
The Difficulties of Running a Sex-Inspired Startup - chenster
https://www.fastcompany.com/3029634/the-difficulties-of-running-a-sex-inspired-startup
======
mattmaroon
Well, that article portrays banks as moralizing prudes and neglects to mention
why they don't want to deal with those companies: very high amounts of fraud.
Process payments for a porn site and you're going to be hit with charge backs
out the wazoo. The industry has been mostly shady since the beginning so you
likely won't recoup the money you got stiffed.

Certainly there are legitimate players, but you can't blame a payment
processor or bank for not wanting to take high levels of risk.

~~~
ouid
Any hypothesis that violates the zero-arbitrage principle should be taken with
a grain of salt.

~~~
khazhoux
explain?

~~~
quickthrower2
A situation in which all relevant assets are priced appropriately and there is
no way for one's gains to outpace market gains without taking on more risk.
Assuming an arbitrage-free condition is important in financial models, thought
its existence is mainly theoretical.

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ykler
I still have no idea what the company does. "A user-generated digital
marketplace trying to “normalize” real sex"?

~~~
dlgeek
I gave up and checked out their website. It's an "amateur" for-pay clip site
(that claims to specialize in "genuine" sex) that does revenue sharing back to
the users, according to the various claims I could see in 30 seconds of poking
around.

~~~
whipoodle
Wow, that is so ridiculous. I was wondering what it was too.

So, this is really about people drawing weird boundaries around what they find
acceptable and labeling whatever's outside the boundary "porn". Mmm, so
progressive.

Much of what is called "sex positivity" strikes me as suspicious for similar
reasons.

~~~
kirsebaer
Back in the 1990s, VHS tapes of porn had a label explaining that this was
educational materials for married couples, not porn.

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sbuttgereit
These people have managed to get the funding thing under control as a sex
inspired startup.

Not huge money raised to be sure, but a good little business that's been
growing pretty well.

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/crave#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/crave#/entity)

[https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/09/19/50-shades-
of...](https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/09/19/50-shades-of-angel-
funding-crave-innovations-raises-2-4m-for-luxury-sex-toys/)

Their company site: [http://www.lovecrave.com/](http://www.lovecrave.com/)

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alacombe
This is not just out of "moral" reason.

The sex industry was under the scope of Operation Choke Point, an Obama-era
initiative of the United States Department of Justice, which would investigate
banks in the United States and the business they do with business in "edgy"
categories, including pornography.

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naiv
If you are well connected in the adult business it is easy to get financing
from other adult businesses and even more important massive traffic. But you
need to have a unique concept that converts traffic which she clearly doesn't
have.

There are also a couple of adult crowd funding sites, eg
[http://www.adultxfunding.com](http://www.adultxfunding.com) and some more.

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skarap
Maybe it's just that potential investors don't get how the startup is going to
earn money?

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notyourday
I can see "How are you going to actually make money" questions applicable to
all kinds of well funded startups except for the ones peddling porn and sex.

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whipoodle
Here is what people like the first woman in this article never address:

If porn is so denatured, and so misrepresentative of reality, why do people
make it themselves, and then share it with others, while never getting any
money or fame from it? There's no other explanation than they enjoy it. And
there are SO many places on the internet where people do this. And you can
find all the stuff that is supposedly sooo unrealistic that "normal" people
don't do. Singles, couples, groups, women and men, all of it. All of it.

Why not just admit, hey, there's things I like and things I don't like, and
sometimes people like things I don't, and vice versa. (I mean, I know _why_ ,
but.)

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wodenokoto
What does the MLNP company do? What is their business model? Looking at the
website, the best I can tell is that it a person selling conference talks
about sex.

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madaxe_again
Another business which ran into this in its early days was NaturalMotion -
they were initially building tech for realistic animated interactive porn -
and they got an initial round of angels (HNWIs) on that basis.

Of course, they pivoted and ended up producing tech for movies and games, but
porn was where they started.

It's not impossible to get investors for an adult startup (far from it), but
it is hard to grow, as word of mouth and so-forth doesn't work so well there,
for fairly obvious reasons.

~~~
senatorobama
It's pretty good SW.. I never figured out their technique. Does it use AI? Or
is it just a giant list of heuristics (i.e if else if else ... )

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al_chemist
Selling porn (sorry, sex-inspired videos) is now startup?

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zachrose
> “In the beginning, a lot of people told me not to go to the tech industry
> [with this product], but to go to the porn industry instead,” says Tio, who
> created the product for his wife during their long-distance hiatus from one
> another. “But for me, this is not porn. This is not kinky stuff. This is
> about intimacy because a lot of couples are looking for solutions to
> maintain intimacy.”

It's like they're on the middle rung of the sex-positivity ladder, looked down
upon by potential investors while themselves looking down at porn.

~~~
mc32
Maybe not looking down so much as differentiating from it. Kind of like you
don't have to look down on coffee to sell tea instead cuz some people prefer
tea.

~~~
Viker
But why do people differentiate porn and Sex?

When we look at a professional football player play football, we never call it
fake football. So why when it comes to sex we choose what is real and what is
fake. I understand that very few people can have Sex like porn stars and very
few women have the ability to look like porn starts. But why do we look down
upon them and call them fake.

~~~
elorant
Because porn objectifies women. Today's porn doesn't have to do anything with
sex, at least not the sex most people are used to do. There's no intimacy.
Women look artificial with all these cosmetic surgeries. The whole thing looks
artificial. Not to mention that it gives youngsters a very distorted view of
how sex should be which is a whole other story by itself.

~~~
coldtea
> _Because porn objectifies women_

That doesn't make sense as an accusation, as that's the whole point of the
activity: to objectify women (and men).

Porn, like casual sex, is about seeing the other person, and being interested
in them, for a single dimension: sexually. Which is totally fine. Who said you
should be interested in the whole package deal every time?

Maybe not have sex unless it's a relationship/marriage either? Men AND women
do enjoy casual sex without any further purpose all the time.

Employment also sees the other person in one dimension: professionally.
Traffic cops see the person in one dimension: how well they drive. Credit card
companies see a other person in one dimension: what they do with their bills.
All of those are objectifications: the other is a means to something. It's
just because of being prudish and/or misunderstood feminism that specifically
seeing the other in terms of sex (for casual sex, porn, flirting, etc), is
considered especially heinous.

> _Women look artificial with all these cosmetic surgeries. The whole thing
> looks artificial. Not to mention that it gives youngsters a very distorted
> view of how sex should be which is a whole other story by itself._

That's more like why it's "fake" \-- not the objectifying thing.

~~~
peterwwillis
_Mainstream_ porn is about objectification. At the birth of modern video
pornography, pornography was a vehicle for a story. The story was the theme,
and the sex took up a small portion of the total run time, because who wants
to watch people fucking for two hours?

Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify is to
render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless. To have a
single task, to be used as a tool. As a thing to be achieved or gained or
possessed, bought and sold; a commodity.

Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point of
view. In that view, women are usually objects. And since the women are the
main subject of such porn, there's no focus on the guy, either - so both often
seem like objects.

Porn in itself is an object, similar to a painting or piece of music. And also
like art, the point is not to objectify the subject - it's to identify with
the subject. What one does after that is particular to the person. Maybe you
fall in love with the person on the screen? Hate them? Imagine a past lover
who looks similar? Not everyone sees porn subjects as objects. Sometimes
people want beautiful art, or escape. They don't necessarily want to see two
machines banging into one another for an hour.

~~~
coldtea
> _Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify is to
> render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless. To have a
> single task, to be used as a tool._

And when you want to just fuck, whether you are a man or woman or anything
else, that's exactly what you want.

When you want love and cuddling and connecting, that's another story (and you
can even be the same person that in other instances wanted to just fuck. In
fact usually that's the case).

But somehow those that want to just fuck, and thus seek in the other just
that, are supposed to be made to feel guilty -- even if the other doesn't
mind, and wants just that themselves.

> _Mainstream heteronormative porn mainly espouses a chauvinistic male point
> of view._

That's the whole point. Porn is about pleasure. The "chauvinistic male point
of view" provides pleasure to the majority (mainstream) of males.

Porn is not about expanding your mind and connecting with the Other and the
magic of the universe. It's also not about empowering etc -- any more than
cooking is about empowering eaters.

~~~
peterwwillis

      > > Objectification is a very specific thing as regards sex. To objectify
      > > is to render less than human, to make something inanimate, lifeless.
      > > To have a single task, to be used as a tool.
      
      > And when you want to just fuck, whether you are a man or woman or
      > anything else, that's exactly what you want.
    

"Just wanting to fuck" is not objectification. I can want to fuck someone
without dehumanizing them. Implying that "just wanting to fuck" is the same as
objectification, for everyone, all the time, is really not healthy.

    
    
      > But somehow those that want to just fuck, and thus seek in the other
      > just that, are supposed to be made to feel guilty -- even if the
      > other doesn't mind
    

I haven't mentioned guilt or shame at all. I think you're projecting something
else into my comment.

    
    
      > That's the whole point. Porn is about pleasure. The 
      > "chauvinistic male point of view" provides pleasure to the majority
      > (mainstream) of males.
    

It's pleasurable to you. It's not so pleasurable to someone else if they
become the subject of your objectification fantasy without agreeing to that.
And it's not so pleasurable to large segments of society who then become
targets of behaviors learned from watching only this kind of porn.

..... which is the entire point being addressed by the business mentioned at
the top of the article. But anyway.....

    
    
      > Porn is not about expanding your mind and connecting with the Other
      > and the magic of the universe. It's also not about empowering etc
      > -- any more than cooking is about empowering eaters.
    

This is _your view and personal opinion_. It doesn't apply to everyone else.

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's pleasurable to you. It's not so pleasurable to someone else if they
> become the subject of your objectification fantasy without agreeing to
> that._

Fantasies are personal. And if you mean the porn actors, they are paid and are
into the whole thing (if they are not, that's of course another story). So
what someone's fantasies are, is no business of anybody else -- and no one's
agreement is required.

> _And it 's not so pleasurable to large segments of society who then become
> targets of behaviors learned from watching only this kind of porn._

Porn didn't exist when cavemen raped women. Besides, should we extend the same
concern to video games, movies, literature, etc? How about we add violence to
it? I, for one, wouldn't find it "pleasurable" to become target of behaviors
someone learned in a street fighting video game or a FPS.

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0x8BADF00D
When is the token sale? Put me down for 500 ETH.

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thomas_howland
All of the above, plus VCs likely worried about giving excuses for being
targeted by sexual harassment claims.

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the_stc
If they had a solid revenue model, they might be a good target for blockchain
fundraising. I dislike the term ICO, because a token makes zero sense for this
company. They could do what we're doing and sell shares (token-
shares/blockchain bearer shares). I think we'll see a turn to this model in
the post-ICO era, once the hype dies or the bubble bursts.

