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Billionaire Porn King Reinvents Himself as Japan's Startup Guru
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- faitswulff 9y agoWow, this guy is a hustler. I just got to the part of the article describing his entry into producing porn. Apparently, he mass-produced the VHS tapes using thousands of household video recorders, then used a clever pricing model ("here's 100 tapes, pay me only for what you sell") to get into video stores. The next bit really impressed me: "The next big idea was a cash register Kameyama developed that looked like a tablet computer. He gave it to customers for free, in exchange for their sales records -- data that made him better than anyone at tracking the preferences of Japan’s porn consumers."
- Abishek_Muthian 9y agoThe writer says, "Asked to explain his philosophy, he struggled for a tidy phrase and settled on this: “I like to be able to think, ‘I’m a little less flawed today than I was the day before.’” But IMO, his philosophy is pretty clear with these quotes - "To him, porn is the proverbial widget -- a thing to sell for more than it costs to make and market, no different from any other product." "If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.” Another interesting anecdote is that Mr.Kameyama is part of the growing list of Billionare who choose to keep their identity dark (or) go great lengths to protect their privacy. I wonder whether not running a publicly traded company directly gives these kind of people an advantage to secure their privacy over the counterparts who run businesses which fall into public scrutiny.
- e19293001 9y ago> "If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.” I learned that Stoics don't say, "Stop doing this, it's a sin." Instead they say, "Don't do this because it will make you miserable." They don't say, "Pleasure isn't pleasurable." They say, "Endless pleasure becomes its own form of punishment."
- gboudrias 9y ago> "If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.” This is so similar to Thank You For Smoking, I have to wonder if that's where he got the idea from.
- adanto6840 9y agoWas my first thought as well, and is one of my favorite quotes from the movie -- the movie is fantastic & one of my favorites. Though I was half way expecting his answer to be, "if you really want to, I'll have my cameras rolling!" =)
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoI shared a taxi with him a few years ago. Really cool dude and smart as hell.
- 5_minutes 9y agoSo he introduced himself as the porn king?
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoDMM. Everybody knows who they are.
- z0r 9y agohonestly, until i read this article i thought of a climbing equipment manufacturer in wales when i saw DMM
- tlrobinson 9y agoI thought Digital Multi Meter...
- aerovistae 9y agoHe speaks English, or you speak Japanese?
- rgrieselhuber 9y agoI speak Japanese.
- conanbatt 9y agoSharing a cab with the Porn King sounds like the beginning of a type of movie.
- CoolGuySteve 9y ago
- colbyh 9y agoPorn has led the way on a number of technological innovations, I'm surprised there aren't more billionaire porn kings/queens. edit - modifiers are hard
- TaylorGood 9y agoSurprised a porn related blockchain token hasn't taken ahold yet. There are attempts.
- stevenwoo 9y agoIIRC almost all porn now comes from one company, Mindgeek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek It reads like the founder started the company in 2010 and sold it to the current owners in 2013. I've read that the actors/actresses don't make a lot (it's on a per scene basis) and have short careers and the money is mostly in distribution so with one large company any billionaires would probably be from there.
- meri_dian 9y ago>"In November 2013, it was reported that Pornhub has over 1 billion visitors per month, and a December 2014 article in Adweek states that Pornhub has 50 million daily visitors." 2017 numbers are probably much higher... Wow
- TaylorGood 9y agoWhat a title.
- nayuki 9y ago> Some of his best ideas, including the one for the hit video game “Fleet Collection,” The title translation was a bit too literal. It's actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantai_Collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantai_Collection .
- laurieg 9y agoI used to work as a Japanese to English Translator. It's all to common to see titles like this become the canonical English title because some editor who has a shaky knowledge of English says so. Once the title is canon it's hard to push back against it even when you as a translator know better.
- aedron 9y agoI've always been convinced Donkey Kong is named thus because some Japanese guy mistook 'donkey' for 'monkey'. (Haven't bothered to look for the history though so feel free to set me straight)
- ludicast 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong_(character) "Donkey" conveys stubbornness.
- jandrese 9y agoMy favorite is when the original Google Translate translation is drawn into the artwork for a series and cemented forever as official. Bandai seems especially prone to this.
- patio11 9y agoA lot of DMM's other businesses are also seediness arbitrage. The FX exchange, for example, is a bucket shop. (This is a shorthand criticism, but since many HNers might not know it already: pretend you have a country where gambling is mostly illegal. Wagering on the roll of a die is illegal, but people really want to wager, so, you give them "investment" options like "Is the yen going to trade up against the dollar?" While you swear blind that this is investing and that the proverbial Mrs. Watanabe is making informed investment decisions after deeply analyzing the latest market trends, Mrs. Watanabe is actually just depositing yen with you and withdrawing less yen later. She doesn't actually own dollars at any point; she is just "trading" with you. You might not even own dollars at any point. The only purpose of the exchange rate is to be a source of legal random numbers, since a die or deck of cards would be a source of illegal random numbers.) I haven't used DMM's FX offering but out of morbid curiosity I looked at a Bitcoin exchange which is widely reported to have copied it. It was like Zynga had made a pachinko game with slightly more numbers and less chesty mermaids. There was even a "bloop" sound effect when other people's trades went through.
- kloncks 9y agoJust out of curiosity, what's the Bitcoin exchange you reference?
- patio11 9y agoYou can satisfy your curiosity trivially by looking for cross-currency Bitcoin volume stats and looking for the JPY volume. This will avoid me having made directly critical remarks of a Tokyo startup; that is, for a few reasons, something I am careful about doing.
- 101km 9y agoApropos of nothing one could look up exchanges ordered by Bitcoin USD volume here: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/analysis/USD https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/analysis/USD
- max_ 9y agoThis interview he gave make think he has really unique ways of making decisions. http://africa.dmm.com/special/chairman-interview.html http://africa.dmm.com/special/chairman-interview.html
- gfredtech 9y agoWow, he's a billionaire and he's still talking about masking himself and his privacy
- sgberlin 9y agoLook up the founders of ALDI and Lidl, among the richest people in the world and there are barely photos of them.
- pluma 9y agoWell as many people in Germany know, ALDI is a contraction of "Albrecht Discount". Theo Albrecht (who founded Aldi Nord and Trader Joe's) was kidnapped in 1971 for ransom so it's obvious why they'd rather want to keep out of the public eye. Theo Albrecht died in 2010, his brother Karl (who founded Aldi Süd) died in 2014. Dieter Schwarz (who owns Lidl) is still alive and currently the richest man in Germany. Technically Lidl started out as the Schwarz-Gruppe, founded by his father. Interestingly none of the people involved in Lidl were called Lidl. His father bought the naming rights from a man called Lidl who had no further affiliation with him or his company. Germany has strict privacy laws so it's not as easy to publish photographs without consent.
- germanier 9y agoAs the legend goes, Theo Albrecht's kidnappers forced him to show his ID to make sure they actually got him.
- peteretep 9y ago> “I hate it,” he says. “But > if it works, great. If it > doesn’t, we’ll try something > else.” Quite the mantra
- naiv 9y agoSetting personal preferences aside for the sake of revenue is something that you learn in the adult industry quite well.
- wprapido 9y agojackie treehorn gone digital
- lowry 9y agoThe founder of Pornhub is a startup guru in Belgium.
- naiv 9y agoTo put this into perspective: Pornhub was founded by Matt Keezer, not someone from Belgium. A German who lives in Belgium that used to be the ceo of Mindgeek for a while (which purchased Pornhub) invested some of his money into some startups after he left Mindgeek.
- lowry 9y agoWhat you say is closer to truth, but does not catch the eye as well the other statement.
- Mikushi 9y agoAnd Matt wasn't alone either, Brazzers & Pornhub founders went to uni together and their businesses were always very closed (one, then two, then one again IIRC). MindGeek did not purchase Pornhub either. Mansef did (founders of Brazzers), then was acquired by Fabian (german dude) who renamed the company Manwin, then MindGeek.
- halflings 9y agoReminiscent of Xavier Niel [0], who started with "Minitel rose" services offering phone sex, peep shows and sex shops (was even arrested because one of his peep show businesses was a cover for a prostitution business)... then went on to found Free (and later Free Mobile), who truly disrupted telcos in France (and arguably everywhere else in Europe) with cheap broadband and mobile plans + acquired some of the largest French media, started a tech school in Paris, and recently opened the biggest startup campus in the world [1]. Now worth 9.6 billion USD. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/global/xavier-niel-billionaire-who-breaks-the-mold.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/global/xavier-nie... [1] https://stationf.co/ https://stationf.co/
- Perados 9y agoOh, and he also did this: http://www.19h59.com/10238_Le-directeur-de-lecole-42-donne-des-fessees-une-fille http://www.19h59.com/10238_Le-directeur-de-lecole-42-donne-d...
- monsieurbanana 9y agoNo he didn't, that's Nicolas Sadirac.
- akamaozu 9y agoFor those looking to hear more about DMM's work in Japan's tech community, I think you'll find this podcast episode interesting. https://www.disruptingjapan.com/taking-akiba-back-otaku-dmm-make/ https://www.disruptingjapan.com/taking-akiba-back-otaku-dmm-...
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoSo his story has a.... Happy ending?..