Yesterday, our portfolio company Kickstarter announced that they had relaunched Drip, a subscription platform they acquired almost two years ago.
Perry Chen, Kickstarter’s founder and Chairman, wrote this blog post explaining what they are trying to do with Drip.
I would like to highlight a few quotes from that post:
Kickstarter is for projects, Drip is for people. – Kickstarter and Drip are different. Kickstarter is about funding a project. Drip is about supporting a person.
In recent years, we’ve seen the growing validation of subscriptions for serial online content creators — podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers — using tools like Flattr, Patreon, and Steady. It’s been great to see organizations build tools like these — the world is far from having too many tools for creators. But there remain large groups of artists and creators who don’t see subscriptions as fitting their creative practices. Our goal with the new Drip is to change that. – Drip is about expanding the market for subscription patronage beyond serial online content.
creators will be able to export their data and content, and we’ll even help creators securely transfer subscription and payments information to other subscription platforms. We believe creator independence means not being locked into a platform by design. – Subscriptions are different than campaigns, they are for the long run. Being able to leave one platform and join another is critical.
Every Drip begins with a founding membership period to help creators build momentum. The founding membership period is a way for creators to entice their fans, friends, and new audiences to jump in and build up their base of support. (This is not all-or-nothing like Kickstarter, but it does build on our experience that a strong call to action is essential.) – Kickstarter knows that having a call to action is key to generating early support for a project. Until now, that notion has not existed in the subscription market.
We also designed Drip to be both separate from but complementary to Kickstarter. One way we’ve done that is that existing Kickstarter users can use their stored account and payment details to easily support creators on Drip. Kickstarter and Drip are different services but they share user accounts and payment credentials. If you are logged into Kickstarter, you are logged into Drip.
We will operate Drip with the mission and values codified in Kickstarter’s Public Benefit Corporation charter, which mandate our commitment to helping people bring their creative projects to life, not putting profit first, and maintaining higher standards for our practices. We think these commitments are more important now than ever. – Kickstarter is a different kind of company, a Public Benefit Corporation. Their products and business practices reflect these values.
I backed about ten drips yesterday. It is about the simplest thing to do on the Internet if you already have a Kickstarter account.
If you are interested in doing the same, you can find some great Drips here.
