PATRO
PATRO
Some projects begin because someone needs them. They keep growing when other people start making them their own.
Vin would still have existed. But it wouldn’t have come this far.
Vin started as a way to solve a problem I had myself. Three months later, as far as I was concerned, it was finished.
If no one else had used it, development would probably have stopped there.
The community changed that.
The community gives Vin its energy. Patros keep air in the tyres.
The motivation to keep going comes from the people who use Vin. But building and maintaining a project like this has real costs too: servers, databases, storage, third-party services, development tools, AI, and the infrastructure that keeps Vin running every day. Patros make it possible to live up to that commitment to the community.
You don't pay to use Vin
Patro was never meant to turn Vin into a subscription packed with premium features. We want Vin to keep going, keep developing, and reach as many cyclists as possible — without turning the experience into a wall of banners and ads. That’s why the contribution we ask for is deliberately small compared with many other apps. Not because Vin is worth less. Because the goal isn’t to turn Vin into a subscription business. The goal is to keep it running, keep building it, and keep sharing it.
And we want to thank the people who make it possible
People who support Vin as Patros keep their badge for the period they choose — one month, one year, or whichever option is available — and get access to a few additional features. But the important point is this: Patro is not the price of those features. They’re our way of thanking the people who help keep the project going and make it possible for us to keep building new things. We don’t want to build barriers just so we can charge people to get past them. We want to keep making Vin, and share a little more with the people who help make that possible.
