Building the Patreon for developers (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Birk Jernström from Polar joins the show to tell us all about the creator platform for developers: why he built it, how it works, why it works how it works, what’s in store for the future & we even give Birk some super deep UX feedback on the funding flow.

Leave us a comment

Changelog++ members get a bonus 8 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Tailscale – Adam loves Tailscale! Tailscale is programmable networking software that’s private and secure by default. It’s the easiest way to connect devices and services to each other, wherever they are. Secure, remote access to production, databases, servers, kubernetes, and more. Try Tailscale for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users at changelog.com/tailscale, no credit card required. Also check out Remotely access Home Assistant via Tailscale for free!
• Sentry – Code breaks, fix it faster. Don’t just observe. Take action. Sentry is the only app monitoring platform built for developers that gets to the root cause for every issue. 90,000+ growing teams use sentry to find problems fast. Use the code CHANGELOG when you sign up to get $100 OFF the team plan.
• Ladder Life Insurance – 100% digital — no doctors, no needles, no paperwork. Don’t put it off until the very last minute to get term coverage life insurance through Ladder. Find out if you’re instantly approved. They’re rated A and A plus. Life insurance costs more as you age, now’s the time to cross it off your list.

Featuring:

• Birk Jernström – Twitter, GitHub
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Polar
• SerenityOS on Polar
• SerenityOS issues on Polar
• SerenityOS on GitHub
• David Hewitt on Polar
• GitHub Sponsors
• Open Collective
• Vagrant and Virtualized Environments with Mitchell Hashimoto (Changelog Interviews #72)
• The serenity of building your own OS with Andreas Kling (Changelog Interviews #554)

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Luvut

1. Welcome to The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Tailscale (00:01:30)

https://changelog.com/tailscale

3. Start the show! (00:04:34)

4. Birk's backstory (00:05:44)

5. Polar's backstory (00:09:20)

https://polar.sh

6. Making money with Polar (00:13:02)

7. GitHub acquisition? (00:23:00)

8. Sponsor: Sentry (00:25:20)

https://sentry.io/

9. First donation to IPO (00:29:09)

10. First appearance to IPO (00:31:38)

11. On Paddle (00:36:31)

12. Merchant of record (00:38:01)

13. How Polar makes money (00:44:10)

14. Pre-seed funding (00:48:15)

15. Convincing the angels (00:55:17)

16. Sponsor: Ladder Life Insurance (00:58:30)

https://ladderlife.com/changelog

17. Polar copycats (01:00:27)

18. The Shopify analogy (01:03:15)

19. The SerenityOS story (01:07:44)

20. Shared issue funding (01:12:05)

21. Stripe only for now (01:15:47)

22. Funding UI DEEP dive (01:20:17)

23. Birk on bug bounties (01:31:51)

24. First steps (01:36:13)

25. Wrapping up (01:41:48)

26. Outro (Join ++!) (01:44:13)

https://changelog.com/++