I'm just sharing in here b/c I've always appreciated when others "peel back the curtain" to show the thinking behind decisions.

At the end of the day, it was obvious that we fucked up from the immediate feedback, but internally there was already a strong camp who felt this change was wrong, which greatly helped our ability to move quickly and plan out how we'd call this off (all the code was already in production behind feature flags).

On the data side, our churn ticked up, but was actually lower than we predicted and quickly returned to normal levels https://imgur.com/a/inFOE -- so the reversal was largely driven by the complaints of creators and patrons alike, and our own realization of how tone-deaf the decision was to begin with.

Speaking of which -- in my mind there are some obvious solutions to alleviating fees that didn't require moving the entire burden onto the goodwill of supporters. We're going to tackle a more comprehensive roadmap in the coming days and weeks (and talk to creators much more during this process), but if anyone is curious or wants to offer feedback, here are my thoughts:

* A big problem (that we arguably created ourselves) is a patron could pledge to a creator on the 25th of a month (granting a patron 5-6 days of access), get charged, and then get charged again on the 1st of the next month (granting the patron 30-31 days of patron-access). Pro-rating didn't seem like a right solution for the first charge since becoming a patron unlocked all the content immediately. So imo we should just (like a Netflix or any other subscription) have your first pledge grant you 30 days of access, whenever it was created -- and have this forever be your "anniversary date" of charge -- if you pledge Jan 25th, you'd be charged again Feb 25th.

* The question is around how we aggregate pledges if this patron pledges to another creator. If we say the patron pledged $5 to the 1st creator on the 25th of Jan, then pledged $5 to the second creator on the 10th of February, I'd want to charge the patron $10 on Feb 25, and in the receipt call out that you're paying for the 1st creator for the period of Feb 25-March 25, and for the 2nd creator from March 10-April 10 (because you'd have already paid for Feb 10-March 10 when you pledged to the 2nd creator on Feb 10). This way you're ALWAYS getting 30 days of access for every pledge you pay.

* Now that we can aggregate payments across multiple creators, I'd want to allow for the purchasing of multiple months/year at a time for a creator or creators, which further reduces fees -- additionally it allows creators to setup rewards (we're building this system out now) for when patrons have pledged a total of X amount or pledged for some time period.

* Finally, once we can pledge across multiple time periods, I'd love for cryptocurrency to be able to pay for patronage. Currently it's trivial for us to accept bitcoin via our Stripe integration, but we wouldn't be able to do recurring payments, and the ultimate thing that kills it for me is that creators wouldn't actually get bitcoin, but rather we'd have to convert it to fiat immediately. I'd rather patrons be able to purchase multiple months of patronage and creators have the option to convert to fiat immediately or hold actual bitcoin and participate in the wild ride that is cryptocurrency speculation :)

Ok that's all -- ideas are rough above, but that's what's on my mind lately -- happy holidays.