Lifetime Patrons

Around a decade ago, I read Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" [1] and was very excited. I was finishing high school, had just declined a computer science scholarship to take a gap year and run small business experiments. The idea of having a loyal audience that would care enough about my work and support me financially made so much sense.

Looking back today, my audience and my network have had a profound effect on the trajectory of my life. I took that simple idea to heart, and it worked.

Over time, I've read countless biographies of my heroes - core contributors to the worlds of art, technology, humanities, and science. I couldn't help but notice how many of them had patrons supporting them throughout their lives. The more I read between the lines and thought it through, the more it appeared to me that patronage might be one of the best ways to support your favorite creators.

Patronage has been one of the main ways so many prominent artists, especially of the Renaissance, could focus on their craft while becoming financially stable - and in some cases, even independent. Patrons, like the Medici family, gave the gift that many artists had been desperately aiming for: freedom to create. Not needing to spend time working or being immersed in other chores opened up enormous possibilities for artists to create and improve their craft, and that led to historic breakthroughs [2].

Of course, patronage had its own cost too. It wasn't always for "the love of the game" that patrons supported the artists. While there are exceptions, the majority of patrons expected some return from their financial support. For some, that meant artworks featuring them, or their desired people and objects. For others, a direct learning opportunity from masters of their craft. And then there were those who supported artists just for the sake of it - they believed in beauty and art, and that there's nothing more important than the constant pursuit of greatness in one's craft, shared with the world.

Let me share a few examples from my favorite polymaths, to illustrate the profound impact of patronage on civilization.

(i) Leonardo da Vinci

After moving to Milan around thirty, Leonardo wrote to the Duke of Milan a 10-point letter describing his skills and the ways he could be valuable, particularly in military engineering. He mentioned painting only in the last paragraph, arguably a balance between the patron's needs and what he loved most. What followed turned into his life's most productive period: he worked on The Last Supper and Lady with an Ermine, among other masterpieces, as well as documenting (!) thousands of multidisciplinary notebook pages - on flight, anatomy, architecture, military engineering, and so much more [3].

That was 17 years of his life, largely funded by one patron. Sforza supported him with a stipend (not always paid on time), provided a studio, and - most importantly - the freedom to be a polymath, expanding well beyond being a painter. That original letter survives in the Codex Atlanticus at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and it's a great reminder that even the greatest polymaths in history had to pitch for their survival [4].

(ii) Vincent van Gogh

Vincent is truly remarkable. In his prolific decade of painting, and throughout his life, he only had one patron and true believer: his younger brother. Theo was an art dealer and supported Vincent's rent and art supplies, mostly in the form of monthly allowances [5]. It's worth mentioning that Theo was actually the person who suggested Vincent become an artist (Vincent thought the idea was ridiculous).

It's hard to summarize how special the relationship between the two brothers was, and how critical Theo was to the Vincent we know today. I highly recommend reading the letters between them to experience what true support means (651 letters to Theo) [5]. Despite Vincent's obsessive output, he felt a great burden and guilt as his brother covered his life expenses. Theo wrote back: "you've given it back to me several times over, both by your work and by a brotherly affection which is worth more than all the money I'll ever possess."

I'd love to believe that Vincent experienced the most beautiful, unconditional form of love from his only patron and brother. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. When Theo considered leaving his job to start his own dealership, Vincent became extremely anxious over potentially losing his only financial lifeline - and, among other strains, things turned tragic from there. At 37, Vincent died from a gunshot wound - presumably suicide. Theo died six months later.

(iii) Ludwig van Beethoven

In 1809, Napoleon's brother offered Beethoven a position in Kassel. His patrons in Vienna panicked and pooled their funds to offer Beethoven 4,000 florins a year - with one condition: stay in Vienna. That was the only condition. He was free to compose and play as he wished. Archduke Rudolph (the Emperor's brother), Prince Lobkowitz, and Prince Kinsky literally paid him to live and create [6].

Having diversified patrons saved him from single-patron reliance - and that was felt most when Prince Kinsky died and Lobkowitz went bankrupt. Rudolph continued to pay him alone until Beethoven's death in 1827, a total of 18 years. Beethoven appreciated the support, dedicating some of his works to him (the Emperor Concerto, the Missa solemnis, and more).

(iv) Nikola Tesla

Tesla never had a patron in the classic sense. His backers were business partners and investors, and that's exactly the point. Westinghouse believed in Tesla's alternating current system and licensed his patents, paying $60k upfront plus $2.50 per horsepower of AC electricity sold. By 1890, Tesla had become wealthy - yet it didn't last. The War of the Currents with Edison left Westinghouse nearly broke, forcing them to ask Tesla to tear up the royalty contract. In response, Tesla (reportedly) walked to the safe and destroyed the original contract worth millions on the spot [7].

Tesla was driven by his idealistic values. He believed AC power was an ultimate public good, that it needed to reach the world - more than he needed money. He eventually found another funder for his wireless power transmission project, yet J.P. Morgan withdrew funding, reportedly after realizing Tesla's project was not commercially viable: Tesla wanted to provide free electricity, without usage tracking and charging. There was no revenue model. The whole project collapsed, and Tesla never recovered from it. He died alone in a New York hotel room in 1943. Perhaps the world, and its money, simply wasn't ready to back the genius's ideals for an energy-abundant, prosperous world.

Each of these stories taught me something different. Leonardo shows how much one patron can make possible. Vincent shows how fragile it gets when that one patron is your only lifeline. Beethoven had several patrons, and that's what kept him going when two of them dropped out. And Tesla shows what happens when your backers are in it for the returns - once the numbers stop making sense, they walk away.

Granted, these examples are outliers rather than the median. History favors the winners, and that's exactly why we remember the geniuses over their patrons, and mostly those geniuses who changed the world noticeably. For every Leonardo with a Sforza, there were patron-backed mediocrities (with all due respect to those who dared) whose names we've forgotten, courts full of artists whose output never justified the stipend, and patrons who backed creators who never delivered breakthroughs. This goes both ways: countless makers with world-class work inside them never found their Theo or Medici family, and we'll never know what the world missed.

Patronage doesn't pick winners - only time and hindsight will tell. What patronage does is buy the things that creators can't always buy for themselves: time, sustained long enough for greatness to compound, if it's there to compound at all.

Having a patron, even a lifetime one, does not guarantee a great outcome - be it for the patron, the artist, or the world. What it does is increase the probability of such an event - or even a series of events creating a chain reaction for the net positive of everyone involved, and ideally the world.

Beyond their life works and practical impact on their fields, the greatest polymaths continue to inspire the next wave of creators. In that picture, patrons don't always get the credit they deserve - yet without them, things would have looked different. Likely worse.

For many, working life starts between 22-25, after graduating from college. With retirement around 60-65 depending on where you live, the math of actual work years comes to ~40 years, give or take. That's 40 × 365 = 14,600 days. Accounting for weekends and holidays, it's safe to reduce that by ~30% to get to actual working days: ~10,220. That's it - for the majority of humans today, their "creative window", the active timeframe of producing their core work, is 10k days.

In those 10k days, how many hundreds, if not thousands, of days are spent on random jobs that neither fulfill you nor serve a greater purpose? How much time has been wasted away from your core craft, your deepest curiosity, just because you had to make ends meet? Life just presents itself in the least expected ways, and you have to make it work with what you've got, while the clock is ticking.

I use the term "placeholder work" intentionally - it's really a placeholder for the other thing you could have been doing instead. To be fair, each life experience could teach you something if you're open to it. What if the majority - or even all - of that useless placeholder work could be removed?

It's hard to speculate what my life could have been if I'd had financial independence early on. Perhaps it could have ruined me. Or maybe, just maybe, it could have helped me create more art and share it with the world. I don't know. What I do know is that I didn't let financial struggles, or even lack of resources, stop me.

Nowadays, there are tools and platforms that let you fund your lifestyle of creating and sharing with the world. You can build an audience, sell products and services, get funding for your startups, receive donations, let people subscribe and pay for your work, or just "buy you a coffee". The opportunities feel endless, bound only by your resourcefulness.

And yet, look closer at how those tools actually feel for a creator. The subscription creator lives renewal cycle to renewal cycle: every month, a chunk of supporters quietly churns away, and every month, the creator is back to performing for retention instead of creating. The grant-funded artist spends half their creative time chasing grants, writing applications, polishing pitches, and shaping their work to fit whoever is holding the budget. The ad-supported writer optimizes headlines instead of pursuing sharp ideas. The startup founder raises enough runway to survive ~18 months, then spends those months raising again and again. Our modern funding tools have increased perpetual, low-grade financial anxiety, stretched across an entire career. Funding that lasts a month, a year, or maybe a few more - and the work of a lifetime keeps getting chopped into quarterly chunks.

What about creators and their supporters? What about their commitments to each other? That's where I think there's a possibility for a breakthrough. I like to think that everyone could be an artist. In fact, we're all creative, and with practice, our creativity muscle grows. As with all great things, it takes time and effort. Even with the skills and the effort, you still need time to will it into existence. Even if you can ship masterpieces fast, it takes years of work behind them.

I know there are people out there who care about my work, and there are people out there whose work is dear to my heart. There are also people who are extremely talented yet they focus on completely unrelated work to take care of their families and pay their bills. I respect everyone earning their money in an honest way, and I wish more people would push toward creating and focusing fully on their craft of love, whatever it would mean to them.

Imagine how much different your life would have been if you knew that you could focus on your work of choice without the financial stress of figuring out the rest. You could just dedicate yourself to your work and the things you love, freeing up so much time - carving out moments for your loved ones and your loved craft, instead of chasing financial upside bit by bit.

I believe "Lifetime Patronship" is one way of achieving that, and I think it might be an optimal life strategy for prolific creators. What if, besides - or even instead of - support in the form of sales, donations, and other kinds of funding that could last you a month or even years, there was a way for people to support you for a lifetime?

Yes, for your lifetime.

By lifetime patron, I mean someone who commits to a creator for the rest of their creative life, not month to month. It's a single, significant contribution made once and either (a) distributed over time, or (b) given all at once - so the patron never has to renew and the creator never has to ask again.

Technology isn't the bottleneck here; rather, it's the creators' and patrons' ability to coordinate and evolve into a new form of co-creation.

Look back at history's patrons. The Medicis are remembered forever, literally painted into the masterpieces they made possible. Archduke Rudolph has the Emperor Concerto and the Missa solemnis dedicated to him - his name is still attached to those works, two centuries later. What patrons might get is not financial: it's legacy.

Becoming part of the work itself, a name stitched into the fabric of what gets created; it's utility and access - a front-row seat to the learning, the experimenting, the breakthroughs and the failures; and it's participation, perhaps the rarest experience of not watching history but tangibly helping make it happen.

There are people I'd love to back for a lifetime. I love their personality, their work, and their values. I know they might not succeed at first, maybe not even on the 5th or 10th attempt, but I still want to back them and be part of their journey, experiencing many of their ups and downs as their lifetime patron. Building a lifelong relationship with them, witnessing their evolution over countless creative (and destructive) cycles. More than anything, I'd love to gift them what's arguably the most precious gift: freedom, in the form of free time and resources to focus on their craft of a lifetime, imperfectly seeking breakthrough(s).

It's worth clarifying that when I say art, I mean "art" in the most abundant and versatile definition of the word. It's a term I use to encompass a craft one deeply loves, led by curiosity and a relentless pursuit of discovery - ideally combined with the love of humanity, manifested in giving back and paying it forward, so that we all can continue building on top of each other's life works, contributing to our shared, prosperous future. That's what I want to support for a lifetime: people willing to dedicate their lives in pursuit and creation of breakthroughs. That's what I selfishly want for myself - imperfectly seeking breakthrough, and hopefully achieving one after the other until the clock runs out.

The idea of lifetime patronship has been growing inside of me for years. It started as a personal need for a different, sustainable funding path than existing alternatives. I've prototyped ideas over the last year, but hesitated to launch. I don't think lifetime patronship is a technological constraint - it's a psychological one. It's all in our minds, the greatest battleground there is.

It's not about the form factor of lifetime patronship, but rather the commitment of it. There's a giant difference between a lifetime commitment and, say, offering perks from your product or service for a month or a year. The difference is so remarkable that it makes you think about your life holistically and question things you might not have thought about before. That itself is incredibly special. Going outside cached answers makes for a great adventure. It might as well be an adventure of a lifetime.

As you might have guessed by now, I'm launching my own Lifetime Patronship. I'll happily share the experience as it unfolds, alongside a documented experiment covering the implementation details. It's been truly a long time coming, and I hope decades from now, when I connect the dots looking backwards, this one will be pivotal on the map.

It turns out that creating art for the sake of it is a privilege, and to do it for decades... is the privilege of a lifetime. Let those who support us on that journey reap the fruits of that garden with us.

References

1. Kelly, K. (1998). 1000 True Fans. The Technium. https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/
2. Vasari, G. (1550). Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.
3. Isaacson, W. (2017). Leonardo da Vinci.
4. Biblioteca Ambrosiana. (n.d.). Codex Atlanticus. https://codex-atlanticus.ambrosiana.it
5. Van Gogh Museum. (n.d.). Letters to Theo. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/all-stories/van-goghs-letters
6. Solomon, M. (1998). Beethoven (2nd ed.).
7. Seifer, M. J. (1998). Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla.