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Finances & the Future of Cara
Hi all, this is Jingna, the founder of Cara. Since going viral, a lot of people have expressed concern about how long Cara can last after seeing the screenshot of our $100k Vercel bill. Many people forwarded me Angelos post about how Cara should become subscription-only, thousands of others have said everything from "ads are fine", "get sponsorships", "do donations", to the more dramatic "just shut down".Its been over a month since this unexpected surge in traffic. We passed 1 million users (!!!), and with our mounting bills, Ive put off time and again on writing this post because I needed time to research, do my homework, work on optimizing our code to reduce costs, and consider as many angles as possible for the long-term health of Cara.This post was difficult to put together, and I feel immensely vulnerable in having to share the details and my thoughts around such a sensitive topic. I know people can easily misunderstand, misconstrue, or take things out of context, but still, I think it's important for me to be transparent about the challenges we have been facing, how we are dealing with them, and our plans for moving forward.My original plan:I avoided promoting Cara most of this entire past year as I know we couldnt afford the challenges that would come with scale, which requires money and a much larger team than what we have to tackle issues we aren't ready for. So my original plans were to: 1) Lay low for as long as needed and build features until we are ready for public launch2) Pilot subscriptions in the meantime, see how much we can sustain against our expenses3) Raise money from trusted people like family and friends that align with our vision and missionI wanted to get us to profitability over time, so we could afford hiring full-timers to work Cara and sustain it long-term. That was the goal.Current State of Things:It costs a lot of money to run Cara.Before the traffic surge, it cost about $2k/month for various hosting and development services to run the platform.When things went viral, I was hit with a $100k bill from one of our service providers for 1 week of traffic.3 weeks after things calmed down to a new normal, a quick back of the napkin calculations say we will need $660k to host Cara for a year.We now have 4 million posts and 5 million images on Cara! These numbers grow by hundreds of thousands each week. So if we account for another unexpected traffic spike within a year, add the cost of spam and moderation that we have to start tackling, and legal fees for advice to make sure we are doing things correctlythe expenses would get closer to $1million.We anticipated spam and bot issues to happen at some point, but due to the new attention on Cara, we are now encountering it much sooner than expected.Ive had to start banning our first porn bots and I am so overwhelmingly terrifiedbetween the potential legal costs, full time salaries and more that I have to start thinking aboutits been a lot.Monetization Thoughts:I planned on having a mix of job listings, user subscriptions, and sponsorship/selected ads in the long term. Each of these would take 1 year to implement given our small teamlast year we did job listings, this year was going to be subscriptions.I wanted to build our community slowly and organically, and eventually open up to more types of creatives such as photographers, designers, stylists, hair stylists, makeup artists, and more from my own industry and beyond.I wanted to steadily work towards being profitable one day, so that we could afford to pay people to work on Cara full-time, and speed up our development so features and tools can be shipped more quickly.With the unexpected traffic, we urgently need to address spam and other issues much sooner than I was estimating for. So to address some of the most common suggestions the community has brought up, my thoughts are below: On Crowdfunding/GoFundMeI appreciate the communitys support so so much, but unlike a Kickstarter, our expenses wont be a one-time only event. Our bills will keep growing, and they have to be paid month after month after month.It might be a viable short-term measurelike the coffee contributions helping us out right now (thank you, everyone!)but its not a feasible solution to paying our bills long-term.When I imagine having to repeatedly ask artists for money in the state of our current worldI just hate the idea so much. I dont ever want anyone to feel obligated or pressured into making contributions. So while its one means of keeping us afloat, I truly believe we need to work on longer-term solutions as we move forward. On Going Subscription-OnlyAngelo Sotira is the co-founder and former CEO of DeviantArt. When I first heard his suggestion to make Cara subscription-only, I couldnt wrap my head around it. But as I started to see spam and ban evasions pop up on the platform, I began to understand how his words as well-intentioned and came from a place of experience after running DA for over 20 years.The discussions around his post got really heated. Some people understood the perspective, many others felt that this would cut off access for young individuals getting interested in artand I agree.I benefited a lot as a 14-year old on DeviantArt 22 years ago, and made life-long friends because access to DA was free and anyone could be on it. I was able to have my first clients like Mercedes Benz because they saw my work on DA.I know the world has changed drastically over the last 20+ years. Spam is more rampant than ever, bots are more sophisticated, and generative AI is only making everything much more difficult and ultimately expensive for us to moderate.Given all that, I realize how a paywall can help cut down bots and reduce scraping for gen AI. It is truly appealing for artists. But even so, my vision for Cara is to benefit the greatest number of people for as much and as long as I can. Even if I may be wrong, I dont want to give that up without trying.Maybe in a year I will regret not listening to this advice, but for now, I want to try all the options I can think of first, even if it means a harder path forward. On Non-Profit GrantsA lot of what Ive seen of good nonprofits requires things I cannot do, such as the founder to network and socialize 99% of their time. I dont have the luxury and time to do that without already having money first. So for now, I can only keep building Cara and work with what I have. On Community InvestingMany people suggested having our community be Caras investors. And its really hard to say this because its very personal, but the biggest grief Ive had since founding Cara was the amount of hate and harassment I have had to deal with from the artist community critical of us.Be it bugs we cant resolve, features we cant yet build, or policies to protect ourselves and our userspeople get so angry and abusive, yell at us in caps, call us names, and would say some very, very horrible things.(Trigger warning for this paragraph, feel free to skip): Up until Cara, I have never attempted to harm myself due to bullying and harassmentand Ive lived through a number of harassments, doxxing, and personally difficult times in my life. So to have been driven to the brink while working on Cara last yearI learned that I need to protect myself if I want Cara to keep going.So as much as the idea of community investing in Cara sounds appealing on paper, I am overwhelmed by the thought of having to endure what Ive experienced a thousand times more.Maybe there are ways to do this if Im shielded from engaging with the community and using the app altogether, but then I wont be able to design or make decisions as I have. And I worry I'll end up in a place where I wouldn't want to work on it anymore, and that's not a path I want to go down towards.Perhaps things will change in the future. But for now, I dont yet know a way around this.Whats next:Over the past month, the team has been focused on optimizing code for cost reduction and scale. We will continue that work, start on in-app subscriptions, as well as begin responding to partnership enquiries and start exploring those potential income streams.Prior to our traffic spike, I also intended to do a round of fundraising from trusted friends to help afford the hiring of key staff so we can speed up Caras development. While the other work are underway, I plan to pick up where I left off, as the funding will assist with our more immediate needs for development and stability, and reduce risks of us rushing into bad product or partnership decisions.There has also been a lot of interest from venture capital firms which I had put off looking at while dealing with our first fires.The increase in traffic and expenses means we do need more money, but as a benefit corporation, our mission and values will take priority. So if we were to consider any offers, it would have to be someone who understands our vision and goals, and as a condition for fundraising, we have to remain in full control of Cara..I built Cara because I wanted a place I could call home for myself as an artist.Our mission is to build a platform where creatives rights are respected, and that will always remain core to our guiding principles.But beyond that, I love the community thats come together on Cara.We are seeing the beginnings of a shift towards more positive mindsets with regards to sharing onlinesomething that hasnt been true in a long timeso I want to keep building Cara in ways to make that possible.I believe we can and should aspire to be a healthier cornerstone to the internet of tomorrow.I want to continue building Cara in that vision, and for those joining us on this long journey, thank you.Jingna ZhangFounder, Cara
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