Three categories of adult themed I might be thinking of:
"Maxim" style, where it's targetted at males, but doesn't have nudity.
"Playboy" style, which is similar to "Maxim" style but does have nudity.
"Porntube" style which is full on pornography.
Personally I think there is big potential in the disjointed and mostly pirated adult themed sites of today. Three benefits I see of this business could be:
- easy(easier) to gain traction, several sites I know which launched in the 2008-2009 time frame have reached top 100 sites globally. - lack of innovation in this space, mostly pirated content and taking an existing paradigm and switching it to adult themed (playboy does an online version of their magazine, various you tube copy cats) - large profit potential, I know several low(er) traffic sites which are making plenty off ads, there is an IPO potential here I'm sure
Long story short, I have several ideas for adult themed "hacks" which could be big.
But the fact reminds I know of no YC funded adult themed web sites and am not sure the YC program would support such a thing.
I posted this to HN also to generate some hopefully insightful discussion.
I am not in the least interested in porn, I prefer my bed partners in the flesh, but I find it interesting that you say these things with such certainty.
Families as such are not harmed by porn in any but the rarest cases, and then usually there are other factors besides.
There are people that are harmed by porn, but rarely directly, more usually as a by-product of a society that tries to control the behaviour of it's citizens.
The same arguments you make have been made countless times about prostitution, and are used to outlaw it in many countries.
But the cold hard facts are that prostitution exists everywhere, even where it is outlawed. And yet, only there you will find excessive violence, disease and rampant drug use. The reason for that is that by making it illegal the 'sex workers' as they're called get pushed in to being criminals, and that means they lose the protection that every other person is normally given. They can not go to the police when a customer (or their pimp) beats them up. They tend to have unsafe sex, the tend to use drugs.
Whereas in places where prostitution is legal prostitutes are treated no different from other professionals, they pay their taxes, they are protected by the law from their customers, instead of their pimps, they get regular medical checkups and so on.
With porn, it is similar. There are lots of people that simply enjoy it. Just like lots of people simply enjoy sex.
Looking at it doesn't make you go blind, it won't 'harm your family'.
As long as all parties involved in the consumption and the production of it are adults and are doing it of their own free will I have absolutely no problem with it.
As I wrote above, I have a website that has an 'adult part'. It was never my intention to be the webmaster of a site that is NSFW.
But when it happened I learned something about my self. That I'm probably more of a prude than I ever thought I was, mostly because the fact that I thought that these people were using my software for a purpose that I could not even envision were somehow betraying me.
But I learned over time that I was wrong.
They simply have a different viewpoint than I do, and they are - to put it bluntly - right, and I was wrong. And they are completely in the right to use the software that I put in to the world to use for whatever purpose they feel like, as long as it is legal.
They're in their own houses, they are safe from stalkers and other real life nuisances, and they enjoy what they do, be it that they're nudists or people that get it on in front of the cam, whatever works for them.
So, I learned to control my 'kill' instincts, and let go of it.
The practical upshot of that is that we have a website which is separated in to two portions, one that is non-adult, and one that is adult.
The non-adult cams are about 85%, about 15% is adult.
On the viewer side it is probably the reverse.
People are asked to label their content using a switch in the software, and any abuse of that switch (there are always jerks) is punished by a very permanent ban.
So, we all get to live in peace, those that care for porn, and those that don't.
As for my reasons for wanting to get out of this, I've been doing it for more than a decade and it is really time for fresh blood, besides that as I said I never wanted to be the webmaster of a NSFW site.
But that's my limitation, not one of the people on that site.
Wait, what? For one, I hardly think that porn the primary cause of any damage to a family; I would think that any family damage blamed on it probably has some deeper seated problems than porn. I further think that you would be hard pressed to prove that it is dangerous, especially when people are seeing actual naked people all the time without any damage. Addictive is arguable until the cows come home, mainly because addictive is a very subjective word.
And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.
And:
Now let’s look at attitudes towards women. Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women.
Read more: Porn: Good for us? - The Scientist - http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/3/1/29/1/
The anti-porn brigade is just as bigoted as the anti video game brigade.
Also, what if I don't have a family? Does that mean I can use porn and drugs with impunity, since there is no family to harm? Or does it magically harm other families, perhaps via some obscure quantum effect that the Large Hadron Collider is studying?
I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.
So far away that you read articles about it and post your "opinion"?
Anyway, this comment was amusing to read. Now to see if you are actually serious, which would, admittedly, make it a lot less funny.
It damages families in a lot of ways. Porn users are almost universally addicts; you might say you're not, but if you're a regular consumer, try to go without it and see how long you last. I challenge all naysayers to do that. A few can do so without much effort, but the vast majority can't. This reality is opposite of the lie that most will claim.
There are accounts all over of addiction to porn and the feelings that it causes. Companions feel inadequate compared to the airbrushed, artificial bodies their companions lust after. Porn users perceive the subjects of their pornography in an abnormally sexualized light and it diminishes their emotional and intellectual sensitivity.
Pornography steals time, productivity, and money from its users; it is not a wholesome, upbuilding recreational activity as some here say, it is not comparable to video games. It is degrading to its subjects and its users.
Pornography, like drugs, is a mechanism to enrich a few for the moral entrapment of its many users. Porn users become addicted and can't stop using it. They go back for more and more. They desire harder and harder material. They seek to mimic what they see in their preferred pornographic material. How is any of this desirable?
Pornography has a large negative effect on its users. That's absolutely true and no amount of studies, hopes, oblations, snarky comments, or any other thing can change that.
He's expressed a valid opinion. Don't downvote.
It was a personal opinion that many disagree with.
That's pretty clearly malicious, and it most definitely breaks the "would you say this at a dinner party if you wanted to be invited back?" rule.
p.s. "lack of innovation in this space"...I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. From what I understand porn has been driving innovation for a lot of things
Absolutely. First credit card payments, first (live) video delivery, first affiliate systems and so on.
* This is LEGAL just about everywhere other than the US (including Australia and the UK).
* The market size is huge
* People will pay serious cash money, unlike online porn
* Far less competition and tech in the business (see myredbook, cityvibe, and erosguide for the state of the art)
* Given the dogfooding imperative, recruiting lonely male programmers would probably be very easy
I say all this only half tongue in cheek. With a little bit of technology you could become the world's biggest pimp.
Prostitution is legal. Pimping is not. (at least here in the UK).
This is standard across large parts of Europe (with a few obvious exceptions; Holland, Germany etc.)
It's legal in Nevada, except Las Vegas.
We've had contact with VCs and some very large companies that we have partnered with, and invariably the one thing that floats to the top is brand damage.
This is the big fear of any large player, as soon as there is even the remotest risk of that you have a problem.
That pretty much rules out your second and third option, leaving the first.
And YC being a tech oriented investor rather than a media company I figure that that would not be their cup of tea either, but in the end the best way to find out is to ask Paul Graham directly or to simply apply.
My guess is you'll be turned down, but that's worth very little, it's just a guess. Based on the companies that they've invested in in the past and what I know about the people behind YC.
The first is something that you'd have to spend quite a bit of time and money on mocking up to the point where you can show a potential investor what you're planning to do.
The people you'd pitch to would probably be established players in the market that are looking at expanding their offering without taking on more employees.
Personally, I'd rather get out than in to such a line of business, the website that I run with the 'adult component' has been quietly on the market for years but so far no takers.
(A fund on lines of fbFund or iPhone apps fund.)
I don't think there is really room for such a fund, simply because the competition is so fierce that you would have to do 100's or more investments to get one that gives you a good ROI. The successful ones can bootstrap, the others die and try again.
One of the more interesting observations that I read on the adult market somewhere (I can't find where, sorry) is that the adult and the gaming industry are the only two 'mature' internet industries, in the sense that the cards have been dealt and new entrants have a very hard time getting traction.
That alone would be a reason to make an investor very skittish.
You do have a TONNE of 10-100K type of exits in adult--but that's hardly attractive even for angels. It's often great money for one-two person shop though.
I don't think ethics, brand damage, or any other factor would keep investors out of the field if they thought they'd make a lot of money on a porn investment. Thus, I think investors still doubt the ability of most porn companies to have an exit. It doesn't mean porn companies aren't or won't make money, possibly even a lot of money, just that they probably won't do it in a way that leads to the investors making a lot of money.
But, yes, there could be other ways to structure deals that don't require an exit to make everyone happy. But most current high tech investors don't invest that way.
To gain and keep an edge in that world is very hard work.
I'm not categorically against it though. For one thing, porn is a proven money maker, and as evidenced here at least some of your potential competition won't touch it.
Regarding the 3 styles, I think #3 (hardcore) is the only one that would work as a startup. To be blunt, the less hardcore the porn the prettier the models have to be, and you can't afford Maxim or Playboy tier models.
There was this thing called 'adultvest', but I think they've died.
Dang, this is starting to sound like a not bad idea.
(I'm with vaksel too: remember Betamax? I don't, but I've heard stories that porn didn't choose it, so it died.)
I'm in the adult industry, and it happens. We've approached several VC's, angels, and some other investor folks, and we get a lot of "You want to do what?" or "Did you say 'adult'?"
We get slapped around, yelled at, and cursed, but honestly, we run a clean business. We've never had a chargeback in our 6 months with nearly 4,000 transactions. We receive a letter of praise on amazing customer service regularly, and with the exception of an eBay sale to Brazil, we've never had a complaint.
No matter, there's no explaining it. Most VC's and angels run away, for they have some vision of lawsuits and chargebacks, but that aint the way it works these days. Sure, we're shunned, but honestly, its a hell of a lot of fun, and we're not doing too bad.
So in my opinion, bootstrap it, e-mail me, or that guy who has unlimited risk allowance, and run with it. But be prepared for the fury of porn customers who will try to pretend they don't even know what exactly porn is.
Porn sites are like the "your parents have sex" realization in Internet business terms. We all know it's there and it happens, but we like to put our fingers in our ears over it. Even though most of us here are surely regular purveyors of pornography, not many people of a certain class/culture or over a certain age want to admit it or acknowledge they like porn. This love/hate relationship makes it easy to get traffic but hard to succeed (whether financially or to just get funding).
Whether or not YC will back your "hack" should be secondary to whether or not you can create a credible business. Youporn was a "hack" created by 2 guys and is now despised by the rest of the industry and is largey credited as letting pandora out of the box. They're also not rolling in cash. If you have a solution to "solve" the current situation adult publishers face then you've got something of real value.
The adult industry is in an awful state due to the rise of free sites and talent brain drain over the years. That makes for a perfect environment for companies to try and innovate in this sector and do what Apple did for music - but you've got to understand the business before you try to fix it. And being a consumer of the product is a lot different than creating a business out of it.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/amicable-spli...
http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/zivity-splits-employees-exe...
11.6.3. ensuring that any materials posted on your site or within your Application are not illegal and do not promote illegal activities, including without limitation any activities that might be libelous or defamatory or otherwise malicious, illegal or harmful to any person or entity, or discriminatory based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age;
What if someone at Amazon decides that some of your content falls into this category and yanks it off. Remember how quickly Apple booted off iPhone apps with such content.
I think the best way to go about this is: (1) Go after a niche area to reduce the huge amount of competition, e.g. "porn for women" and (2) partner with a content provider so you don't get into the intricacies of producing content. I thought the Fyre Box (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-01-10-po... had an excellent idea (streaming movies with detailed search functionality) but they have disappeared.
