
are not nearly there yet, but given Patreons growth curve (and with knowledge
of the growth rates of other abusive centralized services like Facebook) it is
not something to just ignore the potential of.

There is always the possibility Patreon can be using its data already for
nefarious purposes. We have no idea, the data is private, and if they are
violating their own data collection TOS thats only a problem if users find out
about it. Bulk collection by dozens of web properties has been going on for
decades without consequences despite bogus terms of service and data privacy
agreements, the fundamental problem with all those services is how little
people care or are aware of the dangers of giving information freely.

~~~
quadrangle
Patreon will never be as large as Facebook. Your concerns about Patreon acting
against the public good are VALID as are your concerns about them becoming a
monopoly (although they are not that right now).

Get this straight: I'm not AT ALL defending Patreon. But to compare them to
Facebook is to fail to realize how deeply horrible Facebook is. I'm not saying
Patreon is better than you say they are. I'm saying Facebook is far WORSE than
you suggest.

------
wmeredith
I haven't read the article, but the branding absolutely sucks. When trying to
generate income, Drip, is hardly the connotation I'd want. They should have
gone with Flood or Tide. Something big and powerful MADE of Drips. I get what
they were going for, but it seems like a tone deaf misfire.

EDIT: And, as u/aronarduino pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the name is
already taken (and the TLD drip.com) by a well established tech product.

~~~
lolsal
I think the point is not to attract people willing to take money in drips, but
people willing to give money in drips. The taking side is the easy side.
Getting people to give is the difficult side.

~~~
chx
Really? The music that some people make (in my case, Peter Hollens, Taylor
Davis, Clamavi De Profundis) makes me so happy I am very glad to give so they
can make me more. In this world, it seems a very easy thing to understand that
they can only make music if they are paid for it. This is the ideal model,
there is no greedy studio stealing most of the money, I am directly connected
to the artist, it just makes so much sense to give a few dollars. And also, I
am not paying a lot here compared to the amount of quality entertainment time
I get.

~~~
lolsal
I don't really understand what your comment has to do with my comment.

> This is the ideal model, there is no greedy studio stealing most of the
> money

They don't steal most of the money. They are paid according to whatever
agreement they have between themselves and the artist. Typically for services
rendered, like providing recording, mastering and marketing services.

------
captainmuon
I would like to hijacked this post to also mention Liberapay
([https://liberapay.com](https://liberapay.com)) which is a fork of GitTip and
ran by one of the original devs. I like it because it is a small, independent
competitor to Patreon. It seems more suited to things that are not "art" or
"internet celebrity", e.g. open source projects or political initiatives. It
is like GitTip before the name change to Gratipay in that you don't need
concrete rewards and it also funds individuals. (IIRC Gratipay introduced
those changes to get around "money transferrer" laws that didn't allow them to
send money no-strings-attached to individuals. Liberapay gets around this by
being in EU jurisdiction).

It's still pretty small, but looks cool, and I'd love to see it succeed.

~~~
smichel17
If I might hijack this comment, I'd like to mention Snowdrift.coop as well,
which is targeted at free/libre/open works. ("Disclaimer": I am a member of
our fully volunteer team.)

Snowdrift.coop functions in a similar no-strings-attached style to Liberapay,
but uses a unique donation model, called Crowdmatching, where the amount of
the monthly donation is based on the number of patrons. The platform itself
will be funded as a project on its own site (rather than taking a cut of
donations), and will be run as a non-profit cooperative (getting governance
set up is one of our top priorities right now, alongside a public launch; if
anyone has experience/expertise and would like to help with this, please reach
out).

The best introduction, although visually outdated, is probably the intro page
on our wiki:
[https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/intro/](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/intro/)

I wish I had time to stick around and chat, but it's a busy time in my
semester right now; there's a wealth of adfitional information on the wiki and
there's usually people around in irc/matrix (#snowdrift on freenode /
matrix.org; the rooms are bridged).

~~~
hsod
Your wiki link is giving me this error, FYI:

Happstack 7.4.6.1

Something went wrong here Internal server error Everything has stopped

The error was "NotFound"

~~~
quadrangle
The link given above was wrong. There's no final slash. It's just:
[https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/intro](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/intro)

Anyway, it would be better to get a not so bad not-found page. Also, better
intro stuff for Snowdrift.coop is planned to be published soon.

------
annapurna
As the article mentions, there are many players in this area and time will
tell how Kickstarter leverages their brand to succeed, especially as it is an
invitation list only (for now).

Some interesting thoughts from Perry Chen (Kickstarter Co-founder and
Chairman): _“If you look at a lot of companies, it’s COO, CMO, blah, blah,
blah,” Chen said. “But look at a museum. You might have a CEO or director, but
then you might have a curator. There is a very specific articulation of roles
and lanes, and I think that’s really necessary for Kickstarter, trying to be a
different kind of company over a long period of time. If you have operators
coming with the classic business playbook, I don’t think we’ll be able to
sustain our focus on our mission.”_

As for comments regarding the name, you get an idea of why they might have
leaned towards drip. On one of the artist's page [1], you see there are
different tiers for supporting his project:

1\. Dripper [$3/month]

2\. Drizzler [$7/month]

3\. Sprayer [$15/month]

[1][https://d.rip/peter](https://d.rip/peter)

~~~
neaden
Those are absolutely awful names for tiers.

~~~
abiox
surely an intentional thing. i'd be tempted to do the same, honestly.

~~~
dkersten
Sure, but they're still terrible (and IMHO somewhat off-putting) tier names.
Nothing about the drip branding is making me consider using it, given that I
already back a number of people on Patreon. (Of course, there's more to a
product than branding, so we will see -- EDIT: as somebody else mentioned,
Kickstarter being a PBC does make me more inclined to support this, despite
its bad branding)

------
DamnInteresting
I had an idea for a competitor in the Patreon space a couple of years ago, but
with a twist that I feel would have made "patrons" much more comfortable with
the whole thing. I even registered a domain, started on some coding, and
consulted with some designers. But it quickly became apparent that financial
gateways (credit cards, Paypal, etc) are hostile to the idea of allowing me to
charge customer A, keep a cut, and pay customer B. Terms of service usually
forbid this sort of action.

How does one circumvent this hostility? Obviously it's possible, since Patreon
and Drip exist, but I didn't know where to start. I still think my idea is
worth a try, but I'm stuck.

~~~
no1youknowz
I was going to write the exact same response. One day I'm going to write a
blog post because the overwhelming response has been very hostile. Even when
companies advertise that they do it.

Here's my experience so far:

Adyen.

Overwhelmingly hostile to startups. All telephone numbers get routed to
support. So if you call sales, someone in support answers. The individual who
answers the phone also has very basic knowledge of their product line.

Each office that I contacted (US, Europe/London and Europe/Amsterdam. All gave
differing reasons why I was not suited. Where it last ended, because I wasn't
doing $1m a month. I was not a suitable candidate for their services. Even
though someone in the London office did mention I could email my business plan
in, although there was no chain of custody and who knows who would be looking
at it or when they would come back to me. I think they were really saying that
to make me feel better.

So really. How can I get to $1m/month, if I cannot start?

Braintree.

Had good response with braintree, was about to pull the trigger. But then
their marketplace solution has been superseded by paypal's new offering of
marketplaces.

Paypal.

Called their business team and been forwarded to partnerships. Can't get a
hold of their partnership team as they don't have an email or telephone
number. 14 days has passed by and all I'm looking for is a simple yes or no. I
have filled in their contact form (3 weeks ago) here:
[https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/partner-
program/contac...](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/partner-
program/contact-us?ref=marketplace) But never hear anything back.

Stripe.

Even though this was my initial provider to go with. It's currently a non-
starter and I am leery to approach them. With no actual phone number to
contact them on and previous email exchanges being less than steller and not
having someone who actually could understand the business model. Note: Shopify
is doing the same for heavens sake (yes I am frustrated lol).

Additionally, I am not in the US, so there is also the extra hurdle of having
to go through stripe atlas. But again, not really wanting to forward my
business plan into the void.

If Stripe had a phone number that I can call, I would investigate that
possibility. Can't really understand when I can call lots of other finance
companies. I can't get hold of Stripe directly.

Worldpay.

Didn't understand my business model. Even though they promote themselves as
being able to deliver complex solutions. It was determined that they could not
support my marketplace.

\------

Finally, if anyone is reading this and is from an acquirer in the US or
perhaps from the companies mentioned above. Or perhaps a partner of stripe-
atlas so I don't have to wait two weeks/direct contact. Please let me know. My
forecast is that there will be a tipping point in the first year where I will
be doing $5m a month.

The sad part here. The development of the platform/marketplace. This was the
easy part. The difficult part, is finding someone high-up enough the ladder to
see that they will be on-boarding a company who their closest competitor is
now doing $100m a year. Where that competitor is tiny in the overall
competitive space.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Cryptocurrency?

~~~
no1youknowz
Believe it or not. I have looked at this and it's now on my roadmap. As with
the business that I am launching, there are additional services to come
online. I'll either start my own ICO or using another coin is part of that.
Whichever is the path of least resistance!

I have seen that no limit coin can be purchased by Visa and there are stores
in the US that take that for physical products.

So as Mike Tyson says: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the
mouth."

Believe me, I've been punched quite often on this journey of mine. I'll
happily investigate every path available.

~~~
s73ver_
Why do you need your own coin? What value would your own coin bring to anyone
else?

~~~
agentdrtran
this guy sounds nuts

------
seibelj
My idea for paying for open source code would be to auto-scan your codebase,
find all open source projects, let you set a donation amount ($5, $10, $100,
$1000) per month, and it would auto-donate to every project. Then give you a
nice tax writeoff summary for the non-profits.

Obviously many details to work out, but I could see a company willing to pay
$500 per month if it was easy to donate to all the tools and projects they
use.

~~~
olalonde
The problem with this approach is that trivial libraries (e.g.
[https://github.com/visionmedia/debug](https://github.com/visionmedia/debug))
that are widely used would get a disproportionate amount of donations.

~~~
freeone3000
That doesn't sound like a problem. If it's so widely-used, is it really
trivial?

~~~
unholiness
I mean... yes. Some libraries would be easily replaced if they didn't exist.
Others took substantial effort and deliver substantial value.

------
aaronarduino
Kinda surprised they picked that name considering Drip [1] has been around for
a while.

[1] [https://www.drip.com/](https://www.drip.com/)

~~~
hundchenkatze
Yeah, the name is all kinds of weird. If I give someone money through Drip am
I Dripper? Sounds gross.

~~~
kegan_myers_asy
You are a defective faucet. Every time you contribute you are sending a
droplet. Content creators are a drain.

This analogy isn't getting any better.

~~~
stevehawk
Either that or he has chlamydia or syphillis.

------
edgarvaldes
The first image as a bleeding and broken logo is sad. But the idea seems
interesting, and I think that to have a Patreon competitor is healty for the
content creators.

------
dlwdlw
Is this something that be automated by a sufficiently advanced smart contract?
It seems strange that energy is directed towards creating yet another market
with yet another moat to capture money when such a service should be forced as
close as possible to commodity pricing.

------
Sujan
I was automatically logged in on their domain [https://d.rip/](https://d.rip/)
with my Kickstarter account, no redirect happening (as far as I could see).

How?

~~~
pierrebeaucamp
Third party cookies

------
hitekker
Where should I go to short Kickstarter? I know they didn't go public so I'd
like the next best way to invest in their likely outcome.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
The founder guy sounds kinda naive and strange. The only way to provide the
most value to users is scale.

~~~
subpixel
Think of it this way: he has his ‘f __* you’ money and Kickstarter was his
idea to begin with and they still rake in millions and he’s happy to
experiment at the artsy-end of the market.

That may or may not make impeccable business sense but he’s structured the
business so he can follow that ‘mission’.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
I was just taking him at his word, I think at some point in the article he was
quoted about providing value to users or something. But yes I agree with you
in general, he wants to mess around and experiment and let his ego rule his
little kingdom.

------
Sujan
Awesome domain: [https://d.rip/](https://d.rip/)

------
throw7
d.rip is javascript-only site.

