BIG INTV: Patreon CEO Jack Conte Wants You to Get Off of Your Phone

0:09Hello and welcome everybody to Wired's Uncanny Valley, the live show in partnership with the one and only listener supported KQED. Of course, we are coming to you from the commons in the heart of San Francisco. I am Katie Drummond. It is truly me, Wired Magazine's global editorial director. And we have a great show for you tonight. Joining me on stage is co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a company that could only have existed in the internet age and is at the heart of keeping creators able to create. So I am so thrilled to bring out Bay Area native Jack Conte.

0:49Hello. we were talking backstage about how we would greet each other and he had a very elaborate handshake in mind and i said i couldn't possibly we will we will not be doing that jack thank you so much for being here in front of all of our new friends uh here in this public auditorium uh to be interviewed for wired's new podcast the big interview which you can listen to on uncanny valley feed now before we yes before we really get too far into it we always start with a little bit of rapid fire, some warmup. Great. So are you ready for your warmup? Okay, let's go. Jack, what is the most active text thread that you're on?

1:27I am not on any active text threads. I try to do as little of that as possible. Very interesting. Okay, we may come back to that later. What does the algorithm know about you? Way too much. Oh, yeah. I know the feeling. um it knows that uh that i got a new dog recently oh what kind of dog i it's she's a mutt she's um a little bit of a golden retriever a little bit of uh chihuahua some pitbull um she's kind of everything she's the most beautiful creature i love her pitbull mutts are you getting like ads for dog food now yes yeah yeah i know that feeling what is a piece of tech that changed your life um um DAWs digital audio workstations okay did not see that coming um the the transition from having to have half a million dollars of recording gear to make an album to being able to make an album on your laptop um it's the most beautiful wonderful thing in the world what is your favorite way to spend a Saturday in the Bay Area I have to ask.

2:38You're from here. We are here. It's a new, sorry to bring up the dog twice, but she just learned that she can just run straight into the ocean. And it's so great. I love it. And so I throw sticks for her into the ocean. She bolts into the ocean totally fearlessly, swims around, looks for him. It's great. It's the best thing in the world. What music app do you use the most? Spotify. Spotify. Yeah. Okay. That's on the record. so let's give our audience let's give our audience a little bit of your backstory just in case they don't have it so you were born and raised here in san francisco and music to you know your earlier answer to that question about piece of tech has always been in your life so you studied music composition at stanford you founded patreon with your college roommate in 2013 and that was in response actually to a personal experience right can you tell us a little bit about that um yes so I have a, um, a band called Pomplamoose, um, which we started in, you know, 2007, 2008, like right at the beginning of creators before the word creator existed.

3:39Um, we were uploading and, and, um, reaching a community and building a fan base and putting our music online and it was working, um, and, uh, wonderful. But the, the business model around being an early creator on the internet in 2010, you know, we had to jump through a million hoops, we had to build all our own website, I was building my own websites to sell mp3s, to make my living, which worked. And, but it was like, everything was bespoke, and we had to do everything ourselves. So it was also the day and age, I don't know if, you know, it's hard to go back 15 years now at this point. But there was a period where the word creator economy didn't exist, the word creator didn't exist um if you told the platforms that like maybe you would like to be paid for uploading work to their platform they'd say oh you don't have to upload work to our platform and we'd be like yeah i know but i am and it's like building a lot of value for you and like it'd be nice if i got paid for like being an artist and giving you media for free um and and yeah the attitude at that time was like uh if you don't want to upload media don't upload media.

4:50And, and yeah, that was really frustrating for me as a creative person. Because, you know, what I was seeing from my end was, wait a minute, there's, you know, upload a video, get a million views on that video, there'd be 10 ,000 comments. And I would, I felt like I was really building something valuable and doing something valuable. And then I'd get my ad revenue check for$180 at the end of the month. And I'd be like, this is fucking crazy. This is crazy that that humanity is just accepting this system that we have designed and deployed globally um as a way to usher us into the next phase of artistry and and specifically digital artistry that felt really bad to me as a as a creative person as an artist and um i didn't want to take it um and so yeah that's where patreon came from and you didn't take it in 2019 wired always prescient I like to think um did a feature on you and patreon and the subhead on that story reads as follows the diy musicians membership platform set out to provide a livelihood for artists on the internet is it more than just a band-aid for a broken system so that was six years ago band-aid for a broken system how would you respond to that question today um the system is broken.

6:15Now there are a number of systems that are broken for artists and creators. I would still argue that the platforms undervalue creative people and media makers, which is, I think, just like a cultural thing in tech, honestly. The undervaluing of the makers, of the people who tell stories and those skill sets and media creators and storytellers. And so, yes, I think the system is still broken. I don't think of Patreon as a band-aid. Surprise, surprise. And maybe the reason why is because what we want to do is change the way the internet works. And specifically, there's a new problem that we've been tackling over the last five years, which is as the internet kind of TikTokified and moved from being a follow-based subscription system where you would choose who you want to interact with and see and what media you would want from which people as it moved from that and into a algorithmically curated format where you don't decide what you see the platform decides what you see the net result of that is you see 500 creators in one day and instead of forming deep relationships with those creators you just skim the surface with a it's sort of focused on breadth instead of depth.

7:39That is bad for fans because I think you lack the depth of connection with one person over time and watch that person evolve and you miss out on seeing how their mind changes and what they think about and the sort of deep personal relationship you can form with that person. And it's bad for creators because it makes it really hard to build a business in a community. If you can't keep in touch with your fans, how can you have a community? How can you have a a business? How can you sell concert tickets? How can you go on tour? How can you sell your course? How can you sell a membership, do any of those things?

8:14And so this has become a very important problem for our creators and something that we want to change about the way the internet works. And so, yeah, the way we're thinking about Patreon now is sort of phase one was this payments platform, which was very much solving the problem of creators being undervalued on these systems that existed in the internet. And you've paid out just a mind-boggling amount of money. I mean, I think, right, it's$10 billion. Yeah, we just crossed$10 billion paid out to creative people. That's nuts. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. It's good to applaud for good things. There aren't enough of them right now.

8:51Well, I mean, what I would say about that is that's a testament to the power of creative people, Right. And what feels so good about that to me is it is it is proof that art and artists are valuable. That's what it is. It's proof that people who have something to say and are creative and stand on the shoulders of giants and do something differently and take risks and try things and build communities. It's proof that there is value in that. And as an artist, it's so easy to look at these freaking dashboards. You take out your phone, you look at your view count, you look at your like count, you look at your ad revenue.

9:31You do that for seven or eight years and you start to feel like you feel worthless in those systems as an artist. And so what feels so good about hitting 10 billion is it's not that art isn't valuable. It's that those systems are dumb and need to be changed. Well, so the TikTok-ification that you were talking about a few minutes ago, the sort of the breadth and not the depth. How do you solve for that? Yeah. I think there's a couple key things. the main overarching thing is you build a system, and this is what we're doing, that isn't singularly focused on maximizing human attention. Most of the internet is singularly focused on optimizing one metric, time spent in that app.

10:34And say what you want about that. it's had some pretty horrible effects on people. I think humanity is having a rough entrance into the information age. And that is one of the core issues is we all wonder why we're being sucked into my phones. I have to set a time limit for myself on some of these apps because I'm sucked in my phone and I know what's going on. And I'm still sucked in. I hate it. I don't want that. time spent creates all types of perverse incentives for the platform for the consumer for the advertiser for the creator and what you end up with is stuff that you pay attention to instead of stuff that you value and that is bad for people and it should change and so what we want to do is build a system where the incentive is stuff that is valuable, media that is valuable, stories that are valuable.

11:37And how do we measure value? Instead of optimizing around whatever I will pay attention to, which actually is just hacking the human limbic system and A-B testing your way to the bottom of someone's brainstem and figuring out what will suck them in, which is not what a human values. Instead of doing that, what will someone pay for? What makes someone go deeper with a creator over time? What makes someone interested in seeing that creator's post again and then again and then again? You know, eight weeks down the road, a year down the road, two years down the road. What makes someone trust a person so much that they're interested in the recommendations from that person?

12:17So they now recommend a different creator. And now as a fan, I go follow that creator, too, because I have so much trust for this person. How can we build a system that optimizes for long-term human connection? and deep relationships instead of just addicting people to their phones. I want to ask you about the influencerization, which is a word now that I made up. Solid word. Thank you. That Patreon has sort of obviously tracked very closely with the expansion of this idea of being an influencer, right? I would say that you were also sort of integral to that phenomenon booming in the first place, right?

12:56And it's not just musicians, right? It's musicians, comedians, it's self-help gurus, it's podcasters, it's journalists. Not everyone is a fan of that trend, right? And I think there are gives and takes and pros and cons. I mean, I could tell you within the field of journalism to be publishing the kind of journalism that we publish at Wired and then to realize that someone with no credentials, with no training, with no actual reporting is playing the part of newscaster, right? and is reaching and finding trust with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, maybe they're pocketing money from the DNC and not disclosing it, which is a story that Wired published recently to much controversy.

13:38What do you make of the puts and takes there? And sort of how do you feel like, what role does Patreon play in trying to make sure that the influencerization, my word, of the internet is in service of that healthy ecosystem that you were so obviously seeking? Yeah, a couple of thoughts on that. And maybe before I get to the meat of that question, even the word influencer, I really hate that word. I hate it and I don't use it. And I don't use it because - So creator, not influencer for you. And I think there's a difference. And the way I think about it, there's a big difference.

14:20Influencer, such a bad word. it's i it's not actually my word i just added the thing no i'm not it's no knock on you it's it's it's that like to call a person it's it's such the way a brand thinks about an artist it's the way a company it's like what is the commodity in you that i can extract and use for my benefit it is your influence a lot of people take great pride in being an influencer yes and um actually the people that do the best on Patreon, I think it feels more like a creator and less like an influencer. I'm not saying there aren't any influencers on Patreon. I'm sure there are. But like, so the interesting thing about Patreon is it is what people will pay for, which is a decision that you make kind of with your forebrain.

15:12You don't make it with your lizard brain. With the this brain. With the that brain, exactly. It's like, what is so important to me that I want to pay five bucks a month? And if you think about the companies that have kind of instituted consumer payments into their media offerings, there are companies that focus on making really high quality stuff. And then, I guess, New York Times is an example, or The Guardian is an example. And then there's a bunch of creators who have a paid offering. Um, and you only convert on a paid offering if it's worth paying for, um, which means it's like valuable to the end person who's getting it.

15:58I would offer a lot of the time, the sort of what you're bucketing as an influencer is a bit of a come and go clickbait, um, fast dopamine hit kind of, um, function that is possible. You can do that on YouTube. You can do that on Instagram. but I don't know that you can build like a deep lasting business and community around that as much as you can focusing on like high quality media.

16:37For some people in the audience and certainly some people who will be listening to this after the fact, I'm guessing they're tuning in because we're interviewing you and they want to be successful on Patreon. Whether they conceive of themselves as influencers, as creators, they see that career path. And it is a very viable career path now for people. I mean, ask my eight-year-old, this is the only thing they're interested in doing with their lives. What advice do you have for those people, whatever field they're in, to be truly successful, to make this a career, to give this actual depth? Don't compromise.

17:12Make something beautiful. Make something important. Make something that you love, deeply care about. Be careful with writing the internet algo and getting the clicks and getting the hits. It's an easy way to get started. I'm guilty of it. I have done that. and it's a good tool in your toolkit but every time I've over rotated in that direction I look back at the end of three years and I have this feeling of like what the fuck am I doing with my life? Like why am I making all this stuff that I don't even care about but that will perform? That sort of like outcome oriented artistry is not I think why kids get into the game of being an artist.

17:58I think they get into the game of being an artist because they have a desire to self-express, which is like a deep human desire and is important for other people to see. Like really great people who deeply self-express help other people feel less alone because you say something that other people are afraid to say. And my favorite artists were excellent at this, right? Like David Bowie and Prince and Ella Fitzgerald and Elle Mills and Hank Green. You know, these are people who like say something with their work and I see what they say and I feel connected to them. And so my advice to people who want to be artists is like, say something that you want to say deeply.

18:49Say something important. Say something that is meaningful to you. Express something that you're a little scared to say. Something that's a little bit risky. there's value in that. And you will find a path to making everything else work. You're talking a lot about human-created work, human connection. As you're talking, I can sort of picture a version of the internet as you describe it. We've talked a little bit about the system still being broken, which brings me to AI. And I have to ask you... A what? It's artificial intelligence. Oh, right. A1. A few years ago, chat GPT. So obviously Wired and everybody else has been covering the hell out of AI, but in particular copyright lawsuits, right, against companies that have trained their models on the IP of creatives, of creators, of authors, of journalists, of musicians, so forth.

19:45Talk to me about how you are thinking about artificial intelligence in the context of Patreon, in the context of the internet that you want to see. what are the risks to you what are the risks to the creators that you support give it to us i mean this could be a whole podcast um so um yeah maybe like first things first which is just that um i think it's crazy that uh creators work is being used to train these models and generating hundreds of billions of dollars of value and creators are not partaking in that value creation it is crazy that's crazy it's crazy um and i if there's a piece of me like i can actually i can feel myself going back to 2012 when patreon started it's the same thing right the same thing's happening again um and so it's like personal for me um and you know i remember when we did this the first time i remember the viacom lawsuit against youtube in 2007 and that took seven years and then eventually like there was a system that compensated rights holders and it wasn't perfect but at least like they got to partake in in the value that was being created.

21:08I believe and hope there will be such a system for creative people with regard to AI. And the problem specifically, it's two problems. Creators are having their work used without their permission. There ought to be a way to opt out. And two, creators are having their work used without compensation. There ought to be a way for them to get paid. It's that simple. and we figured out how to do a lot of crazy shit. We're sending rockets into space and we got self-driving cars. We should figure out how to get creative people paid for their work. So, yeah.

21:48So that's kind of the main thing and it's a shame. The reason it's a shame is because the technology is really cool. It's awesome. I use ChatGPT all the time. it's amazing. It's useful. And I think there's a lot of implementations of AI that I think are really great. Even like the most useful stuff I found is like actually very narrow implementations of AI. There's a couple music tools where you can like drop in a sample and it'll like turn your synthesizer to, you know, create a sound that sounds like the sample you dropped in. Anyway, I'm getting in the weeds. The point is there's some really great stuff that you can do with this technology.

22:27I just wish we were rolling it out in a way that wasn't kind of at war with creative people all over again, which is the way, you know, we did the first version of the Internet. Do you have rules of the road for the creators on Patreon around how they do or do not use artificial intelligence? I mean, I'm thinking about it in the context of in journalism. We have guidelines. You can do this with AI. You cannot do this. You cannot write your story with artificial intelligence. I mean, what does that look like for you? So we don't disallow creators to use AI. I mean, there are, I think we're starting to now finally see some artists use AI in a really cool way.

23:10And so, no, we don't like prohibit AI by any means. But like we don't, you know, train, you know, models on creator generated works. and like we don't do that stuff. I mean, for obvious reasons. But yeah, we don't stop people from using AI in their work. Honestly, part of the reason is because AI is more of a brand than it is like a technology at this point. There's like, it's, I know the electricity metaphor is a little bit overused, but like it's kind of in everything now. So like, what would we do? Like stop a creator from like uploading an image that was used with, you know, made with Photoshop.

23:50Like if they used a certain brush or something, Like you can't, you can't do it. So, um, and, and, and nor would we want to, um, the one thing I will say about the way AI is, is being used right now, just artistically is, um, you know, when the, when the, uh, the, the motion picture camera first came out in like 1895, um, the first filmmakers took the motion picture camera. And like, if this was a, like a theater where there was like a play, they would go to like the middle row. They'd put a wide angle lens on the camera. It was called a cinematograph. And they would film the play from like 20 feet away on a wide angle lens.

24:29And then they would play that film back for audiences. And audiences are like, this is black and white. It's 2D and it has no sound. Like this film technology, not going anywhere. Yeah. And it's because the artists at the time, the filmmakers at the time, were using a new medium, but the only thing they could think of was plays, right? That's their box. That's their creative box. And I think a lot of creators are using AI like that now. It's the version of the cinematograph plopped in the middle of a theater where it's like, oh, let's try to make a movie. Let's try to replicate a shot that you would take with a camera.

25:15I don't think that's what AI-generated work is going to look like in five years, ten years. Like, the most emotionally resonant work, I think, is going to be nothing like movies or images that we know or think of. It's not going to be in that box. It's going to be something surrealist and incredible and mind-blowing. And I'm actually, like, pretty excited to see what a good use of that medium looks like from an artistic standpoint. I guess we'll have to find out. We'll see. I want to ask you a bit. It's very interesting to me, and we talked a little bit about this backstage. You were making music, decided to start a company.

25:53It obviously worked out for you. You now have over 400 employees, multiple offices. So you went from like Jack the music dude to like CEO of a serious thing. You were the CEO of like a serious company. talk to us about that learning curve i'm always very curious about sort of how people learn as they go how they like fly the plane when it's already 30 000 feet in the air yeah what was that like um uh this is what i talk about with my therapist regularly excellent

26:31um so not not easy yeah um uh painful failing in public flopping on my face a lot dealing with imposter syndrome um sitting around a table full of vcs doing a pitch and feeling like I'm a fucking YouTuber pitching a table full of VCs um to like slowly kind of figuring out what works and how and um learning a lot reading a lot uh kind of just like everybody else does and then I think I yeah like at this point we're we're 12 years in and I'm not you know I don't claim to be an expert at this but I do feel a sense of like okay I know what to do now which is like that's a that's a good feeling i'm not always right i'm often wrong still um but i but i know like spiritually what i want for patreon you know like i know what i want the company to become and what i want it to do in the world and um and then a lot kind of is downstream of that and so i try to trust that as much as possible and i didn't always trust that as much as possible Sometimes I took the attitude of like, okay, I hired this person who has 20 years of experience and they know how to build a go-to-market function.

27:58And so, okay, I guess you're supposed to do it that way. Those have been the moments that I regret the most is when I've gone against my own instincts and convictions and better judgment because I felt like I was deferring to somebody who had the answers. And it took a long time to realize that, including me, nobody has the answers. And we're all just trying to figure it out and do the best we can. And there is not one right path. There's a bunch of different ways to do things. And I know how I want Patreon to do things. And getting confident in that and feeling okay with that is probably the biggest piece of the journey for me.

28:33So there are lots of different ways to do things. There are a few things that you could do with your company that you haven't. You have not IPO'd. You are still a privately held company. You have not been acquired. You have acquired many other companies. So in a few different respects, I think, interestingly, Patreon has behaved quite differently than other tech companies. You behave differently than other CEOs. I hope so. Well, I think so. Why not IPO, run away with a few billion dollars, buy a jet, get a second house? Like, wow, what a great idea. I'll be right back. But like, why not? You could have done it.

29:07You can still do it. Do you think about it? Of course. And, I mean, just the real answer is because it's not the right time yet. And, like, I do hope that Patreon, I want Patreon to be in charge of its own decisions and mission and destiny. um and so part of the reason that like we haven't been acquired yet is because there's very few potential acquirers where i feel like we they would do right by our what we're trying to do and um and i don't want to do that um so so so that's why we haven't been acquired and then i I think in terms of going public, we don't have plans to go public. I do hope one day that Patreon is like an independent, publicly traded company.

30:04I think it's probably like where Patreon will end up. You know? And yeah, I think that would be like, of all the paths for Patreon, I think that's like the best, strongest path for us to be able to be in charge of what we want to do in the world. so we need to wrap up pretty soon before we end i am going to force you to play a brief game love it okay it's called control alt delete it's like the nerd version of fuck marry kill creaking i know that laugh there she is um so i want to know what piece of tech you would love to control what piece would you alt so alter or change and what would you delete so what would you vanquish from the earth if given the opportunity ready i totally should have thought of this ahead of time you should have but it's live now so control what would i control um i would and what does that mean control like what would i what would i seize the reins oh wow you got it i got it you control it what are you gonna do i would control uh the distribution platforms for creators to get their work out there.

31:18Very nice. What would you alter? Oh, I'm going to be so boring. Oh, you're not boring. You've been very entertaining. This is actually what I would do. I would alter. I would just save us all seven years of a Viacom lawsuit and the New York Times lawsuit and the RIA lawsuit. And I would just pay creators when their work is used in AI. And I would alter the AI platforms to pay creators. Well, wouldn't that be nice? What would you delete? What are we getting rid of tonight? Just to be spicy and to kind of fuck with things. Uh-oh. Let's delete mobile phones. Oh, no. Just get rid of them. Yeah, I'm fucking tired of looking at my screen all the time.

32:00I'm also tired of looking at my screen. Yeah. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. No more phones. That was good. That was good. Jack, co-founder and CEO of Patreon, thank you so much for being here. This was awesome. Thanks for having me. Yes. Thank you.

32:28This show is presented by McKinsey & Company and is produced by Jessica Alpert with help from Adriana Tapia and Sam Egan. Sound design, mix, and original music by Pran Bandy. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. Condé Nast head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. And I am, of course, your host, Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director.