(2017-05-09) Hon Patreon As A Future Of Working

Dan Hon sees Patreon as A future of working

The shape that Patreon takes in my head is something of a mish-mash of 1,000 True Fans, Universal Basic Income, moat-building, genuine Platform creation and the introduction of a (for now) benevolent dictator.

Patreon is the way that people can monetize their 1,000 true fans not on a one-off transaction basis (who could possibly live that way?) but on a recurring monthly subscription way. Or, in other words, ask their 1,000 true fans for a monthly salary

There’s a lot of good that Patreon could do too, though. At some point, they start to feel more like a quasi-employer or staffing agency, albeit one who provides a staff to hundreds or thousands of customers at once. For those high-performing creators, Patreon could offer benefits like health insurance

services like Patreon allow for the possibility for people to get value for what makes them them, and that no-one else can copy or reproduce... I say, “no-one else can”, because the obvious counter-example is a) made-to-order art reproductions from a photograph in the style of your favourite painter from China and b) a recurrent neural network doing exactly the same thing.

Patreon is interesting because it’s a future of work that appears to allow enough space and flexibility for a human future of work.