At Patreon, I tackled two major barriers to growth: retaining top creators who were leaving for specialized platforms, and broadening our reach beyond only high-intent fans. I led design initiatives on both fronts, scaling from individual contributor to managing two squads totaling 5 designers.

My team revamped core experiences like post creation, creator pages, and podcasting tools, and added new use cases like livestreams, newsletters, and social functionality—transforming Patreon as a thriving media and community hub for podcasters.

Podcast creator tools

Podcasters are Patreon's top earning vertical, but in 2024 we were losing top creators to specialized platforms. Our general-purpose tools couldn't handle advanced podcasting workflows. I led our response—first stopping creator churn, then defining a vision to become podcasters' preferred home.

Multiple shows: Successful podcasters often run multiple shows, but our platform treated everything as one feed. Episodes from different podcasts would mix together on creators' pages and in podcast apps. This limitation drove some creators away and prevented others from bringing their full catalog to Patreon. To solve this, I completely rethought Patreon’s podcasting system, restructuring it from account-level settings.

As we resolved foundational issues, we saw an opportunity to position Patreon as the central hub for podcasters—managing both their paid and free episodes in one place. At the time, most podcasters were using Patreon solely to host their paid episodes, forcing fans to jump between platforms to listen. I designed two solutions:

Public feed: For creators going all-in on Patreon, we enabled native publishing of free episodes, with tools to migrate existing content from other platforms. Because public and paid podcast feeds functioned differently in subtle ways, we had to carefully design setup communication to keep the process as simple as possible for creators.

Podcast syncing: For creators who wanted to maintain another host for their free episodes, we created "syncing" functionality to display content from external hosts on Patreon while creators maintained their existing setup.

Together, these product improvements transformed our relationship with top podcasters, turning former critics into advocates and enabling high-profile partnerships with creators like Joe Budden and Chapo Trap House.

Casual fan experience

Historically, Patreon served only the most dedicated fans. The app offered no content for new users—fans only arrived after creators directed them to paid subscriptions, and even then engaged infrequently. We saw an opportunity to grow creators' audiences by creating a "front porch" for casual fans who weren't ready to pay yet.

Building on our ambition to be the home for podcasters’ work, I envisioned Patreon also becoming the home for their community. Podcasting has plenty of community activity, but it’s scattered across different platforms with no central hub.

After rounds of divergent concepting and user research, I arrived at Highlights—short podcast clips paired with discussion prompts. Podcasts are long, and the most interesting moments are often hidden and overlooked. Highlights met two goals: they created a space for members to discuss those moments, and they gave non-members a window into what Patreon offers.

We piloted Highlights with a group of creators. While some clips drove strong engagement, we also saw limitations: the format was time-intensive for creators, didn’t fit all content, and often went unnoticed by fans. Recognizing a larger opportunity, we took these lessons into our next initiative, coming soon.