

Ask HN: To porn or not to porn? - cantsay

Hello everyone,
Well, I have reached a crossroad and need to figure out how to proceed from here.
I am, like most of you a founder of a startup(s)... long story short I have lost my job that was funding my startups and currently have no income. my 2nd start up is about to launch any day now and all our hopes (5 people) are hanging on this to succeed.
My first startup was a failure/success, it has won many awards some very "prestigious" and still gets tons of traffic and not to mention gets me some positive recognition but NO MONEY!
basically, Traffic is not enough to make any real money.<p>I am seriously considering starting a pay porn site (my friend owns 7) and explained how I can make some decent amount to at least keep paying the rent.
I have already contacted an attorney because I am concerned about my name not being affected by this... I frankly dont want to be associated with porn and explained to me how to make start this with out using my name.<p>My question is this:
Would you (startups/entrepreneurs/VCs/funders/anyone in the industry) do business or be associated with someone in the porn industry?<p>Thank you.<p>P.S: If its not obvious I have started a new account to hide my identity.
======
TomOfTTB
As a kid I helped a friend’s dad start a porn site (on the technical end) and
I’ll tell you two things about it.

1\. As someone with a decent reputation I get asked to a lot of meetings with
people to discuss the "big ideas" of non-programmer types. In those meetings
big numbers are always thrown around as to how much money can be made. The one
porn project I’ve ever done is THE ONLY time I actually ended up with the big
number that had been thrown around ($200,000 for 6 months work in case you
were wondering)

2\. Working on that site was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever had (and
not because of the pornography). From a technical perspective porn pushes the
boundaries more than any other area (except maybe pure research). It involves
everything from telecommuting (allowing performers to do their jobs from home)
to content delivery networks (my first experience with delivering a high
number of quality video feeds) to social interaction (porn is more about an
emotional reaction than anything else which requires studying how to create an
immersive experience). It really does push all your skills.

I mean, in honesty, I wouldn’t do it now that I have some money behind me. But
I don’t think there was anything wrong with it and I don’t feel bad about the
experience.

As far as hiding your identity, it’s called a shell corporation and it’s not
that hard. That said, you aren’t going to be able to completely hide your
identity. Some people are going to have to know (you deal with a lot of
vendors in that business). If you are going to the trouble of creating a new
HN account it probably isn’t for you.

------
tjic
> I frankly dont want to be associated with porn

Here's some business advice:

What exactly is your secret sauce that's going to make your site better than
(or even halfway as good as ) all of the thousands of competing sites? There's
no free way to make money.

Here's some moral advice:

Don't spend your time doing things you're ashamed of.

~~~
tlrobinson
" _What exactly is your secret sauce..?_ "

Porn is often the first (commercial) industry to take advantage of many new
technologies (DVD, the internets, etc), but even then there's probably tons of
room to innovate.

For example, I recently saw a porn recommendation engine posted on Reddit that
used collaborative filtering and all that fun stuff. AFAIK there aren't many
sites out there that do recommendation, even though it seems pretty obvious.

~~~
Tichy
Have a link? I've been (idly) wondering about creating something like that.

I suppose StumbleUpon would work as a recommendation engine.

~~~
tlrobinson
obviously nsfw...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/7qz7t/reddit_please_he...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/7qz7t/reddit_please_help_train_my_new_porn/)

------
SwellJoe
So, you can't make a non-porn site with tons of traffic pay...but you expect
to build a porn site that makes money?

I will humbly point out that porn clicks are some of the least valuable clicks
in the industry. Sites like YouPorn, with _huge_ traffic, aren't exactly
making a killing (they aren't going broke, either, as far as I know, but a
handful of these sites are in the top 50 on the Internet...there are non-porn
sites that are dramatically less popular that are making a lot more money). If
you expect an easy road to that level of popularity and traffic, _and_ expect
your porn site revenues to be respectable very quickly and without a lot of
work, I suspect you'll be disappointed.

That said, there have now been a few reasonable exits for adult Internet
businesses in the past two years. Before that, it would have been foolish for
someone who wanted to be _really_ rich to start a porn site...unless they
planned to go "all in" in the industry and become a major player for years to
come. It's still far less likely for a porn startup to be acquired than a non-
porn startup, and this is reflected in the hesitance of VCs in investing in
adult startups (it just doesn't happen, and it's not because the majority of
VCs would have ethical issues with such investments). And, going public is
pretty much impossible for a porn business, so the VCs that are looking for a
huge score are simply not going to be interested. Of course, if you're
bootstrapping, you don't care about VCs or exits.

All of that said, about six or seven years ago I did some infrastructure work
for one of the top-tier porn empire builders (I won't name names, but at the
time, his network was very likely the second largest). He paid on time, was a
joy to work with, and had very serious hardware running his sites. He had no
problem spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for expenses (his bandwidth
bill the month I worked for him was $86k, for example, and that was after he'd
negotiated a new deal that dropped those expenses by tens of thousands per
month), so his revenue was obviously respectable. But, he'd worked hard to
build it--it took several years to reach that level. He worked directly with
the content providers who were creating new branded content exclusively for
his network, he had his own porn ad network (because he had 30 or so brands to
promote, he could buy in large blocks, and also could barter with friendly
competitors), and he was extremely focused (which I think might be lacking for
you, if you're thinking of porn as a stopgap measure just until your "real"
project gets going).

I know several people who have had some level of success building small
projects specifically for revenue generation, and I don't think you have to go
the porn route to get there. Since you're obviously uncomfortable with that
path...why not choose something else that provides recurring revenue without a
huge investment of time? Widgets, iPhone apps, Flash games, etc. all are
pretty small projects that can produce a few hundred a month in revenue.

Or, perhaps you should be seeking investors for your "real" project. That's
how most successful tech businesses were started, you know?

~~~
Nelson69
I think there is some truth hidden in that first statement.

I think the financial model of porn is easy enough to grok, if you can get a
lot of traffic to a legit site, then I don't imagine that you can't make a
porn site work. It's really just a matter of figuring out what folks are
buying and start selling it and if you're seedy enough you can find the right
models, etc... It's probably easier in a lot of respects. What might be harder
is "going legit" after that.

Without passing judgment, porn seems to be one of those addictive sorts of
things, once you're in it or into it, getting out isn't always that easy.
Especially if you've known "success" with it and not really in other ways.
It's sort of a stereotype.

I've known a couple entrepreneurs that had experience with porn, running ISPs
and providing various technical services, in the post-porn world they seemed
to have a swarthyness to them that get in the way of a lot of things. I can't
say if they were that way before or if it was something they picked up along
the way but they just have different attitudes about the worker bees and
people working for them as well as those providing services they purchase. The
easiest way to describe it is a lack of respect on some human level; it's hard
to say, they have employees come and go and it's just different, the people
are almost all pissed when the leave and a lot more leave than do some of the
other companies around here.

~~~
SwellJoe
_The easiest way to describe it is a lack of respect on some human level; it's
hard to say, they have employees come and go and it's just different, the
people are almost all pissed when the leave and a lot more leave than do some
of the other companies around here._

I don't have a huge amount of experience in this area...but the one guy I
worked with was absolutely fantastic to work with. In fact, he seemed so
grateful that I was treating him like any other customer that he went out of
his way to be nice in return. Of course, I was not his employee; I was a
contractor and a vendor of software. This may have changed the dynamic, and
perhaps he put on a more polite face when going outside of the porn industry.
This may, even, have been part of his formula for success: the ability to play
effectively in both the porn world and the straight business world
successfully.

I do know the music industry a lot better, having spent a lot more time in it,
and I kinda suspect the attitudes are similar in all "talent" based industries
(e.g. businesses where you have a very clear line between the people who have
and make the money and the people who are the "talent", whatever that talent
might be). It breeds a very contentious working relationship, generally, with
not a lot of trust or respect going either direction. So, I guess I can see
working on the business side in the porn industry leading to the same sort of
attitude that rock and roll club owners usually have (pay as little and as
late as possible, treat the "talent" as expendable and interchangeable so they
don't get uppity, etc.), and the other side being quite mercenary, with no
loyalty to their employers (and with good reason).

------
dpifke
Funny story: when I first decided that I wanted to work for an "internet
company" in 1996, nearly all of my interviews were with porn companies. I was
a young kid with very little formal experience, so it follows that folks
closer to the fringe would be more willing to take a chance hiring me.

One of my most memorable interviews was when a company took me through the
cubicle farm in a SOMA warehouse where the "live on webcam" girls and guys
were performing. (To tell the truth, the setup was a bit depressing.)

I ended up taking a job at an ISP, not because I had any moral objection to
working on porn, but because it seemed like I'd be working on a lot more
interesting stuff and had a lot more potential for future advancement.

On my first day, my boss gives me a project to work on: get the streaming porn
working for his side business.

------
staunch
Porn is not some magic industry where all you exchange is your willingness to
be associated with it for riches. You're going to end up working your ass off
to be successful whether it's porn or not. If your other startup attempts
targeted consumers try switching to doing something that goes after small
businesses. They're actually willing to pay money for value and on average
they're wiling to pay a lot more than people will for porn.

------
mixmax
I think that in ten years porn will be much more mainstream than it is today.
Here in Scandinavia, the first place in the world to legalise porn, it is
already becoming socially acceptable with ex-porn stars becoming main stream
talkshow hosts, etc. The US. is probably a few years behind in this trend due
to their strange take on religion and sex.

My point is that I would just go with it, I know people that are in that
businees, and to my knowledge they have never had any problems. Neither
socially nor in business.

The social norms may be stricter where you are from, so take this with a grain
of salt.

For inspiration on how far you can take it if you choose this road look at
Private Media Group liste on NASDAQ:
<http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3APRVT>

~~~
mattmaroon
The U.S. is a LOT more than a couple years behind you, and the trend isn't
going in the right direction either.

~~~
josefresco
Are you kidding me? Have you seen Fox Business news lately? Or watched Rock of
Love? Or I dunno, any main stream media in the US in the last 10 years? Porn
and pretty naked ladies rule here in America even with the religious baby
boomers fighting against it (all the while buying it non-stop in private).

Yes maybe the mentality of the US is still lagging (lots of old people still
cling to their religion), but our actions are probably the most progressive in
the entire world (we don't need a law to change that)

~~~
mattmaroon
No, they're not. Someone swears on TV and it's still a huge fine. Do you think
the Europeans run live events on a tape delay just because someone might
accidentally swear near a live mic? When's the last time you saw a nipple on
broadcast TV (and remember what happened then?) or on the street? Walk down
the streets of London, you will. They have full nudity in fashion and perfume
ads in general interest magazines.

Our broadcast standards may be a little looser than they were 20 years ago,
but it's really not much. Our society as a whole has become more socially
conservative over the last 40 years too.

~~~
jrockway
I agree that our society is too conservative, but it _is_ going in the right
direction. It's just that there is a long way to go, and we are going in the
right direction very very slowly. (You'll notice that people keep trying to
make porn illegal, but the courts are becoming more and more permissive. That
is a good thing.)

Finally, the Internet is a global place, and it doesn't really matter what the
US thinks about a porn site based in the EU or in Japan.

------
mattmaroon
I have no moral qualms with it, but I wouldn't because it's just not a good
investment. In my travels I've bumped into some people who've succeeded at it
(one of whom writes a fascinating blog about the industry) and it's not easy.

For one, there's serious capital outlay. Producing porn is not cheap. Good
female performers charge $1k-$2k per scene. Males are $300-$500, but
significantly less reliable. They're really more important too, since their
job is much more demanding. Thanks to lubricants, a female can pretty much
phone it in so any hot model will do. But good luck finding a guy who will
show up, not be coked out, and be able to get it up and keep it up, and pop
when and where you tell him to. You're going to have entire shoots largely
wasted due to this.

You have to rent locations, camera men, lighting people. You're easily looking
at $4k-$5k per scene. To get people to pay money, top sites put out 10 or more
scenes per week. Can you fund this until reach the critical mass needed to
break even? If so I suspect you wouldn't be considering doing this in the
first place.

You have to move to L.A. pretty much. That's where all of the adult modeling
agencies are, and California is the only state in which shooting a porn does
not constitute illegal prostitution.

You have to design the web software, which is not trivial. You're delivering
videos so your incremental costs are high. You have to deal with payments,
which usually means a very expensive third-party provider. The rake is high
because of the very high rate of charge backs (which usually occur when the
wife sees the charge on the monthly statement and the husband suddenly can't
determine what it is and decides its bogus) which in turn makes credit card
companies often decline those purchases, so the processors play a game of cat
and mouse (much like companies that process payments to casinos, which is how
I know this part) by changing their business names and category codes. In
fact, you need multiple processors, because each one on its own will fail a
large portion of the time. It wouldn't be worth your time to try to process
payments yourself.

You have to set up and run an affiliate program, which is the main way these
sites get traffic. That will require networking with some of the millions of
free sites. You have to find a good way of getting content to them, running
promotions. The major sites pay up to 70% in affiliate fees.

People tend to think that because the industry is unsavory, it therefore is
less competitive, but really the opposite is true. Just like selling drugs is
way more competitive than selling tires (to my knowledge Goodyear employees
don't run drivebys on local Firestone plants) porn is way more competitive
than most other industries.

------
cantsay
Hello, Thanks for all the great response.. I truly appreciate it. I dont have
a "moral" problem with Porn or even prostitution if all parties involved are
over 18.

that said, most people I know and deal with on daily basis are against porn in
general... the society for the most part is againt porn or hide the fact that
they watch it.

I have a very good idea for a simple porn site that I can start for 5k
(including legal fees) that can get me 2-3K paid users.. its frankly brilliant
and the loss if it doesnt work out is not that great. I need an income badly,
disparate times... they really are :(

My other site gets 15k traffic a day, we have been blogged 1000s of times in
different languages, there are 100s of reviews about us, however, traffic is
not getting any better and I have had enough! My new start up is launching
this month, If i do start the porn site it wont be till april/may (if the new
startup doesnt pick up) So its pretty much my last 2 months.. then I will have
ran out of money and I will have no choice but get a real job which I havent
done in 10 years.

thanks again guys

~~~
brianobush
starting a porn site is much cheaper than 5k, unless you are generating
content (photographer, equip, studio, etc). register a domain name, throw up
some purchased content (acquired legally for a small fee per set), add an
interesting logo and minimal/clean/cute CSS. Then get your mind "into" the
industry (read <http://fleshbot.com/>) and try to get your site rank up on
google. Place ads from black label ads (<http://blacklabelads.com/>) - google
doesn't allow porn ads for 3rd party sites - unless they are for google
search. Once you start having traffic and making money, then create a legal
entity (LLC is best) and continue to revamp the site. Mind you this will NOT
make you instantly rich - however, you probably can pay for the hosting fees
and have a valid excuse to look at porn. YMMV.

------
davidw
I helped a guy I knew with his porn site for a bit, and I wouldn't repeat the
experience:

1\. It was kind of unconventional stuff - not illegal, but more like "ouch, my
eyes" sorts of things. Not fun.

2\. The people involved in it were pretty sleazy individuals, and also fairly
lame in terms of simply being unprofessional and not pleasant to work with.
Could have just been a bad experience.

And, because the whole operation was kind of shitty, it didn't even really
make that much money, so, like others say, it's not a free ticket to tons of
cash.

------
gravitycop
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Chicago_Options_Ass...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Chicago_Options_Associates_and_Bomis)

 _[Wikipedia founder Jimmy] Wales undertook was the creation of the web portal
Bomis, which featured user-generated webrings and that, according to The
Atlantic Monthly, "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet."
For a time the company sold erotic photographs, and Wales described the site
as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a similar market to Maxim. Although
Wales is no longer connected with the company, his involvement with Bomis has
been criticized_

------
nostrademons
I personally wouldn't do porn.

As for whether I'd do business or be associated with someone in the porn
industry: it depends a lot on circumstances, and the particular organization
I'm working on behalf of. As a programmer, I don't care, and porn might
actually be a plus on your resume because it tends to get high traffic and
give you experience with scaling problems.

But if it was on behalf of an organization like FictionAlley or the Flash
games site(s) my startup was trying to do, I'd stay far away. Because these
are largely aimed at teens (and tend to get lots of pre-teen visitors as well,
even though COPPA in theory should keep them away), and it's not worth the PR
disaster that'd come from any association with porn.

~~~
critic
Are you saying that porn programmers hired to work on teen-oriented web sites
might accidentally go Tyler Durden on you and do a "changeover" inside your
flash games?

~~~
nostrademons
Not at all.

The worry is that if you try to partner with big entertainment properties like
Disney or WB and they find out you have a porn programmer on staff, they may
nix the deal. Because you can bet that some gossip rag like Valleywag will
eventually run a story like "Is Disney sponsoring porn?" all about how a
company that Disney does business with has some lead developer whose side
project is a porn site. Elsewhere on the thread I say that reasonable people
"decay" relationships by social distance. Well, tabloids are not reasonable
people.

IIRC we had an issue with this at FictionAlley. We had a sister site called
RestrictedSection.org that was for NC-17 HP fanfiction. It was a separate
organization but had many of the same people involved, and we'd help each
other with technical stuff and such. When FA got Warner Brother's blessing,
part of the condition was that there would never be anything more than R-rated
on the site, and we needed a warning for anything more than PG-13. And
concurrent with that, a wall went up between FA and RS.org - you had to pick
one to be involved in, and we didn't help each other out so much any more. WB
actually had a great relationship with FA but a somewhat antagonistic one with
RS.org.

------
swombat
I can only speak for myself, as an entrepreneur myself, so not for VCs and
other similar types, but as for me, I would consider the fact that a cofounder
or employee has successfully run a profitable porn site a plus. First of all,
it'd be quite interesting to find out how that business works. Secondly, as
others have pointed out, there are technical challenges to this which are
useful on most start-up jobs. Thirdly, it shows initiative and a willingness
to do things which are not commonly seen as "the right thing".

However, I'm suspicious of the "it's an easy way to make quick money"
statement. In my experience (and I started a business that used MLM for its
distribution with a friend before - not as disreputable as porn, but also
generally looked down on imho), even those apparent shortcuts require insane
amounts of work... so the suggestion that you can somehow do it on the side to
tide you over seems suspicious. You can start a porn site - but it'll take all
your time for 6 months to a year... so if your 2nd start-up is about to
launch, I'd give it a miss unless you're prepared to forget about your 2nd
start-up for a year.

------
hardik
During my teens I did build an erotic forum with another partner. It was never
intended to be big money but money was good for us teenagers. However, I quit
after a month simply because the mind becomes numbed out by sex, you don't
enjoy it anymore. If you do decide to go ahead with this, I would suggest you
try to work out a schedule or structure where there is some break time, at
least visually.

------
SystemOut
I'm the head of software engineering for a decent sized porn company so I know
a little about this. I personaly wouldn't worry about your VC concern but then
again I don't see myself ever doing a project where I need VC money. That's
just the reality of me disliking the large VC firm approach. I doubt angel
fund types would give a rat's ass about whether or not you did porn related
work in the past. That being said, if you're doing anything that is easily
traceable or even moderately traceable then I would say don't do it. Why?
Here's why:

The only way you can make decent money quick in the porn business is if one,
you know how to get and drive traffic to the right sites and two, you can
optimize which sites to send your traffic to based on their conversion ratio
and payout amounts. There's no way to make money quick as a porn
producer...just as an affiliate or some other traffic referrer and even then
you are going to wait a minimum of a month to two months before you see that
money because porn companies are going to make sure you're aren't scamming
them with signups where you are buying memberships with stolen numbers. And as
a true distributor? Well, that's going to take a while because you have to
shoot the porn, edit the porn, get the bank to approve the type of porn you're
doing, setup an affiliate network, get the traffic to come to your site and
actually sell it. And that's after paying out a bunch of money to models and
other folks. Therefore, I'm concluding you are going to be an affiliate. Good
luck. Even sites like YouPorn don't make that much money from affiliate sales
and they drive a crapload of traffic...although admittedly their traffic is
sucky because they like free porn. It takes a while to get going as an
affiliate. I have a friend that drives traffic to dating sites and he makes
decent money at it but it's a time sink to be honest. Also, vanilla porn is
way down from what I hear...there's so many companies making it and there's so
much free stuff out there that it's just not the money maker it used to be.

I'd ask your friend how long it took him before he was making REAL money. I
mean, unless you guys are just amazing and finding good quality traffic
(that's the rub) it's really hard to make money quickly in the porn affiliate
world.

Why don't you just have him "hire" you to make rent money and start up a bunch
of new sites or projects for him so it's under his name and you never have to
worry about it. He can keep them going later and reap the profits. You can
even do it under the table if necessary so there's no messy legal trail for
someone to find. Seems a lot easier to me.

------
TooMuchNick
The semi-social, semi-user-generated porn site fantasti.cc was created by a
group of popular dot-commers (I know who but I can't tell) who have so far
kept their names off the site. One of my partners at Boffery (a pre-alpha
visual diary for sex lives) did some work for them, and that partner and I
agree that the site would benefit from the name brands of the dot-commers.

In a supposedly enlightened modern world, and more importantly a world in
which every man with a computer uses it several times a week to view porn and
nearly every man and woman masturbates daily, is there really so much shame in
being the person who provides those services?

I have no data on who the most financially successful sex aid and porn makers
are, but we certainly all know of some success stories, and we know them by
their legal names: Hugh Hefner, Sasha Grey, Larry Flynt. The founders of
JimmyJane (a high-market sex toy maker and seller) are out in the open, as is
their investor Tim Draper.

Sex sites aren't exactly parallel to porn sites, but it's the closest
comparison I have. In its early days, Boffery will need every advantage I can
give it, and one is my small amount of notoriety online (both as Nick Douglas
and as "the first editor of Valleywag").

I've heard a few stories: FriendFinder calls itself a "social network" when
talking to money people. JimmyJane has a different corporate name, but one
still assumes Tim Draper knows exactly what he's investing in.

In short, if you don't want to be associated with your industry, you're at a
huge disadvantage (your competitors will profit from risking more of their
personal reputations) and possibly even have some moral questions to ask
yourself. Why do you want to spend time profiting from anything if you feel it
would taint your name?

------
DaniFong
From my perspective, porn varies from positive and affirm to degrading and
disgusting. I think that is some sense, we are our actions. At least they long
outlive us. Make sure that your actions are consistent with your values, and
not just a quick way to turn a buck.

From a practical perspective, I doubt that you have a moral outlook to make
much money doing it. There are probably easier ways to make money: a tax on
your feeling of self-worth and morality is expensive to pay.

------
vaksel
I wouldn't do it. With sites like youporn, xvideos, redtube etc growing by
leaps and bounds, the amount of paying customers will go down the drain.

\+ don't forget, there are something like a million porn sites out there
competing with you, so unless you pick some sick shit involving grannies in
wheelchairs or midgets, you'll be hard pressed to gain paying customers.

As far as dealing with someone involved in porn? Its honestly not something
you have to think about. Once you get big enough with porn(to pay the bills),
you won't want to do a legit startup anyways. A porn site is pretty much a
license to print money. Even if you have a mere 1,000 users, at $20 month, you
already make 20 grand a month without doing any major work.

------
menloparkbum
What does starting a pay porn site entail? Signing up for some sort of porno
affiliate link program and just posting previews of other site's content? Or
actually buying cameras and lights and hiring people to go to town?

I ask cuz I had a friend who was really into this idea about 7 years ago and
actually did all the legwork and research into who makes money and how. He
decided that actually making any money in porn involved a lot more work than
simply getting another job.

~~~
Tichy
I created a simple erotic game (<http://3boobs.de>) - when we started, we had
no idea where to get the pictures. In the end it was easy to get them from
established sites. However, I kind of miss hanging out with the models (we
don't know any of the models on our site) ;-) Just saying, I think going the
route of actually taking the photographs and all would probably be more fun...

------
joshuarr
If you don't want to be associated with porn, why would you want to associate
with people who associate with people associated with porn?

In other words,

If you don't want to be associated with porn then don't associate yourself
with porn.

~~~
nostrademons
Geek social fallacy #4: friendship is not transitive.

Most people "decay" social relations as they get farther away. Presumably, you
want to like everyone that you associate with. But if one or two of the people
_they_ associate with is somehow objectionable, you kinda write it off as bad
taste and tolerate them as best as possible, as long as you're not invited to
the same dinner parties. And most people don't care at all who their friends-
of-friends-of-friends are.

If you believe the 6-degrees-of-separation theory, this is a very good thing.
Otherwise, we'd _all_ be connected to some serial killer, or traitor, or
banker. Heck, if you go out even 2 degrees of separation, I'm sure there are
people in my social network that I find rather detestable.

------
chris11
It sounds like you are uncomfortable with it. Is it because of your own
values, or are you just worried about your reputation? It sounds like you have
problems with it because of your own morals, and I don't think you should go
against your values just for some money.I personally would not even get
associated with porn.

But if you decide you are comfortable with it, is it really realistic to be
running to unrelated websites at the same time? Your friend knows a lot more
about it then I do, so how much time a week are you talking about to run a
porn site? Are you wanting to create your own content, or just host other
people's content? I really doubt you will be able to keep your name
unconnected to the porn industry if you decide to create your own content. I
think this situation would be somewhat comparable to working full time and
working on your masters at the same time. It might be doable,but the quality
of both projects will probably suffer, since you are focused on working on two
separate things. So I'd advise you not to do it.

------
vrs
I hope things work out for you without you having to start a porn site. There
are enough of those already. Plus if you "frankly dont want to be associated
with porn" maybe you shouldn't get into porn business.

------
alexquick
I've always been under the impression that there's no shame in work done well.

Just do good work, then.

~~~
brianlash
Your maxim seems overly simplistic. I don't see the connection between how
well you execute something and how it jibes with your ethical convictions.

I can think of a few things that were done well, but for which the
perpetrators ought not be proud. Consider the Banco Central burglary
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_robbery_at_Fortal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_Central_robbery_at_Fortaleza)).
Beautifully executed, but the burglars' selfishness cost the people of Brazil
a fortune.

In the extreme, consider Hitler, who was tremendously efficient at terminating
Jews under the Third Reich. Should that efficiency exonerate him from any
shame?

My examples are ridiculous, but I'm only trying to make the point that how you
feel ethically about your work is a function of what that work is, not a
function of how well you perform it.

~~~
ahoyhere
The OP was not talking about murdering a race or stealing from a bank.

It's porn, people. Porn is pictures of people having sex. Consensually. Over
minority age.

You can say "BUT NOT ALWAYS!" but if the dude's worried about his rep enough
to hide himself on HN, do you really think he's gonna do that?

~~~
abless
But the OP made a general statement which is clearly simplistic.

------
skmurphy
There is an investment site <http://www.adultvest.com/> that specializes in
"adult entertainment" startups. It appears to be a legitimate investment
group.

[http://venturebeat.com/2005/12/21/adultvest-investment-
commu...](http://venturebeat.com/2005/12/21/adultvest-investment-community-
for-adult-industry/)

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/11/01/8392016/index.htm)

[http://www.hedgeco.net/news/06/2008/adultvest-hedge-fund-
acq...](http://www.hedgeco.net/news/06/2008/adultvest-hedge-fund-acquires-
iporn.html)

------
cpr
Don't do it. Porn degrades the people who perform it (especially the women)
and the people who use it (mostly men, who are conditioned to see women as
body parts for their own enjoyment).

~~~
axod
Hard to tell if you're being sarcastic, or truly believe this‽

~~~
patio11
a) There do not seem to be any sarcasm markers, so this shouldn't be that hard
of a call.

b) Unpopular opinions should not be downmodded on this site merely for being
unpopular. (I don't even know if this one is unpopular -- it merely is
_thought to be unpopular_ , like expressing a moral judgment on something is
verboten in polite society, which is of course a moral judgment in itself.
There are approximately 47 people here who said some variation of "Ick, I
don't want to be associated with porn" without being censored, so I see no
particular reason to bust the chops of someone who doesn't like porn qua porn
rather than merely not liking porn qua job opportunity.)

~~~
axod
Sure. It was really the "who are conditioned to see women as body parts for
their own enjoyment" which I thought may well be sarcastic.

I don't think most people need much conditioning to have a sex drive...

------
mhb
_The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The
hard part is doing it._

Norman Schwarzkopf

------
axod
"still gets tons of traffic...basically, Traffic is not enough to make any
real money."

What sort of traffic are we talking here? And what sector? If it's the _right_
traffic, you don't need much to make lots of money...

------
astrodust
The trouble with trying to cross-fund ventures like that is it might diffuse
the focus of your business. The way you succeed is by doing what you do best,
which is ideally better than the competition and something that's in demand.

I'd say you're faced with a few ways of raising capital, one of which is
investing in a porn site. While web sites may be web sites, I'd suggest that
running an adult-themed one is more problematic than most because people will
always think themselves clever and try and crack their way in past your pay-
wall. Without the right precautions, this could take a fair bit of time to
either set up or, in the case of breeches, to patch up the compromised
accounts.

If you don't want to get directly involved, you might want to consider
exploring what you can do to make money from that sort of thing without
running a site yourself. For example, this friend of yours may need some
technology developed for their properties, and as you have many developers on
hand, it could be trivial to crank out something like that for profit without
impacting your other project too badly.

That way you get better at doing what you're best at, such as development,
without getting distracted over the long-term with other side projects.

------
intellectronica
You should judge this using the same criteria you use for judging any other
business idea. Do you feel passionate about it? Do you have something new to
contribute to the market that you feel excited about giving to users? Will you
be proud and happy working day and night making your product the best there
is? If yes, why not porn? If no, then why bother?

------
joubert
Competition in the p0rn industry is stiff.

------
hotpockets
If somebody sues you your name will be outed anyways.

------
greyman
>>> My question is this: Would you (startups/entrepreneurs/VCs/funders/anyone
in the industry) do business or be associated with someone in the porn
industry?

No. Don't do it. Your name will get associated with porn and you will not be
able to get rid of it completely in the future, even if you will want to. Just
my advice...

------
kwamenum86
If you are worried about ruining your rep by getting into porn and your
startups are not making any money then just get a job.

------
TrevorJ
"I frankly dont want to be associated with porn and explained to me how to
make start this with out using my name."

Then don't. In my experience your respect for yourself is a hundred times more
valuable than money.

------
cabalamat
> _Would you do business or be associated with someone in the porn industry?_

If it made business sense, of course. I certainly wouldn't turn it down on
"moralistic" grounds.

------
andrewljohnson
How much traffic does the non-money maker get, and in what market?

------
ericb
Because of how you feel about it, you should not take this route.

------
theBobMcCormick
Why not? What's more natural than sex?

Frankly, I'm tired of all the bogus social stigma against a healthy interest
in sex and porn.

~~~
redman
Agreed. That is basically our credo.

<http://www.nakedtube.com/about>

------
ahoyhere
Hard advice you're not going to like:

If you can't convert your traffic, maybe you should spend time investigating
how to get people to convert, how to make products that they want, how to
market & sell & reach people effectively, etc.

Don't just give up on it and flip to the next project, which you won't fully
invest in either, like a schizophrenic hummingbird.

If you've got the traffic, you can make money with it. If you're willing to
study, test, and learn.

------
mroman
From recent, direct experience:

9 out of 10 people you come across in that industry are not people you want to
deal with.

Trust me.

------
lst
Even if you succeed, you will not be happy. Peace and porn are not friends.

------
geoffw8
Register via whois proxy and don't tell anyone...

