Leaked memo reveals Patreon's valuation plunged 70% in the past year

Most here say that the reason is their censorship and while that is certainly playing a role, I think there is another bigger reason they are loosing so much of their value.

The problem with Patreon is that it's a "piggyback business". That is, it wouldn't exist if Youtube, Instagram, Twitch and other didn't exist. I define a "piggyback business" as something that depends on another product to exist. If you build X for Y, you're piggybacking on the existing customers of Y wanting something more and opting for X.

You can run a "piggyback business" quite well, just look at companies like LinkTree for example. Patreon's problem is that they got too big and the giants started to take note. They saw that they could take a chunk of that revenue by baking in Patreon's features into their own platforms.

I can only hope that part of the plunge was the result of people like me departing due to Patreon's warm embrace of coporate censorship. But yeah, probably not much of a factor.

Patreon's apps are pretty bad now and I blame it on their attempt to turn into a paid version of Facebook or whatever. I can barely tolerate the iOS app, and the web experience is a joke. I know Patreon's design in the early days looked a bit amateurish, but at least it had personality. Now they feel like a Big Tech wannabe. No thanks, I'm out.

When they continued to fund the Russia supporter what was shown on video threatening Cossack Gundi I was out.

https://twitter.com/cossackgundi/status/1548081053599801344