What is the impact of switching costs between platforms on content creator behavior?

Guest: Most platforms are not competing along the same dimensions. I think the switching costs are very different for all of these platforms.

Patreon locks creators because they don't let creator export their email list, at least at one point in time. They don't let you transfer all your paying users and their payment information to a different platform.

So if you work hard to build up a membership business on Patreon it's very hard to switch at that point. I think Teachable and Podia, basically their digital products are more complex. So I think that makes it harder because it locks in the supply side.

Because once you create this complex product offering, it's kinda like how website builders, like Wix and Squarespace, have such good long-term revenue retention, because once you put a lot of work into creating your supply-side product, you don't want to put in that same amount of fixed cost to do it again on a different platform.

Teachable and Podia, well, I've never made a course, but I'm assuming they don't make it super easy to package up your course and take it somewhere else. 

Gumroad I feel like probably has low switching costs because, uh, it's probably like the simplest platform and that's probably why they're growing so fast because there's a lot of creators who are just looking for simple solutions right now.