Shadow Hive

Don't build another Patreon. Build the platform for people mid-build.

Dana Hill came to us with a specific thesis: creators don't want to teach, they want to share the work as it happens. And subscribers aren't looking for a course, they want to sit next to someone who's in the middle of doing the thing. A house flipper deep in a renovation. A SaaS founder on month four. A photographer building their book from zero.

The product had to hold two payment flows (subscribers paying creators + monthly platform fees from creators), three user types (Creator, Subscriber, Admin), structured weekly Sprints, live sessions with real-time tipping, a Private Workspace, a Wins Wall for social proof, and a creator-to-creator affiliate system that pays 25% of platform fees for life.

It also had to ship as a complete SaaS, not a prototype. That meant a full admin portal, a creator application workflow, a category & algorithm panel, and every account action (suspend, ban, reverse) wired into production from day one.

Application, review, then a four-step setup that ends at Stripe.

Every creator applies before they can publish. The sign-up screen splits two lanes from the first click, Shadow a creator or Share my journey, and the journey lane opens the Creator Application Info panel inline: category, a 500-character journey description, no polished bios. A real admin reviews each application manually inside 48 hours.

Once approved, onboarding runs four steps: Profile → Pricing → Journey → First Post. Pricing is the structural decision, a slider from $5 to $99/mo, with founding rate locked for life for every subscriber who joins at that price, and a Stripe Connect link that gates step 3.

A Hive is someone's live journey, pinned, gated, and running on a weekly cadence.

Every creator gets a Dashboard that behaves like a control tower, active Sprint at the top with submission progress, upcoming live sessions, a notifications column, and a My FAQ block that's visible on their public My Story tab. Posts are drafted here, then pushed to the Hive.

The public Hive page pins the Weekly Sprint above the fold, a task or prompt, a deadline, and a submission count. Below it, a reverse-chronological feed of raw posts: Update, Win, Numbers, Real Talk, Hard Lesson, Decision, Behind the Scenes, Voice Note, Tool/Resource. Every body is gated behind the subscription.

Daily.co video, real-time chat, and tipping that keeps 100% with the creator.

Live sessions embed Daily.co. Viewer count is real-time. Tips route through Stripe direct to the creator, the platform takes zero on tips. Replays save to the creator's feed automatically; chat highlights and pinned questions persist into the replay post.

The Wins Wall is social proof. The Workspace is where subscribers actually work.

Every time a subscriber gets a real outcome from following a Shadow, they post it to the Wins Wall, with a tagged result chip (Saved $12,000 on purchase price, First $1,000 revenue month), the specific Sprint it came from, and a link back to the creator's Hive. Admin can pin wins to the top.

The Private Workspace is every subscriber's working surface, Saved Posts with personal notes attached inline, My Notes, and My Purchases for the one-off digital products creators sell. Purchases are receipt-linked and re-downloadable for life.

Every dollar in, creator revenue, tips, affiliate payouts, in one view.

Stripe Connect runs the whole money layer. Creators see available balance with a one-tap withdraw, monthly bars for the last 6 months, a full transaction history that separates gross, platform fee, and net received per line, and their Affiliate Earnings block, 25% of every referred creator's platform fee, paid for life.

Affiliate referral codes are auto-generated at launch (format: DANA-H7X2). Any creator who signs up with a referral code locks the referrer into a 25% revenue share on the $29–$49/mo platform fee. It's one of the main reasons founding creators bring in the next 100.

A full admin portal. Not a settings page in a corner, a second product.

Shadow Hive's admin experience was scoped as a complete product in its own right: a persistent left sidebar with Dashboard, Applications, All Creators, All Subscribers, Monitoring, Revenue, Affiliates, Platform Settings, Users, Categories & Algorithm. Every admin action takes effect immediately, suspend logs the user out of every active session; ban permanently deactivates the account.

The Categories & Algorithm panel is where the trending engine lives. Admins edit the weights on the trending score formula, new subscribers (7d), engagement rate, posting streak, is-live bonus, active Sprint bonus, and override with manual Featured Rank pinning per creator. Save & Recalculate runs the trending job live.