Patreon

1,000 true fans is dead — now it's 100 true believers

Shaan reframes BitClout-style creator coins: where Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans sell access, a creator coin lets early supporters also profit as the coin appreciates. The old '1,000 true fans paying $10/mo' model becomes '100 true believers' who get rich by backing you early, like buying Amazon stock.

“So it takes the concept of 1,000 true fans, which was like a, like a 20-year-old concept that a lot of people talk about. Hey, if you can get 1,000 people to pay you $10 a month, you can make a living as an artist. 1,000 true fans is gone. Now it's 100 true believers, 100 people who actually invest in your coin. Not only are they enough for you to make your living, but they will get rich by being early in you too.”

Your reward for succeeding on a percentage platform is losing the customer

Calacanis argues percentage-take businesses (Substack, Patreon, ad rep firms) are structurally doomed with their best customers: once a creator gets big, the cut becomes a salary's worth of money and they leave for flat-fee tools, just as Sam Harris left Patreon for his own site.

“And so your reward for succeeding was losing your best customers. The reward for Patreon succeeding is they lose that customer to a Stripe or Ghost, or, you know, there's all these like tools that charge you a flat rate to do subscriptions.”

Steal thisIf you build a percentage-take platform, lock in value beyond billing or your winners will defect to flat-fee tools.

Patreon will be a bad business

Shaan predicts Patreon will be a bad business: it raised ~$50M VC (chasing a billion-dollar exit) but only takes ~5% of donations, so it would need ~$2B flowing through it to hit $100M revenue. It's also commoditized, and a 7% fee attempt triggered a revolt, showing no pricing headroom.

“So that means they're trying to track towards like a billion-dollar-plus exit. And on the other side, you have the business model, which is to take essentially 5% of the patronage donations. And so if you just sort of calculate out, you're like, all right, to get to, you know, to be a billion-dollar business, you need to be about $100 million in revenue”