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Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#31

Post by tiagotalbuquerq »

sudokent wrote: post #22
itengelhardt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the problem is not that men "don't appreciate a woman's pleasure" - that is some serious bullshit in my opinion. Most men love it when their SO enjoys sex. The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Just think about what kind of outrage it would cause if Stripe had a single prostitute or porn website use their service to receive payments. (For the sake of argument assume the p…

As someone who is trying to a create a new, unique, non-janky, adult website I have learned a lot in the last 10 months. And I have never worked in this industry so it has been a serious learning experience. The biggest issue for me has been the banks. My assumption is that Stripe and other players would be "ok" accepting payments from "High Risk" merchants. But they cannot, their partner bank will not allow it. I la…

she would stop crying and use cryptocurrency.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#33

Post by _wp3r »

The guys I know in the industry are mostly on the bleeding edge of stream tech both hardware and software. The sheer size of the industry in proportion to the entire internet means that some giant portion of all IT in the world work in the space.

The guys I know all communicate in private communities though, and not for the taboo reason but because the industry is overtly hostile and aggressive towards competitors. There are only 3-4 big players and they play dirty(no pun). They own the pay sites and free sites. They leak their competitors product on their own free site and pair it with upsale ads to their own sites. It is very dog eat dog and hard to innovate in because of the players not the taboo.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#34

Post by selmnoo »

pc wrote: post #25
couchand wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rybchin said she suspects it has something to do with tech being dominated by men, who might be nervous about working with a sex-toy startup: “All these companies are run by men, and they don’t appreciate a woman’s pleasure.” I don't know whether this really is the underlying issue, but damn, it's unfortunate how plausible it is. And the reaction from Stripe to the reporter's request for comment all but confirms.

I work at Stripe. Some details in the article aren't very accurate. But, more broadly, we actually work hard to push against the rules in many cases. (Cindy Gallop, mentioned earlier in the thread, can attest to this -- we spent ages trying to figure out a way to accept payments for her startup.)

In the end Stripe could not work with her or other startups that feature "a naked person" on the product they're selling (the article seems to claim), is that correct? I'm assuming then pay-for-porn sties are not permitted business with Stripe either?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#37

Post by fidotron »

tormeh wrote: post #10
shittyanalogy wrote: post #8

What are you looking for, innovative content delivery, production style, search technology, payment schemes? What problems for example? All the main video sites you go to are startups that are trying to innovate and make money. Porn is a very competitive industry. Pornhub and redtube for example are innovative startups it's just hard to amit it to ourselves because they are peddling smut.

Their websites are horrible, though, and the content is pretty meh.

Their analytics is top notch though.

The whole thing is based on what pays, and from what I've heard from friends in the industry the last couple of years "If it's not gay it doesn't pay". There is simply so much free stuff around that there's not much to be made in the mainstream.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#38

Post by sudokent »

tiagotalbuquerq wrote: post #31
sudokent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is trying to a create a new, unique, non-janky, adult website I have learned a lot in the last 10 months. And I have never worked in this industry so it has been a serious learning experience. The biggest issue for me has been the banks. My assumption is that Stripe and other players would be "ok" accepting payments from "High Risk" merchants. But they cannot, their partner bank will not allow it. I la…

she would stop crying and use cryptocurrency.

I don't believe that BTC has enough market penetration to solve her problem. When I've interviewed potential users concerning my product, the response has been

"Isn't Bitcoin a scam? I saw on the news it is a scam" "I want to just use my CC" "What is Bitcoin?"

That said, I still will launch with BTC support. Because I believed the hype and coded the solution before doing interviews...sigh

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#39

Post by sudokent »

selmnoo wrote: post #34
pc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Stripe. Some details in the article aren't very accurate. But, more broadly, we actually work hard to push against the rules in many cases. (Cindy Gallop, mentioned earlier in the thread, can attest to this -- we spent ages trying to figure out a way to accept payments for her startup.)

In the end Stripe could not work with her or other startups that feature "a naked person" on the product they're selling (the article seems to claim), is that correct? I'm assuming then pay-for-porn sties are not permitted business with Stripe either?

They are not, anything classified as "High Risk" cannot be serviced by Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc.

Again, from my research, it is because the partner banks will not allow them to.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any innovative startups in the porn/adult industry?

#40

Post by selmnoo »

sudokent wrote: post #39
selmnoo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end Stripe could not work with her or other startups that feature "a naked person" on the product they're selling (the article seems to claim), is that correct? I'm assuming then pay-for-porn sties are not permitted business with Stripe either?

They are not, anything classified as "High Risk" cannot be serviced by Stripe, Balanced, Braintree, etc. Again, from my research, it is because the partner banks will not allow them to.

Hm, okay. Though, it's not clear to me why porn sites en masse would be classified as "High Risk"? Are you sure this is always the case? How are current popular porn sites doing this?

And, now that Stripe is quite big, don't they have some leverage over the banks to be able to say they do want porn sites et al. to be able to work with Stripe?

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