Patreon

Instacart

Patreon

Patreon takes a percentage of every payment processed through the platform. It used to run three tiers — 5%, 8% and 12% depending on how many features a creator wanted — and creators who signed up back then are still on those rates.

Everyone joining now pays a flat 8%.

On top of the platform fee, payment processing fees (typically 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) are passed to either the creator or patron depending on the plan. The combined take rate means Patreon captures roughly 8-15% of the money flowing through the platform.

The business scales beautifully. More creators attract more patrons.

More patrons increase creator earnings. Higher earnings attract more creators.

And Patreon's cut grows proportionally with every dollar processed. Creators have been paid more than $8 billion through the platform since it launched in 2013.

Instacart

Instacart operates as a marketplace connecting consumers with personal shoppers and grocery retailers. Revenue comes from multiple streams: delivery fees and service fees charged to consumers (typically $3.99+ per delivery), tips to shoppers (passed through, not revenue), retailer partnerships (grocers pay Instacart for access to the platform and fulfillment services), and advertising.

Advertising has become the crown jewel. Instacart Ads lets consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Nestlé pay for sponsored product placements within the Instacart shopping experience.

When someone searches for "chips," Doritos can pay to appear first. This is incredibly valuable because it's advertising at the exact moment of purchase intent.

Ad revenue was $871 million in 2023 and crossed $950 million in 2024.

The retailer partnership model is key. Unlike DoorDash or Uber Eats (which listed restaurants without permission early on), Instacart works with grocers as partners.

Over 1,500 retail banners including Costco, Kroger, Albertsons, and Publix have formal partnerships. Instacart provides the technology and shoppers.

Grocers provide inventory and stores.

Patreon

Jack Conte was one half of Pomplamoose, an indie music duo that went viral on YouTube in the late 2000s. Their cover of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" got millions of views.

Their original music was critically praised. And they were barely making enough to pay rent.

The math was brutal. A million YouTube views paid about $1,500 in ad revenue.

Conte spent weeks producing high-quality music videos that cost thousands to make. The economics didn't work.

YouTube's ad model paid creators fractions of a penny per view. Spotify paid fractions of a penny per stream.

For mid-tier creators — popular enough to have a real audience but not famous enough for brand deals — the internet was a machine that turned creative labor into pennies.

In 2013, Conte teamed up with Sam Yam, a college roommate and developer at AdRoll. Their idea was simple: let fans pay creators directly through monthly subscriptions.

Not per-video donations. Not tips.

Recurring monthly payments — like a Netflix subscription but for individual creators. They called it Patreon, from "patron of the arts." The platform launched in May 2013 and signed up its first creator the same week.

Instacart

Apoorva Mehta was a 26-year-old Amazon engineer in Seattle who quit his job in 2012 to start a company. The only problem: he had no idea what to build.

Over the next year, he started and abandoned roughly 20 different projects. A social network for lawyers.

A way to track restaurant wait times. Nothing stuck.

Then one day he was too lazy to go grocery shopping. He looked for a service that would shop for him and deliver everything to his door.

Nothing good existed. The existing options were grocery store delivery services that only worked during specific windows, had limited selection, and required ordering days in advance.

Mehta wanted to order groceries the way he ordered everything else online — immediately, from whatever store he wanted.

He built a prototype in 2012 and applied to Y Combinator. The demo was rough — he ordered a six-pack of beer through the app and had it delivered to a YC partner's house during the application process.

It worked. He got in.

Instacart launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 with a simple promise: order from your favorite local grocery store and have someone shop for you and deliver within an hour.

Patreon

Patreon grew through creator evangelism. When a podcaster or YouTuber told their audience "support me on Patreon," that was free marketing to exactly the right audience.

Every creator who joins becomes a distribution channel.

The platform expanded beyond its indie roots by courting bigger creators. Podcasters were the first breakout category — shows like Chapo Trap House, True Crime Obsessed, and Last Podcast on the Left built six-figure monthly incomes on Patreon.

Then YouTubers, writers, musicians, and visual artists followed.

International expansion drove the next phase. Patreon now supports payments in multiple currencies and serves creators in over 180 countries.

The creator economy is global — a manga artist in Japan can have patrons in Brazil paying in US dollars, processed through Patreon seamlessly.

Instacart

Instacart grew by solving a problem one city at a time. They launched in San Francisco, proved the model, then expanded to other major metros.

Each new market required recruiting shoppers, signing up retailers, and building enough consumer density to make the economics work.

The COVID-19 pandemic was the inflection point. Grocery delivery went from luxury to necessity overnight.

In March 2020 Instacart announced it would add 300,000 shoppers, then raised that by another 250,000 weeks later. Order volume increased 500%.

Years of planned growth happened in weeks. The pandemic proved that grocery delivery wasn't a niche — it was the future of how a significant chunk of the population would shop.

The enterprise play is the long-term moat. By providing white-label technology to grocers, Instacart becomes embedded in their operations.

Even if a grocery chain wanted to build its own delivery service, they'd need years and hundreds of millions to replicate what Instacart provides. The more deeply integrated Instacart becomes in grocery operations, the harder it is to rip out.

Patreon

Platform risk is the core vulnerability. Patreon is entirely dependent on creators choosing to use it.

If YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok build sufficiently good subscription tools (YouTube Memberships already exists, Instagram Subscriptions launched), creators might consolidate onto the platforms where their audiences already live. Why send fans to Patreon when they can subscribe directly on YouTube?

The moderation challenge is constant. Patreon hosts content across the entire creative spectrum — including adult content, political commentary, and controversial creators.

Payment processors (Stripe, PayPal) have their own content policies and have pressured Patreon to remove creators. Every moderation decision risks alienating a segment of the creator community.

Revenue concentration is a risk. A relatively small number of top creators generate a disproportionate share of Patreon's revenue.

If a handful of the biggest creators leave for a competing platform or build their own subscription tools, it would materially impact Patreon's business.

Instacart

The post-COVID hangover was brutal. After pandemic demand normalized, growth slowed dramatically.

The company's valuation dropped from a peak of $39 billion in early 2021 to about $10 billion at IPO in September 2023. Investors who bought at the peak saw a 75% paper loss.

The narrative shifted from "essential infrastructure" to "nice-to-have luxury."

Unit economics are perpetually tight. Paying a person to walk through a grocery store, pick items, bag them, and drive them to someone's house is expensive.

Unlike meal delivery (one restaurant, one bag), grocery delivery involves dozens of items per order, refrigeration requirements, and substitution decisions. Every order that requires a shopper to call the customer about an out-of-stock item eats into efficiency.

Amazon is the existential threat. Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods delivery, and Amazon's own logistics network represent a competitor with nearly unlimited resources and a Prime membership base of 200+ million.

Amazon has been willing to lose billions on grocery delivery to build market share. Instacart's advantage is retailer partnerships — Kroger and Publix use Instacart specifically because they don't want to help Amazon dominate grocery.

Patreon

Patreon Memberships — the core product allowing creators to offer tiered monthly subscriptions with exclusive content, early access, behind-the-scenes material, and community perks. Patreon Commerce — tools for selling digital downloads, merchandise, and one-time purchases directly to fans.

Patreon Community — Discord-style community features built natively into Patreon, including chat, posts, and polls for patron-only spaces. Patreon Video — native video hosting so creators can post exclusive content directly on Patreon instead of using unlisted YouTube links.

Patreon Free Membership — a free tier that lets fans follow creators and access some content, serving as a conversion funnel to paid tiers.

Instacart

Instacart Marketplace — the core platform where consumers order groceries from 80,000+ stores for delivery or pickup, with personal shoppers fulfilling orders. Instacart+ — subscription service ($9.99/month) offering free delivery on orders over $35, reduced service fees, and credit back on pickup orders.

Instacart Ads — a retail media platform letting CPG brands run sponsored product listings, display ads, and coupons within the shopping experience. Instacart Platform (Enterprise) — white-label e-commerce technology that lets grocers build their own online ordering and fulfillment powered by Instacart's infrastructure.

Caper Cart — AI-powered smart shopping carts (from the 2021 Caper AI acquisition) with built-in screens, barcode scanners, and payment that let shoppers skip the checkout line.

Patreon

Index Ventures led the Series A. Tiger Global led the 2021 round that valued Patreon at $4 billion.

Tiger Global participated in growth rounds. Initialized Capital was an early backer.

DFJ Growth and Wellington Management invested in later rounds. Creators themselves, including YouTubers and podcasters, have been informal ambassadors and some have invested personally.

Instacart

Sequoia Capital was an early and consistent backer. Andreessen Horowitz invested in growth rounds.

D1 Capital Partners led the 2021 round that valued Instacart at $39 billion. Existing investors including Valiant Capital, T.

Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Tiger Global participated across rounds. Y Combinator was the starting point (Summer 2012 batch).

The September 2023 IPO on NASDAQ priced at $30 per share, valuing the company at approximately $10 billion.