It’s 10p.m. on a Sunday in November at California’s Burbank Airport, and Jack Conte, the typically beaming, bearded half of the husband-and-wife musical duo Pomplamoose, is leaning back in a chair, his hoodie pulled over his head, trying to get some rest. Conte, 33, spent much of the weekend in Los Angeles jamming with his funk band, Scary Pockets, and now it’s time to return to San Francisco for an entirely different type of gig: his day job running Patreon, a website and mobile app where fans pay monthly subscriptions to support their favorite creators, from painters to podcasters, singers, dancers, writers, game designers and photographers.
The moment perfectly captures what Conte lightheartedly calls his “identity crisis”: being CEO and founder of a 100-person startup (valued in September at an estimated $400 million) without completely giving up on his passion for music, which is what led him to invent Patreon in the first place. “A lot of creators depend on us being a high-performance team,” Conte says during an interview at Patreon’s San Francisco office. “That’s the most important thing in the world to me, so there’s less time for music.”
Conte’s dedication stems from a conviction that Patreon can save content creators from having to survive on digital advertising – an all but impossible task for most – or resort to one-time campaigns on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The company is built on a counter-intuitive bet that fans are willing – even eager – to pay monthly subscriptions for content that they could get for free as long as it helps support their favorite artists and it’s easy to do. There’s reason to believe he’s right. More than a million Patreon users are helping provide some 50,000 artists with a predictable monthly paycheck. “On Kickstarter and Indiegogo, creators essentially have to start over every time,” says Danny Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures who is a Patreon investor and board member. “It’s the same reason software companies went from licensed software to subscriptions: predictable revenue and better service for customers.”
Since Conte started Patreon four years ago with his Stanford University roommate Sam Yam, 33, who is CTO, the company has paid out more than $250 million to its artists – $150 million in 2017 alone. Patreon’s traction is fueled by a simple pledging system and the direct line it opens between artists and fans, or “patrons,” who get access to perks like live Q&amp;As or exclusive chats with the artists, and more casual behind-the-scenes footage than an artist might share on Instagram or Facebook. It also doesn’t hurt that being altruistic makes people feel good. In other words, Conte didn’t need to change human nature to get Patreon to work, he simply needed to facilitate the exchange between fan and artist.
While Patreon is no longer the only player in its category (Kickstarter launched a competitor called Drip in November), it is the largest – and it’s growing faster than ever. The number of patrons and creators and the amount pledged are all doubling yearly. Now Patreon is using some of the more than $100 million it has raised from investors, which include Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Freestyle Capital, to double its head count over the next year.
By some measures Patreon’s success defies logic. The average user pledges $12 per month, more than the cost of a basic subscription to Spotify or Netfl ix, which offers access to immense catalogs of video and music. (Some users pledge per piece.) Dozens of artists make more than $30,000 per month, including video reviewer Blind Wave and a capella singer Peter Hollens, who made about $400,000 on the site last year.
From the start, Patreon has taken a 5% cut of each pledge. That’s the same cut taken by Kickstarter and Indiegogo but far less than revenue-sharing programs on YouTube and Apple iTunes, which keep 45% and 30%, respectively. “The mission is to send as much money to creators as possible,” Conte says. The commissions generated an estimated $8 million in revenue last year.
Pledgers sign up for “tiers,” generally ranging from $1 to $10 – though some pay much more – for access to the artists’ perks. Ukulele performer Cynthia Lin, who offers fans live lessons, derives about half her income from Patreon and grew her fan base from 400 to 1,400 in the past year. With video “sketchbook tours” and chats, Chilean illustrator Fran Meneses pockets more than $4,000 per month, which supplements income from her Etsy shop and Instagram presence.
Creators join Patreon for free and don’t have to promise exclusivity. The site offers them instructions on how to use it most effectively. It also provides a growing list of back-office tools such as analytics and email management to help creators run membership campaigns modeled on those of NPR stations.
For now, Patreon is designed for creators who already have established followings but aren’t household names. Long term, Conte hopes to help fund bigger names and prove that technology can help restore the financial underpinnings for content creators that the internet has largely eroded.
Patreon’s artists-first ethos may be lucrative for some, but it comes with pitfalls, especially in a world where digital business models change frequently. “Creators need to diversify their incomes as much as possible so the rug can’t be pulled out from under them,” says Laura Chernikoff , executive director of the Internet Creators Guild.
For Conte the mission is personal. He grew up in bohemian-chic Marin County, just north of San Francisco, and was hooked on music from the age of six, when his father taught him the blues scale. While studying music and composition at Stanford, he started making YouTube videos with his then girlfriend, Nataly Knutsen, in 2007. (The two married in 2016.) In 2013 he drained his savings account, maxed out two credit cards and spent three months making an electronic music video, complete with robots and a replica of the Millennium Falcon cockpit. His fans loved the video, which got more than a million YouTube views in its first year. However, Conte pocketed just $54 from ad revenue over the video’s first month. To date, it has generated about $1,000. Not including Conte’s time, it had cost more than $10,000 to make. “It was this rock-bottom moment for me as a creator,” Conte says. He knew he’d created something of value but would never be paid for it. “That discrepancy led directly to the formation of Patreon,” he adds.
Conte discussed his idea with Yam, who programmed the site in months. It went live in May 2013, and within minutes more than 100 fans were pledging upwards of $700 a month to support Conte’s work. Within months Patreon had investors.
Conte is now eyeing a number of opportunities for growth. First is overseas expansion: The site is in English and takes only U.S. dollars, yet 40% of patrons are outside the U.S. Over time, Conte imagines more immersive features, such as virtual reality concerts. Farther out are somewhat fuzzy notions of turning Patreon into a provider of small-business services, including ticketing and merchandising, to help artists turn their passions into professions. “Artists don’t have to starve anymore,” Conte says. &#8211; Written by Kathleen Chaykowski

Digital Medici

Ask someone for a large donation and the person is likely to balk. If considerate, a polite plea to mull it for a while might be made. Ask for something smaller, akin to pocket change, and there probably would not be much resistance to it. That is the underlying wisdom behind crowdfunding.
The network effect of the internet means small donations from a vast number of people can amount to a lot. Now imagine if, instead of a charitable course, the proposition is one of profit, naturally with some risk. It has the potential to attract many takers.
But how is that any different from the normal stock or bond issuance process? Do interested investors not similarly take as many units of a share or bond sale as they want or can afford? Well, crowdfunding avoids the regulators and transcends borders. Of course, these supposed advantages also come with risks. Even so, they provide an opportunity for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to secure alternative sources of financing in difficult environments; especially in African countries where SMEs constitute more than 90% of businesses, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC). SMEs also account for about 80% of employment in Africa. Top among their challenges is access to credit; which even when they are able to secure, is usually at exorbitant interest rates.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2018/02/15/first-peace-progress/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: First Peace, Then Progress</a>
Crowdfunding, a form of so-called “alternative debt”, is just one of a few new approaches to financing SMEs. Asset-based finance is already widely used. Approaches other than the typical bank debt are beginning to be used, with fancy titles like hybrid instruments and equity instruments, albeit limitedly, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Crowdfunding is different in that it is mostly project-focused, as opposed to financing the entire business. Although still mostly debt financing, equity type financing is beginning to evolve. Whether it is via donations, reward or sponsorship, pre-selling or pre-ordering, lending or equity, not needing an intermediary other than the platform through which the financing is facilitated is a key attraction. And potential returns to backers need not be financial. For the reward or sponshorship type, an acknowledgement, service or token of appreciation suffices.
As the name implies, investors who back a venture in the pre-selling or pre-ordering format sometimes expect no more than the product they backed before it gets to the mass market; and may be at a much lower price. In the lending format, it is the typical payment of interest and principal that one finds in other credit environments that prevails. Alternatively, the parties could agree to share revenue and thus partake in the risk of the venture. And the equity form is no more than the investors buying into the venture via shares.
Global crowdfunding financing was $34.4 billion in 2015 and more than 70% of it was through lending, according to a 2016 report by research firm Massolution. How much of this went to Africa? A paltry $24.2 million, which is less than 1%. Most crowdfunding financing still takes place in North America ($17.25 billion) and Europe ($6.48 billion); about 70% of the global total.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2018/01/15/change-rules-rewarded/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Change The Rules And Be Rewarded</a>
Since crowdfunding has so far been limited in Africa, what is the potential for indigenous platforms? A sense of this potential would first have to be inferred from current savings in African countries of about 15% of GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is not ideal. What funds could potentially be put into such ventures are increasingly destined for ponzi-type schemes that offer ridiculously high returns. That is not to say there is no potential. In Nigeria recently, funds were successfully raised for the family of a deceased policeman via crowdfunding. But if the object is a business venture, without the sentimentality of a supposed noble cause, how easy would it be to similarly mobilize funds?
It seems the potential is limited – for now at least. &#8211; Written by Victor Mamora

Is Africa Ripe For Crowdfunding?

Banks and investors are reluctant to risk money in untested projects. Start-ups are left penniless and broken across Africa. Nairobi-based entrepreneur Erik Hersman struggled for capital from banks unwilling to take a risk. Crowdfunding was the answer.
“We had to make sure that we made this innovation come alive and crowdfunding made it easier. Although the process of marketing the idea while being funded is hard, it is worth it,” he says.
Through online crowdfunding platforms, people pledge small amounts of money to projects for 90 days, for a reward.
Hersman turned to crowdfunding and met people that gave his new business a lifeline.
“It wasn’t just about raising money for the project but we also wanted to test out if anyone else wanted this product. Sometimes something sounds great in our heads but no one else would be interested,” he says.
Using Kickstarter, one of the many crowdfunding sites in Africa, he raised over $160,000 for BRCK – a device that helps people go online where electricity is scarce. It can hop between Ethernet, Wi-Fi and 3G and 4G.
“We looked at the market and we were asking ourselves, why are we trying to connect to the internet using devices that are made in Europe and the US when we have a different infrastructure in Kenya; so we started designing and developing a new way to connect to the internet.”
BRCK began shipping units in July 2014. Thousands had been sold to 54 countries by February 2015. The company employs 40 people.
Hersman is grateful for crowdfunding and says entrepreneurs should use it.
“It is not currently well used and understood in the continent but I wish more people could make use of it,” he says.
Entrepreneur Patrick Schofield, co-founder of Thundafund, a crowdfunding site based in Cape Town, says many businesses fail in their first year and good ideas rarely see the light of day.
“Crowdfunding is the most powerful mechanism we have in Africa. If you have a really good idea and people like it, they will support it. People can put $100 for a good idea, for example, but they are sceptical to put down $5,000 for something that hasn’t been tested,” says Schofield.
“Through the process of the campaign, we test if the idea is viable and if there is a market for it. The entrepreneurs say how much they need to execute their plan. If the target is not reached, the donated funds are returned to the funders.”
Thundafund claims it has funded 170 projects worth R6,123,843 ($550,000).
“There are a lot of ideas around how you can thank or reward backers. This is a very important part of crowdfunding because it will determine how well your campaign will do. For example, you can offer the product you want funding to create as reward, early access to the product or service for example when looking for funding for an album, you will offer signed CDs, VIP access to shows; you can make your backers part of the project and much more,” says Schofield.
Crowdfunding platforms like Malaik, AngelList, EarlyShares, and Seedrs offer equity.
Malaik spokesperson, Vias Lustig, says equity crowdfunding is great, but has drawbacks if not well managed.
“An early-stage company that has raised financing from a hundred different investors through an equity crowdfunding platform will have more trouble getting follow-on investment from venture capitalists,” says Lustig.
Malaik, based in West Africa, acts as a nominee. All the crowdfunded money is channelled through a special purpose vehicle (company formed for investing in equity) that appears on the entrepreneur’s books as a sole investor.
“Smaller investors that participate in equity-crowdfunding are also less likely to contribute and help the entrepreneurs with their business plan, since they have smaller incentives. Malaik also thought about curbing this when developing its model by adopting a lead investor format, this way the lead investor takes at least 25% of the equity round, thus ensuring the company has a larger, more invested individual that can possibly act as an advisor,” says Lustig.
Lustig claims equity crowdfunding could take advantage of the $140 billion to $160 billion gap in finance for African SMEs, because they enable many investors to commit small amounts of capital that would usually be out of the question.
The founder of London-based The Crowdfunding Centre, Barry James, says crowdfunding has not had a massive impact in Africa because of a lack of awareness.
“The UK lagged far behind the US four or five years ago until we started to tackle this. Even now, only a small percentage of people in either country are getting the help and funding they could from crowdfunding, so it has a long way to go,” he says.
“If you’re writing a book, the best advice is to write about what you know. The same is true with crowdfunding and entrepreneurship. That said, campaigns in the tech category tend to raise the most money, while games and comics have the highest rate of success – around 50 percent.”
In South Africa, Schofield says consumer products, arts and entertainment projects are the most supported.
The future could be brighter for struggling entrepreneurs, if you have a dream that draws a crowd.

Tag: Crowdfunding

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Digital Medici

Is Africa Ripe For Crowdfunding?

If you want to get Ahead Draw A Crowd – But Be Careful