[wikwocket]

Based on comments on HN, people are surprised that a company that "just runs a website" can employ "so many people." But this is a platform processing hundreds of millions of dollars among hundreds of thousands of users.

Here's a rough sketch of possible headcount. I'm making these numbers up, but maybe you can see how it does take a lot of work to make a business like this work.

    - Engineering
    - 5 - frontend dev/QA (web, tablet, responsive, A/B tests)
    - 5 - backend dev/QA (app logic, video/content hosting, scaling up & out)
    - 5 - payments dev/QA (payments is huge and complicated, probably a few payment processor partners)
    - 5 - app dev/QA (iOS and Android)
    - 5 - product owners (web, 2 apps, email, internal tools for agents etc)
    - 5 - management (cto, engr manager, director etc)
    - Business
    - 5 - creator experience, patron experience, outreach, community
    - 5 - marketing, advertising, lifecycle email and email campaigns
    - 5 - partnerships, relations with big creators, collaborations
    - 5 - fraud detection and remediation (fraud is huge, chargebacks are expensive, and the ability to charge $1 to test cards attracts fraudsters)
    - Operations
    - 20 - agents handling creator/patron requests/issues (more if 24/7 or multiple languages)
    - 5 - ops/systems (keep everything running, downtime means less income)
    - 5 - HR, recruiting, accounting, etc

This is probably under-representing the business side since I am from the engineering side. Also it looks like they are hiring more people for all these teams. If you want more info, you can always look up Patreon's job openings: https://angel.co/patreon/jobs https://boards.greenhouse.io/patreon#.WcFitC-6z-Y https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Patreon-Jobs-E915057.htm