32 sats \ 1 reply \ @jeff 10 Jul 2022 \ on: Do you think Fountain business model is sustainable in the long term? bitcoin
Rhetorically, how do you know what their business model is? Has their full plan been revealed yet?
As is, absent change, I don't think it's sustainable. But the only thing guaranteed for a startup is change.
Sure, they set up the plumbing so that all users get paid, but what if they are about to switch to a model where podcasters can opt into paying for their own show temporarily, as a one-off-surprise, as a one time thank-you? What if it's a reward only for users who call into the show (ie the prize is "get money if you keep listening for the next 5 shows"). What if they build a tool for podcasters to pay for audience building based on region or demographic? Maybe they turn it into a prize for the podcaster who attracts the most users to other shows (ie, if your sub growth is highest, fountain will pay your users the most next week). Maybe it turns into a sponsorship tactic "Hey listeners, this week's sats are coming from Tesla, anybody who also clicks this link, gets double the sats for listening". What if they charge 10K sats per month for a premium account, and you can earn back your subscription fee by listening?
Zooming out, the economics just flow into the CAC, ROAS and Product Market fit for everybody involved. Some companies pay a referral fee, run spammy email blasts, or put ads on other platforms. Fountain doesn't have to do that, do they?
Have they found a sustainable balance between the CAC, ROAS w/ PMF...doubt it...but VCs throw money at bootstrapping CAC all the time for years sometimes.
Guaranteed, they will be iterating from here.
...one more idea for fountain's what-if future.
What if they only pay if you put in information about yourself or access to your phones' permissions? Age. Location. Income. Net worth. What if they pay more for certain niches?
All fields would be optional to enter, and optional to verify, but doing both would change your earnings multiplier.
Podcasters can likely earn waaaaay more if they know their audience demographics.
I think that could be the money shot here, cause that approach solves the sybil attack problem and lots of people don't really care about privacy.
What would happen is the total audience size can be measured, and then the users who don't care about privacy would enable making assumptions about the balance of the audience who do care more about privacy.
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