

Ask HN:  Would you ever join a porn startup? - spking

The porn market is gigantic (conservatively $2.6 Billion in 2001).  Let's say there existed an innovative and disruptive startup that did not engage in actual porn production, but added a new distribution mechanism and end-user application.  Let's also say that it had some promising early traction.<p>If you got the opportunity to join such a startup, would you:<p>1.)  even consider it, or
2.)  be comfortable telling friends and family what you were working on?
======
netik
As someone who's worked in the porn industry, I disagree with the comment that
it's a "collection of other people's technology duct taped together."

There was huge amounts of API work, design, scaling, distributed encoding and
rendering farms, and a host of technology advances that we made to keep our
sites functional. None of this was other people's tech.

Think about all of the people who work in the gambling industry. It's quite
similar.

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theBobMcCormick
Why not? At least it'd working for a company whose product I'm interested in.
:-)

Frankly, as long as the porn company was only doing relatively straight
forward vanilla porn (no animals, no minors, etc), I'd have fewer "moral
qualms" about working for a porn company than I would about working in the
finance or "defense" industries.

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tetha
Well... You work at a startup which produces a website (for example) to
distribute porn. You are kind of uncomfortable telling your grandma about
this. This is understandable. However, you can reduce this. Why does the
semantic of the images and videos distributed by your website matter? You are
overall producing a distribution mechanism for various media, like images and
video.

To a certain degree, you can apply the same measures special forces or the
mafia applies: You hide as little relevant details as possible to stay close
to the truth, but to remain far away enough to be clear.

So, as a first conclusion we can say: We could work there and not tell people,
while telling people what we do, even our grandmother.

Second, there is something which kinda aggravates me. "Oh my god! He helps
others to distribute porn! He helps someone live their sexuality! Burn this
(meta-)witches!". But I'm rather not gonna get worked up on that.

Given these two, for me, there is clearly no problem in telling friends, and
no problem in telling the family, even though it might be necessary to reduce
the truth a bit depending on the person you are talking to.

Second, considering it. Given the second point I made already, I can just ask:
why not? You are just building a distribution platform (for example). This
platform usually is independent of the contents it distributes. This might be
porn as well as cute little kitten pictures. And again: What is bad about
porn?

so, tl;dr: 1) yes. 2) yes. as much as I can without offending someone.

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gexla
1\. Maybe 2. Yes. This would depend on my choices. If I had two or more
choices of a startup to join, my biggest concern would be the competition in
the porn market. If the startup did come up with an innovative and disruptive
idea, then it would likely be quickly copied, perhaps with better funded
backing. If another choice of startups was equally innovative and disruptive
in a different market (though still a market with potential) then that would
probably be my first choice.

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jarin
I worked at a porn company and built probably the exact same thing you are
building ( [http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty-
ame...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/come-and-get-it-naughty-america-is-
building-an-itunes-for-porn/) ), so:

1) Yeah, if the salary is good, and

2) Friends: yes, Family: maybe

~~~
spking
Thanks for the link. Actually closer in spirit to another site mentioned in
the comments of that post:

<http://www.heatseek.com/>

------
fookyong
I would jump at the chance.

I would imagine that working 1 to 2 years at an adult internet startup would
give you the most insane knowledge about direct marketing, maximising
conversions and the dark underbelly of affiliate marketing. It would be an
absolutely fascinating ride.

Plus you're pretty much guaranteed revenue. There's a strong demand out there
for porn, I hear :)

~~~
hajrice
"working 1 to 2 years at an adult internet startup would give you the most
insane knowledge about direct marketing, maximising conversions and the dark
underbelly of affiliate marketing."

I had a job offer from one porn tube site to work as a developer. I doubt that
you'd learn those skills working as a dev. That being said +1 for the info.

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mgkimsal
1\. yes 2\. yes, mostly.

I'm not involved in the porn industry now, and still am not comfortable
telling some of my family what I do. Not because I'm ashamed, just because
it's not something some of them can easily grasp, and it's seen as a bit
confusing. I just say "computers" and that's enough for that. So, I'd probably
just say the same thing regardless.

------
ZachPruckowski
Given the current job market in many areas, it's getting hard to blame people
for taking jobs producing porn, much less distributing it. I think a lot of
friends/family would buy that as an immediate justification.

Further, porn companies tend to be on the bleeding edge in terms of tech
innovation, so it's very possible whatever tech they're creating sees mass-
market use in a few years, and then you're like the only guy who has years of
experience in it. And that assumes you don't get a nice slice of the pie from
the original company.

~~~
spking
That's an interesting angle. But if you're the guy with a few years headstart,
do you think the stigma associated with porn might make some future employer
hesitate in hiring you?

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known
Isn't competition too high
[http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1703724&cid=32747...](http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1703724&cid=32747546)

------
mwerty
1\. Yes.

2\. I would hide it or claim its a stealth project. Experience has taught that
weirding out people is not the most efficient way of maintaining
relationships.

------
kineticac
the porn industry is basically an "industry" built upon a deadly sin that has
a very powerful innate emotional grasp on some (maybe most) people. Any
company you build upon that taps into some impulsive emotion is going to be
pretty cool, but in this case, society just makes it seem like the dirt of
technology companies.

If you really understand porn, and you're not the kind of person to take on
everything associated with it, go for it. But I think the question and
suggestion is rather: "would you start a company based on an impulsive
emotion, even if it's something society has branded as a sin?"

I can see betting, smoking, drugs, that kind of thing all falling into the
same category.

If you're able to find something that hasn't been struck down as horrible,
then go for it.

------
starkfist
There aren't many liquidity events (snicker) in porn startups, so make sure
you get paid a huge salary.

------
noonespecial
It'd be a last resort. Porn is supposedly innovative but its more like
"Ferengi" innovation. A bunch of other people's technology duct-taped together
quick-and-ugly with pure profit in mind. I don't think it would be very
fulfilling.

------
safetytrick
no, how could I explain that on a future resume?

~~~
garply
"They offered me money in exchange for solving their technical problems. I did
X, Y, and Z while there."

------
csomar
No, I won't feel comfortable (work, friends, family, our culture). There are
lot of other options, so I'll consider other ones.

------
dannytatom
Yes and yes, I even tried to get a development job for a porn site once before
but never got an interview. :(

------
famfam
Sure. Hiring?

------
JoeAltmaier
On the internet, porn is about addiction. SO go ahead, and create a gambling
site while you're at it.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
I'm assuming then that for consistency you also wouldn't work for Zygna,
Blizzard, or any social or MMO game companies? Or work for any alcohol or
tobacco companies? What about Hostess or DQ? All of them are companies that
knowingly benefit from and encourage addiction.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes, I'd agree, "social" gaming is about addiction. In fact, there is little
or no real social interaction going on - its the biggest doublespeak since
1984.

Btw this site almost qualifies - I spend WAY too much time reading this stuff.

And why is a moral code offensive to so many? I won't work on getting people
addicting to junk for money - and get downgraded for mentioning it. Question:
how many HNers do this for a living?

~~~
theBobMcCormick
I'm not opposed to a moral code, in fact, I welcome it. I _am_ opposed the the
knee-jerk puritanical reaction that anything related to SEX is automatically
immoral.

To quote George Michael: "Sex is natural, Sex is good."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My explicit point was, internet porn is an addiction factory. Porn in
magazines, books, videos has a very healthy place - mostly because its social
and portable.

Porn on the internet has been neither. It is not designed creatively, for
enjoyment socially, in venues suitable for sex.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Given that most genre's of media are moving (at least partially) away from
magazines, books, and videos to the internet, I can't see how it's surprising
that porn is also.

I don't see how that makes internet porn any less health or moral than other
porn.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...because its not social, not portable, very difficult to enjoy with a
partner and rarely is. Because it can be force-fed from the Internet at
tremendous speed, in a manner designed to feed addiction.

Again, I have no moral issue with porn. The moral problem is in aiding and
abetting the cashing-in on addictive personalities, in feeding that addiction
and in ensnaring more people, all for cash.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
I can't believe we're spending so many reply's on such a trivial subject, but
the logical fallacies here just bug me, so here goes.

Not portable? Err.. iPad, iPhone, Laptop, Netbook..... Everything on the
internet is portable these days, including porn.

As for not social... Dude what kind of social group are you hanging out with
that you're sharing your porn with them?!?

As for whether it's difficult to enjoy with a partner: Does this mean people
without a partner don't deserve porn?!? Besides which, I'm betting most copies
of "tradditional" porn like Playboy, Penthouse, Playgirl, Behind the Green
Door, etc. are "enjoyed" in a solitary fashion.

