If you want to know why the creator economy continues to draw interest from investors and advertisers alike, Patreon and Kajabi have each provided 10 billion explanations. Within days of one another, those two platforms both announced that they have paid out $10 billion to creators since their respective launches.
Patreon Co-Founder and CEO Jack Conte shared his company’s $10 billion milestone with Axios on August 5, while Kajabi CEO Ahad Khan discussed his team’s good fortunes in an interview with TheWrap that was published on August 6. Both execs used their media appearances to highlight the sizable user bases that led the way to 11-digit payouts. Patreon counts 25 million paid memberships, while Kajabi has nearly 1,800 creators who have earned at least $1 million via the platform.
By enabling direct funding from fans, companies like Patreon and Kajabi have helped creators expand beyond content and build multi-pronged digital empires. “What we’re seeing in creators is that, just like media companies, they’re multi-hyphenate,” Conte told Axios. “That multimedia multi-hyphenate approach works really well on Patreon’s infrastructure, because we’ve spent 10 years building horizontally across categories.”
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Khan argued that Kajabi doesn’t just facilitate creator businesses; it also offers a security blanket for channel owners who struggle to keep up with the ever-changing nature of platform algorithms. “With Kajabi, you’re able to develop that direct relationship with your audience,” he told TheWrap. “You’re not at the whim of an algorithm change as much as you would be if you’re just building on YouTube.”
Kajabi and Patreon were founded three years apart (Kajabi in 2010 and Patreon in 2013), but they took very different paths to their respective $10 billion payouts. Kajabi, which had a slower rise, brought in no outside capital between 2010 and 2019. Since then, however, its on-platform earnings have accelerated rapidly. It reached the $10 billion mark just a few months after it surpassed $9 billion.
Within months of Patreon’s inception, it was touted as a breakthrough in the world of crowdfunding. There have been some up-and-down moments since then, but like Kajabi, Patreon is currently seeing its payouts accelerate. Conte noted that creators take in $2 billion per year through the platform.
The landscape of creator economy funding platforms is now much more crowded, but Patreon and Kajabi’s paired achievements show there is room for plenty of operators in this particular space. Creators rely on direct funding more than ever before, and they have plenty of options to choose from when going down that path.
