Patreon

Uber

Patreon

Patreon takes a percentage of every payment processed through the platform — 5% on the Lite plan, 8% on the Pro plan, and 12% on the Premium plan. Each tier offers progressively more features: merch integration, team accounts, priority support, and dedicated partner managers.

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. Annual payment volume exceeded $3.5 billion in 2024.

The company has been cash-flow positive since 2023.

Uber

Uber is a marketplace that connects riders with drivers. You request a ride through the app, the nearest driver accepts, picks you up, drops you off, and Uber takes a cut — typically 25-30% of the fare.

The driver keeps the rest. Uber doesn't own any cars.

They don't employ any drivers. They built a $150 billion company by being the middleman with a really good app.

The model expanded into Uber Eats (food delivery, same concept — restaurants cook, drivers deliver, Uber takes a cut), Uber Freight (connecting truckers with shippers), and advertising. The advertising business is quietly enormous — Uber has data on where millions of people go every day, and brands will pay handsomely for that.

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.

Uber

The idea started in Paris in December 2008. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp were at the LeWeb tech conference and couldn't find a cab.

Camp had been obsessing over the idea of summoning a car with your phone. He bought the domain UberCab.com, built a prototype, and recruited Kalanick to help run it.

The first version launched in San Francisco in 2010 as a black car service — not the cheap rideshare everyone knows today. You'd tap a button, a Lincoln Town Car would show up, and it cost about 1.5x a regular taxi.

Ryan Graves answered a tweet from Kalanick looking for an "entrepreneurial product manager" and became employee number one. He ran operations while Kalanick was still finishing up another startup.

Graves would later become CEO briefly before handing the reins to Kalanick. The app launched with just a handful of cars in San Francisco.

It worked so well that riders couldn't shut up about it.

The real inflection point came in 2012 when they launched UberX — regular people driving their own cars at prices cheaper than taxis. That one decision turned Uber from a luxury black car service into a verb.

Within two years, UberX was available in hundreds of cities and the word "Uber" had entered the dictionary.

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.

Uber

Uber's early growth strategy was beautifully ruthless. They'd roll into a new city, launch without asking permission, and deal with the regulatory fallout later.

They called it "Travis's Law" — it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

The playbook was simple: launch in a new city, give massive discounts to riders (sometimes completely free rides), pay drivers signing bonuses and guaranteed hourly rates, and flood the zone until the city was hooked. Then slowly raise prices and cut driver incentives once the market was locked.

They burned billions doing this but it worked — by 2016 Uber was in 500+ cities across 70 countries.

They also weaponized word of mouth with referral codes. Every rider could give free rides to friends.

Every new driver got a bonus for signing up. The viral loop was insane.

At peak growth, Uber was adding a new city every day.

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.

Uber

Where do you even start? Uber might have faced more simultaneous existential crises than any company in history.

Regulatory wars. Taxi unions, city governments, and entire countries tried to shut Uber down.

London revoked their license. France arrested two executives.

Uber was banned, unbanned, re-banned, and sued in dozens of jurisdictions simultaneously.

The toxic culture. In 2017, former engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post describing rampant sexual harassment, discrimination, and HR cover-ups at Uber.

It went nuclear. Investigation after investigation followed.

Board members resigned. Executives were fired.

Travis Kalanick's ouster. After the culture scandals, a leaked video of him berating an Uber driver, and a federal investigation into stolen trade secrets from Google's self-driving car unit Waymo, the board forced Kalanick to resign as CEO in June 2017.

Dara Khosrowshahi came in from Expedia to clean things up.

The cash burn was legendary. Uber lost $8.5 billion in 2019 alone.

They subsidized rides so heavily that riders were paying less than the actual cost of the trip. The company didn't turn its first operating profit until Q3 2023 — fourteen years after founding.

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.

Uber

Uber Rides is the core product — get from A to B in someone else's car. UberX is the standard option, Uber Black is the premium black car tier, UberXL fits bigger groups, and Uber Reserve lets you schedule rides in advance.

Uber Eats is the food delivery arm and competes directly with DoorDash and Grubhub. Uber Freight is the logistics play — basically Uber for semi-trucks, connecting carriers with shippers.

Uber for Business lets companies manage employee rides and meals. Uber now also offers package delivery, grocery delivery, and even boat rides in some cities.

Patreon

Index Ventures led the Series A. Thrive Capital led the Series D 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.

Uber

Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital, Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, SoftBank, Toyota, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Tencent