Actually, what did VC give this company that supported their growth (actual question)? I'm a little bit surprised (having not ever looked into it) that it isn't bootstrapped. I mean, you take people's money upfront and then distribute it monthly, taking a cut. All your operations costs are covered because you are paid upfront. In fact, you should be able to squeeze out even 1 or 2 percent more because you're holding on to people's money in advance. It's recurring credit card charges, so relatively easy to manage expectations of operating expenses.
Is it mostly the social media side of the business that's eating up the money (i.e., the services for allowing the creator to interact with their patrons)?
How is Librepay doing? As they are a non-profit organisation, I suppose that probably means they are boot-strapped (barring a sugar daddy somewhere). I've barely ever heard of anyone using them, so I guess growth is slow, but are they able to fund themselves without volunteers yet?
It seems weird to me that this is not a more open playing field -- especially since these guys aren't even doing payment processing internally.
Edit: As usual, I can answer some of my own questions right after I post. Here is a statement of the progress of LibrePay: https://liberapay.com/about/stats They are distributing about 1400 Euros per week now. Interestingly as of the middle of last year, they were distributing up to 4000 Euros a week, but then it precipitously dropped off (presumably because they blocks donations from certain donors... I seem to remember hearing something about that). So, it's not big enough yet to pay anybody a salary.
I wonder how much VC money was spent on marketing and promotion. You couldn't have just invented Patreon and waited for content creators to find you by going to Google and searching for "companies that serve as middlemen for people to give you patronage money". I bet marketing and promotion was/is a nontrivial percentage of expenses.
> mean, you take people's money upfront and then distribute it monthly, taking a cut.
I don't think they do that for all creators - there's a bunch who work on an "$N per item" basis and I'm assuming those are charged at the end of the month once those items have been distributed to patrons (otherwise how would you know what to charge?)
They definitely get the money before distributing it. They will also pass any payment processing delays onto the creators, which just happened at the beginning of this month.
That really sucks. I'm sorry you went through that. What you are doing looks really great and if I get off my arse and start coding I'll probably start using your services.
If I have your ear, I'll ask you a quick question if you don't mind. I notice that you only allow donations rather than payment for some service. I'm wondering if that's due to regulatory issues for you or something else.
Quick background: I want to explore the idea of people paying for software/services in the same way that they might do with an unattended farm box in the country side. In other words, farmers often put produce in a box on the side of the road and people can freely take the produce, putting the money in a slot. There is nothing at all stopping people from just taking the produce and not paying (literally nobody but the unpaid farmer would notice), but there is a social stigma to doing so. I think there is a general understanding in the public that if you take the produce and don't leave the money that eventually the farmer will stop offering the produce. If you were starving, though, I don't think anyone would hesitate from grabbing some carrots or fruit at the side of the road (nor do I think anyone would mind overly much if it only happened occasionally).
Anyway, I want to try to recreate that idea of a farm produce box for software. The idea is that I would write some software (probably a game in my case) and make a web page. On the web page you would have 2 links: pay for software and download software. The two are not connected in any way except that the link would say "Download super game (costs $2)" or whatever.
The idea is to explicitly assign a price to the software and then just not enforce it if people don't pay. I might also have an option in the software that says something like "Pay for super game (costs $2)" which just opens the web browser to the box page. I wish to write free (as in freedom) software, so people might download the software from a different location.
I suspect that this would run afoul of your rules, so it might not be possible to use your service. Any ideas?
Edit: I should point out that in the case of LibrePay, it's a recurring weekly cost, but the idea is that the user is paying $X for a year's worth of my development, potentially paid weekly.
Is it mostly the social media side of the business that's eating up the money (i.e., the services for allowing the creator to interact with their patrons)?
How is Librepay doing? As they are a non-profit organisation, I suppose that probably means they are boot-strapped (barring a sugar daddy somewhere). I've barely ever heard of anyone using them, so I guess growth is slow, but are they able to fund themselves without volunteers yet?
It seems weird to me that this is not a more open playing field -- especially since these guys aren't even doing payment processing internally.
Edit: As usual, I can answer some of my own questions right after I post. Here is a statement of the progress of LibrePay: https://liberapay.com/about/stats They are distributing about 1400 Euros per week now. Interestingly as of the middle of last year, they were distributing up to 4000 Euros a week, but then it precipitously dropped off (presumably because they blocks donations from certain donors... I seem to remember hearing something about that). So, it's not big enough yet to pay anybody a salary.