What Crowdfunding Site Patreon Will Do With That $15M in Funding

Screengrab: WIRED

Crowdfunding platform Patreon, which operates more like a subscription service than the more traditional Kickstarters or Indiegogos of the world, announced today it has raised $15 million in funding from 17 angel investors and venture capitalists, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and a pair of talent agencies.

The Series A funding round follows impressive growth since the company’s initial $2.1 million seed funding round last August; revenues are said to have grown more than ten times in the last five months alone, with the company having distributed more than $1 million to content creators in the last two months. (Full disclosure: This writer is a Patreon user.)

The influx of cash means Patreon can begin expanding their offerings for the artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and other creatives who use the service to get income from fans—or “patrons” in the site’s parlance—for their work. Unlike Kickstarter or Indiegogo, which are best used to fund single projects, Patreon allows fans to fund self-employed creatives so that they make work on an ongoing basis. Along with announcing the new funding, the service also launched a new website, and said the new funding will be used to expand the company’s offerings—creating an even broader platform for its users to get backing for their endeavors.

But beyond the tangible changes to the service, a robust Series A round speaks to the viability of an individual-driven subscription service, and by extension to the emergence of the creator as its own brand. While there have steps in this direction—creator-owned Image Comics has long allowed comic-book artists and writers to work outside of a corporate publishing structure, and videogame service Steam provides a pipeline to publish the work of independent developers—Patreon transcends medium for the first time. If you like what someone makes, you can support their work. In other words, we’re all Medicis now.

Patreon co-founder Jack Conte, himself a Patreon user with his band Pomplamoose, told TechCrunch that the funders of this round were chosen because the company “wanted investors who believed in the arts and understand our mission,” and went on to note that even more money could have been available if necessary.

The funding will be used in part to make new hires and move the Patreon team into a new office—the first official office in the company’s history—as well as expand the company’s offerings, including iOS and Android apps and a new “Launch Mode” for artists to help promote new content and ongoing campaigns.