Working at Tech’s Most Mission-driven Company
I remember the moment it hit me that Patreon deeply cares about its mission. I was sitting among my new coworkers at a weekly all-hands meeting just one month after joining the company. Jack, Patreon’s CEO, was standing in front of a projector screen with large words emblazoned behind him:
FUND THE EMERGING CREATIVE CLASS.
He pointed at the words and took a deep breath. “This is what makes it worth it,” he said. “No investor, no salary, no IPO, no acquisition, makes the daily struggle of coming into this building — fixing bugs, having challenging conversations, realizing that we still have so many more creators to help — worth it.” I remember being blown away by Jack’s bluntness. Standing up and saying those words to the entire company, with that level of conviction, Jack defined how important the mission is to him, and how he intended for it to drive everyone in the company towards a common goal.
Our mission is to fund the emerging creative class.
Patreon’s goal is to help every professional creator achieve sustainable income. We’ll know we’ve achieved it when we look around and artists everywhere are getting paid for the value they give to the world. Our mission is different than our strategy, which tells us how we’re going to achieve our mission, and which could change given the shifting landscape of arts and tech. Our mission is a north star of what we want to accomplish, but it’s not just a maxim we plaster on walls or t-shirts. We use it daily to make work a little more fun, guide our decisions and culture, and help us think about the big picture we’re working towards.
Our mission makes the pain worth it.
The old maxim “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” should be “Choose a mission you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” San Francisco is home to hundreds of inspiring companies — I could work at a place that is making transportation a utility, or making it possible to belong anywhere, or making the world more open and connected. But Patreon’s mission is something I care deeply about. As a singer myself, a friend of many artists, and a supporter of the arts, I care about being part of a platform that makes it easy for creators to get paid. It lights my soul on fire to work at a company where everyone around me is dedicated to building the best possible platform for creators around the world.
Unfortunately, having a strong mission doesn’t make the daily work any easier. Startups are hard. I get punched in the face constantly with new problems I’ve never seen before. In those times, when I’m in the trenches and struggling, I’m not thinking about my salary or getting a promotion or the importance of my title, but instead pushing forward because I care deeply about improving the lives of creators.
Our mission drives decisions and culture.
Beyond this high-level impact of our mission lessening the startup “suffer factor”, the mission seeps down into our decision-making in myriad discrete ways. Our mission ensures a strong level of commitment to creators and a dislike of middle-man funding strategies (goodbye, ad-supported revenue!). At every tough decision, we ask ourselves “will this be better for creators?”, and if the answer is no, we likely don’t do it. This is why Patreon’s fee remains low at 5%, why we rewrote our terms of service with creators in mind, and why we maintain an online community to get product ideas and feedback directly from creators. We’ve also aligned our mission with our business model, which puts us in a great position.
We only make money if creators make money, so in order to grow our business, we have to grow the money that patrons send to creators, thereby helping accomplish our mission.
Our day-to-day culture also reflects our mission. When creators come to perform at Patreon, it’s so quiet that you can hear a pin drop — unless of course they ask us to be raucous, and then this happens:
Our office also boasts a high amount of creative energy: we have midday music jam sessions, monthly “activation energies” where a member of the Patreon team teaches workshop participants a new hands-on skill (be it leatherwork or tai chi), a #made-it Slack channel where people post their newest creations, and an active culture of attending shows, gallery openings, or other cool art things together. All of these things circle back to our mission. Our mission is to get creators paid, so we make space for our in-house artists to practice or share their talents, and welcome creators into the office at any chance we get.
Our mission gives me the warm and fuzzies.
At the end of the day, working at a mission-driven company just feels good — not solely because our mission exists, but also because it’s a good mission. Patreon’s mission is based on the idea of value for value, on the premise that art makes the world a better place, and on the belief that we’re in the middle of a creative revolution. We believe that the people that are building Patreon care the most about helping creators change the world, so we’re in the best position to help them do that.
So, what’s my advice? If you don’t love the mission — don’t take the job. Sure, it can be fun to work at a company with cushy perks where what you do is loosely coupled with something that improves the world, but it’s way more satisfying to work where the impact of your work moves the needle on a goal you care deeply about. Yes, it’ll hurt when you make mistakes and feel the pain of failing to accomplish something you actually care about, but the wins — the small, tangible steps towards your goal — will make every day worth it.
Feeling warm and fuzzies? come work with us.
