Patreon 6000万美元C轮融资，估值约4.5亿美元，押注粉丝直接付费给创作者

做的是什么生意

Patreon lets fans pay creators a monthly subscription for early or exclusive access to their work, passing 95% of payments through and keeping a 5% cut for itself.

启动资金：$60M Series C announced 2017-09-19, led by Thrive Capital; TechCrunch's sources valued the company near $450M, and total funding reached about $107M.

起因

Musician and videographer Jack Conte struggled to earn enough from his own work and found that one-off crowdfunding could not give artists steady income. He co-founded Patreon in 2013 with the mission of funding the creative class, arguing that advertising did not pay enough and that direct consumer payments had to become a bigger part of how art is financed.

经过

By September 2017 Patreon hosted 50,000 creators and 1 million subscribers paying an average of $12 per month, was doubling in size each year and was on track to pay out $150M to creators, which meant Patreon itself earned only about $7.5M. TechCrunch learned that a Series C had closed, and on 2017-09-19 Patreon confirmed a $60M round led by Thrive Capital, with Index Ventures participating and existing investors CRV and Freestyle joined by new backer DFJ. The capital was earmarked for hiring beyond its 80-person team and recruiting more creators, while the low 5% rake stayed central to the pitch: YouTube and Facebook's Watch paid creators only 55% of ad revenue, so Patreon's 95% pass-through was the reason creators moved their audiences over.

可借鉴之处

让创作者保留几乎全部收入，把经济学变成营销手段：刻意保持的5%低抽成吸引了粉丝和创作者选择Patreon而放弃广告平台。