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> Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform,

> Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital I don't get why that's a problem? They already built their platform, it works, they're the gold standard and they have a massive paying userbase! Why do they need VC money? Why would you want to dilute your stock rather than just build with your already existing, sizeable revenue stream?

nine_k 4y ago
Usually it makes sense to take investor money if you want to grow faster than your revenue stream allows. It lets you potentially capture the market before your competition. But I don't think that there's much direct competition to OnlyFans, or that there is a market which is easy to capture by copycatting them. Hence, they can afford to not take any investment. This is similar to how GitHub operated and grew for the first few years.
kreco 4y ago
Especially because it also means that potential OnlyFans competitor will come across the same fate. So there is no need to worry about them (unless the owners intended to get massive cash asap).
rtkwe 4y ago
It would have been useful early to pay for hosting. OF may not exist today if not for the great de-porning of Tumblr that happened about a year after they started as a business.
- lostgame 4y ago
  The Tumblr de-porning was the single most SMH business moment I may have heard of since Yahoo’s previous worst business move ever of not buying Google. I mean - my God… Yahoo may very well be the single dumbest major tech company in history. Just…blunder after blunder after shitty decision. Watching its history is almost the definition of seeing a slow motion train wreck. It’s almost impressive. With regards to Tumblr - I can’t imagine what potential business decision could’ve been worth what they had to know was suicide. Why make the acquisition and then kill your user base? It’s not like they didn’t know. That’s probably one of the single biggest wastes of $1b I’ve seen. Why buy it to knowingly, fully intentionally, throw it down the toilet? So baffling.
  - robotnikman 4y ago
    The only reason I can think of is some executive was so morally opposed to it that they value getting rid of the NSFW stuff on Tumblr over money. Twitter had no qualms taking in the manly Tumblr users who went over there instead.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      From what I recall at the time it was because Yahoo wanted to go down the standard ad serving model to monetize tumblr and the presence of porn was getting in the way of that. They didn't realize or didn't believe that one of the big reasons a lot of people were on tumblr to begin with was for smut.
throwie_wayward 4y ago
because go big or GTFO? I posit this as an explanation. I think "go big or go home" is a terrible mindset.
jjk166 4y ago
It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful. Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers from accidentally hosting terabytes of kiddie porn.
- dropit_sphere 4y ago
  it's "rational" if you don't factor in the complications
  - uoaei 4y ago
    The "complications" are exactly what's being examined here.
- bckr 4y ago
  Just a point of pedantry, "child sex abuse material" (CSAM) is a new, more descriptive and accurate term.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    The use of a colloquialism was intentional
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Pretty sure that mainly caught on because corporations are more comfortable putting "CSAM detection" on a feature list than "child porn detection".
    - bckr 4y ago
      Maybe, but I agree with the argument that we should focus on the abuse aspect

nine_k 4y ago

Usually it makes sense to take investor money if you want to grow faster than your revenue stream allows. It lets you potentially capture the market before your competition. But I don't think that there's much direct competition to OnlyFans, or that there is a market which is easy to capture by copycatting them. Hence, they can afford to not take any investment. This is similar to how GitHub operated and grew for the first few years.

kreco 4y ago

Especially because it also means that potential OnlyFans competitor will come across the same fate. So there is no need to worry about them (unless the owners intended to get massive cash asap).

rtkwe 4y ago

It would have been useful early to pay for hosting. OF may not exist today if not for the great de-porning of Tumblr that happened about a year after they started as a business.

lostgame 4y ago
The Tumblr de-porning was the single most SMH business moment I may have heard of since Yahoo’s previous worst business move ever of not buying Google. I mean - my God… Yahoo may very well be the single dumbest major tech company in history. Just…blunder after blunder after shitty decision. Watching its history is almost the definition of seeing a slow motion train wreck. It’s almost impressive. With regards to Tumblr - I can’t imagine what potential business decision could’ve been worth what they had to know was suicide. Why make the acquisition and then kill your user base? It’s not like they didn’t know. That’s probably one of the single biggest wastes of $1b I’ve seen. Why buy it to knowingly, fully intentionally, throw it down the toilet? So baffling.
- robotnikman 4y ago
  The only reason I can think of is some executive was so morally opposed to it that they value getting rid of the NSFW stuff on Tumblr over money. Twitter had no qualms taking in the manly Tumblr users who went over there instead.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    From what I recall at the time it was because Yahoo wanted to go down the standard ad serving model to monetize tumblr and the presence of porn was getting in the way of that. They didn't realize or didn't believe that one of the big reasons a lot of people were on tumblr to begin with was for smut.

throwie_wayward 4y ago

because go big or GTFO? I posit this as an explanation. I think "go big or go home" is a terrible mindset.

jjk166 4y ago

It's not a problem now, but in a strictly rational economy a company that was so obviously going to acquire a massive paying userbase should have had no issue finding investors back when it would have been useful. Adult content hosting sites face some unique (read expensive) challenges relating to both scale and content moderation. It's not like you can just run videos through a nudity detector to stop your servers from accidentally hosting terabytes of kiddie porn.

dropit_sphere 4y ago
it's "rational" if you don't factor in the complications
- uoaei 4y ago
  The "complications" are exactly what's being examined here.
bckr 4y ago
Just a point of pedantry, "child sex abuse material" (CSAM) is a new, more descriptive and accurate term.
- jjk166 4y ago
  The use of a colloquialism was intentional
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Pretty sure that mainly caught on because corporations are more comfortable putting "CSAM detection" on a feature list than "child porn detection".
  - bckr 4y ago
    Maybe, but I agree with the argument that we should focus on the abuse aspect