YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Yam

lines on the record: 20
first: 2021-04-08
most recent: 2021-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, so the passion economy is not just this intellectual exercise about how people make a living and the future of work.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I took private art classes every single weekend. And when I was a senior in high school, my path really branched out between going to art school versus going to traditional college. And like Sam, I just didn't see a viable path towards actually becoming a professional artist and being able to make a living and sustain myself that way.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The whole thesis about the passion economy stemmed from doing a lot of in-depth research in consumer marketplaces and from studying the evolution of different marketplace models over time. And my colleague Andrew Chen and I had traced all of these different marketplace paradigms from the Craigslist model to the Uber for X model to manage marketplaces and a trend that I saw evolving there was that newer generations of marketplaces were taking a much more supply focused approach and thinking about how can we become a really attractive place for these service providers to work. One catalyst of the passion economy thesis was observing the evolution of marketplaces. Another driver is my personal experience of having studied art and painting intensively growing up between the age of five and eight.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. It's those layers of intermediaries that sit between a creator and his or her audience that is taking a cut that really makes it more difficult for a creator to make a living off of a smaller audience size. Consumers are deciding that they're not going to go with the content subscriptions that someone else has bundled and determined came together, but they're creating their own information bundles from creator-led content.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As opposed to traditional media sources. So for instance, before Substack, any aspiring writer had to go get a job at a traditional media company, someone at that company had to give you a platform to write and distribute to an audience. With passion economy platforms, it's about directly connecting the creator with their audience.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's super interesting. And when you first told me that, I sort of puzzled over it because I had been thinking that the whole creator economy space and everyone monetizing online was really about tapping into the specific niche that they couldn't access anywhere else and that each of those fan bases were probably dependent of each other. My takeaway is that I think overall consumers broadly are shifting their information diets to things that are creator-led.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interaction and engagement. And you can imagine that creators are going to be able to earn more if they not only charge for these one-time ad hoc events, but they're able to charge for belonging to ongoing existing community.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think of depth as a very critical element of a lot of these new platforms, as Sam mentioned. When I've observed a lot of the startups in this space, a lot of them have this initial go-to-market wedge of a single product that they give to creators that they can monetize through. So for instance, Substack started with newsletters, Around the World is starting with online events, but they oftentimes have a vision of offering greater depth over time. In other words, they are trying to offer additional content types or products that give creators the ability to earn more, even if they keep the audience size the same. So for instance, for substack beyond just newsletters now, they also support the ability for creators to publish paid podcasts and for run the world, a lot of the long-term vision is about supporting ongoing community building and community.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, just to start off, the gig economy is obviously huge and isn't going to go anywhere. But one of the key differences between passion economy work versus gig economy work is that the levers that a creator has for growing their business are different. So in the gig economy, when it was really about one-time transactions through doing a particular gig, the lovers for growing your revenue was just through doing more. you know, spending more time doing gigs, driving more miles, doing more jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas in the passion economy, the lover for growing one's business is really about expanding your audience and offering something that's more differentiated than anything else that exists. So it's about the fan base growth and the quality of your service or product.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think broadly there's eroding trust in ad-driven social platforms and creators have the trust and distribution of their fans. For a lot of people, creators have become their main social experience and fans are craving a way to engage more with them.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Content and I think the mindset that they're tapping into among their fans. So a thousand true fans model where people are paying you slightly less than $10 a month is really about tapping into the idea of fan ultrasm where users are willing to pay you for something that benefits the creator because they want to support you and they want to donate to you. In order to get users to pay a thousand dollars a year obviously there's a tremendous amount of value that needs to be offered to them in exchange for that increase in price point. And so the model of 100 true fans is really about the fan benefit rather than the creator benefiting. And so in order to get people to part with a thousand dollars a year, users need to be willing to pay for premium content and community that isn't really available elsewhere.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. It really builds on the same idea as Kevin Kelly's original post, which was that it doesn't take building a huge massive audience in order to be a successful creator who can make a living. But I took it one step further. And this blog post called 100 TrueFans, which outlined the differences in the 1,000 TrueFans model versus the 100 TrueFans model”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On health and fitness, $10 billion on self-improvement. The entire online education market is $130 billion. And a lot of these categories, I think, could shift to creators and more niche content that individuals are producing.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another way to think about the total potential market for the passion economy, which by the way was the biggest question that I got after publication of the passion economy blog post, lots of people said, you know, this all sounds great, but how many people in the world can actually make a living from their passions? How big can the passion economy actually get? There's two ways to think about it. One is by looking on all of the different creative platforms like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and seeing how many people have amassed a decently sized audience where they could probably be able to monetize that audience. But the other way that I like to think about Tam is by thinking through the demand side on the consumer side, what are all the different pockets of spend that Americans are putting their money into that could potentially be up for grabs by creators? So for instance, Americans spend more than $32 billion a year”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of previous market places were really about providing the most consistent experience as possible such that, for instance, whenever you hit the get a ride button, you knew exactly what to expect. The difference between that versus passion economy work is that as a consumer, you're specifically looking for a very, very individual type of service and the person who's rendering that service is of utmost importance to you. And so it's not about taking any online course or subscribing to any newsletter. They're not interchangeable.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The commonalities between all of those examples is people are providing a service that really only they themselves can create versus previous generations of turnkey work platforms may have prioritized consistency and tried to reduce variation between workers”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companionship, and I think a lot of people in the West aren't aware that people are actually making a living from doing that.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In addition to the ones that people often talk about as new forms of creative careers like podcasters, online writers, online course creators, there's also a lot of emerging professions that I think a lot of people aren't even aware of yet. After the Passion Economy blog post came out last fall, I was pleasantly surprised by how broadly some founders read it and thought that it applied to their businesses. There were people who were starting marketplaces for after school kids activities or summer enrichment activities and thought of themselves as a passion economy platform. There's this new potential profession in the form of a conference organizer. There's also community leaders that are going private or paid and making a living through basically moderating a community. And then in China there's platforms that enable people to find video gaming buddies for either training or”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ten years ago it would have been really difficult for many creators to make a living because what has happened since then is that social networks have reached global scale. The entire internet has been connected on these large platforms like Facebook and YouTube and Instagram. We needed that to happen first so that creators could find their tribe so that fans could find the creators that they resonated with in order for this next wave of new creator platforms to arise.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I talk about the passion economy, I really mean any potential path of monetization where people are leveraging their individuality. So it's beyond just podcasters and YouTubers and visual content creators. And it encompasses things like video course creators or virtual teachers or tutors or virtual coaches for professional coaching. So some of the really interesting platforms allow creators to create their own online courses and these online courses encompass everything from how to organize your home or how to not kill all of your plants to more traditional educational subjects like how to start your own online business or how to start a podcast. And then in terms of virtual teachers and tutors, there's platforms that are giving people the ability to come up with their own online Courses and offer them to kids.”
2021-04-08 · a16z Podcast · On Monetizing Community with Patreon Cofounder Sam Yam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source