Wait But Why

Here's our situation. Back in 2013, my kindergarten bff
and long-time business partner, Andrew Finn, and I were running a test prep
company we had started five years earlier. We're the excitable types, and
whenever we come up with an idea for a new creation, we try to figure out if
there's a way to make it happen. I'd been lamenting to Andrew how badly I
was itching to do one of my creative side-projects full time. He knew how much
the side projects meant to me and had always been a big supporter of them. The
shame was that they weren't things we could do as a team. At some point in this
conversation, the light bulb flickered on and we decided to start a new
blog. And Wait But Why was born. 

 

In the first few months, a couple things happened. 

 

First, people discovered the site and a sizable
readership developed. This was incredibly exciting. 

 

Second, we learned that running a blog is annoyingly
expensive. There's the hosting and the site maintenance
and the money Facebook started charging us to reach a large portion our followers and the
Mailchimp fees and the food and apartment and clothes I need to not die. The
tricky thing is that around the same time, Andrew and I were both introduced to
a new character: Tim the Wait But Why Nazi. TWBWN turned out to
be very particular about every single thing that appeared on the
site. He despised banner ads, hated the concept of marketing things to our
email subscribers, didn't want to create "premium content," and
didn't want to raise money from investors. TWBWN seemed intent on making Wait
But Why the least profitable business venture of all time. 

 

So Wait But Why was
a hit with readers and also a money-flushing toilet. Something had to
give.  

 

Then we discovered Patreon. At first we felt super icky
and weird about asking readers to support the blog, but the more we thought about
it, the more sense it made. If even a small portion of our readers had a desire
to support the site, we might be able to have our WBWN cake and eat our
non-money-flushing cake too. We gave it a try.   

 

It turns out a lot of our readers were more than happy
to support Wait But Why. Within a couple months, Patreon had solved most of our
problems. The site was breaking even, and our runway, for the first time,
looked long. 

 

When our Patreon support reached
the next level, we made our first hire: Alicia, whose official title is Wait
But Why's "Manager of Lots of Things." Alicia has been so good at her
weird-ass motley crew of a job that Andrew and I can't imagine how anything
ever happened at the company before she was here. 

 

Today, Wait But Why is an unpredictable operation. First
there were short weekly posts. Then there were longer, more sporadic posts.
Most recently was a post that took me three years and is currently being
released as a long post series. We're planning on starting a podcast when the series
is done (we've already recorded a few episodes), along with getting back to
short, regular posts. We have an app in the works. In 2017 we threw a big
one-day in-person event for our readers, called Wait But Hi, that took place in
168 countries, and we have another in-person event in our plans. There's a lot
of random shit happening over here, and it's all supported by Patreon. 

 

When you're a Wait But Why
supporter, you're not really sure what you’ll be supporting—all we can tell you
is that you're supporting me and Alicia working full-time on things we think
you'll like (along with the general costs of the site). We can't tell you for sure exactly what those things will be, but we can promise we'll always be putting our all
into it. 

 

More than anything, Patreon maximizes our ability to
make an impact. It's why we can put everything out for free and reach anyone
with an internet connection. It's the quiet little engine that powers the Wait
But Why universe. 

 

We don't do official
"rewards" for patrons, but patrons usually get a sneak peek at what
we're working on, and during 2019 I started a random monthly vlog exclusive to
patrons. We plan to stay in touch monthly in 2020. We also treat patrons kind
of like our company board—if there's a big decision to make, we know we can
always email patrons for advice. 

 

I'd also like to note that those
who decide to support us should never feel weird about ending their support at
some later point. We know how tight a life budget can be, and being a supporter
for any amount of time is a great help. 

 

Anyway, thanks for reading, and a
huge thanks to our supporters for enabling Wait But Why to become what it is
today. 

 

Tim

Free

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE POSTS. Every Friday, I’ll share something I worked on that week or learned in my research, or a sneak peek at one of the dozens of topics in my “future posts” list. We’ll have fun. On the last Friday of the month, I’ll post a video where I’ll talk about various things and answer patron questions.

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