2021 version: 100 true fans.
Whales are nice to have but any financial model that includes them is gonna end up focusing on pleasing them. With a broader fan base I mostly need to worry about doing creative work that pleases me.
(I am an artist, and Patreon is a big chunk of how my finances work; this is based on my personal experience of how much stress I feel when a low-level patron leaves vs. a high-level one. Someone else will always show up to replace the low-level ones, not so much with the high-level ones.)
Woah.
That was a beautifully put summary of something I (and I suspect many others) have intuitively known, but perhaps have never articulated so well.
Framing it like this helps to make it a memorable guiding principle in all strategic decisions going forward.
Just wanted to say thanks.
It has all the features of a mildly upvoted HN discussion or an infinitely downvoted Reddit one.
Sure, you get more money by serving a few whales, whether those be giant megacorps you customize your SaaS for, or people willing to pay a couple orders of magnitude more than anyone else for your artwork - but you're gonna have some powerful inducements to change what you make for those whales' needs, even if those are directions that lose you smaller fans.
And when you lose one of those whales, it's a blow.
I completly understand where you are coming from, but most of our historical art is because of "whales", so all in all I don't think whales are bad for art. I am sure Leonardo would have preferred not to be under pressure from whichever prince he was currently working for, but did his art suffer?
I am not saying a whale is required, van Gogh is a good example, but even van Gogh might have benefited from a whale.
Those historical 'whales' you're referring to frequently would finance art for reasons bigger than just their own fancy or pleasure, for political reasons, for diplomacy, for communication, for power grabs.
And then artists would have their own way with exerting their own power over the process as well.
As an artist, I feel that there is a sort of scale of priorities. Making money with my art skills is more fun than making money with any other way. But there are things I like to draw, and I'd rather make money drawing those instead of things I don't like to draw. And I'd generally rather make money by drawing whatever the heck my muse directs me to draw, instead of what I think is likely to sell, or what someone with a lot of money would like me to draw.
Different people have different priorities, someone who's willing to draw whatever the hell comes their way probably makes more money than I do, and that's their choice. I have an artist friend who mostly dropped off the net for a few years because he was doing lots of very specific fetish art for a rich client who didn't want it posted anywhere, and was willing to pay handsomely for that. He was willing to do that, I wouldn't. He also had a kid to support, I don't.
And... poor Vince certainly could have used a richer set of patrons, yeah. He could have used a lot of things. Possibly including some modern psychoactive chemicals. Dude was pretty fucked up.
After all, we've all heard of bands who'd rather be playing their new stuff, but who know the fans at concerts want to hear the old hits.
This is no model to live your life.
I just think that's true for people with a large number of customers too.
If customers have subscribed to my patreon to see my artwork of scantily clad anime ladies, I gotta keep giving them what they want whether I've got 100 customers paying $100/month or 10,000 customers paying $1/month.
I am of the opinion that every established Content Creator starts to care less and less. And is better off for it! And I am also of the opinion that George RR Martin/JK Rowling/Tom Clancy/Stephen King loathe their most hardcore fans while being paid to attend Cons. Inevitable.
1000 True Fans? Try 100 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22263274 - Feb 2020 (217 comments)