newchimedes

You have to be strict. If you let one non-sex photo in next thing you know it's filled with non-sex photos.

Guilty as charged.

We saw and liked fiverr, but we didn't want to do just a clone site of it since we felt they had the market pretty cornered. We'd just be a "me too" player. Looking around we realized there wasn't a good system similiar to fiverr for adult. That's when we decided to test it and see if there was a market. We've been surprised.

Pornification has been going for some time, it just hasn't been well publicized (since mainstream tech news doesn't really cover porn unless there's something crazy going on). Youtube / youporn is a great example of one. In addition the site gamecrush.com is very similar to the adult webcams sites that are up. They added the twist where models can't be nude and they play video games with customers.

As a startup in the adult space I know there are lots of opportunities in adult...especially since the industry is going through a huge transition. As much as people love to say how porn brings innovation, that's not the case anymore. In the beginning it was way too easy for many of these porn sites to make money. Basically you just had to stick up a thumbnail gallery and a payment page and money would come in.

However, now as free porn is prolific on the internet many of these webmasters don't know what to do... so not that much innovation going on. If you can bring in good tech people there's no doubt they could kick butt. That's what we're trying to do, but just being in adult makes people look at you funny. Something that comes with the territory.

Resubmitted again since when our site went down HN marked the link [dead]. We're up and running again...

Wow. Didn't think that many people would read this. It took our site down :( Working on getting it back up.

Yup. Just waiting for this to become the next big thing on the internet...

Why not? Do they have to sign some confidentiality agreement?

I think it's awesome what you've done so far and am thoroughly impressed with your patience and tactics so far to get as far as you have. It's about time someone called out the government on their shenanigans because too many people site back and chalk it up to "that's just the way it is".

I love the comparison between personal branding and corporate branding. I've been told that to "succeed" in life you have to work on branding yourself. But I think you point out the flaw in branding oneself is that you end up boxing yourself into your brand. And what happens when you can't live up to your brand or you slip up? You get mad depressed and upset. Better to be honest and open.

I can see how it can be misleading looking at small market YC companies. Though I'm still wondering what's considered "small" by YC's standards. Someone mentioned Octopart and Wakemate as smaller market companies, but as a consumer/retail play it seems still like a decent potential market.

This is a long about way of me asking if people consider the adult entertainment market small/big. That's where our startup is "disrupting." It's one of those industries where you hear talk of the "billions" being made, but not many share their numbers. One of the few well known exits in the adult space was AdultFriendFinder being sold to Penthouse for $500 million...and interestingly they grew the site from little to no outside money.

so if we don't have phenomenal growth (ie "$100k in revenue in your first month or 10k users in 24 hours") we still have a chance?

Does anyone know examples of YC companies who are in small markets? I was under the impression they only liked larger markets (since they are more fundable by vc's and the like).

I like how he states that he was a YC funded company...since they got an interview with YC and took the travel money $400 to invest in building up the company.

Here's the article I mentioned: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/09/26/facebook-defends-gett...

I think this bake sale is a brilliant idea, but unfortunately many have missed the point. The bake sale illustrates how SB185 (CA bill that wants to consider race in its admissions) if passed might be consider racist. The good thing is this sale is drawing a lot of attention. The bad though is the attention seems focused on the bake sale being racist, but not necessarily the CA Bill which will affect a lot more people. Rather than focus on whether this bill should be passed people are upset that they are charging different prices for cupcakes (even though the organizers have said that they won't).

Wasn't there a FB engineer yesterday who said that this "problem" would take a long time to fix? Apparently it didn't take that long.

congrats on getting it "launched". It's great you are giving exposure to the startups that Techcrunch started off giving, bu then stopped.

We've been interviewing people in the adult industry to see what their world is all about. It's pretty fascinating... let us know what you think.

FYI:

We have a startup in the adult space, but have no background in the adult industry. The lean startup gurus preach the importance of understanding your customers and customer development. The adult industry is one of those places where it's difficult to understand customers because most people don't talk about the porn they buy or services they use. So we went to the Los Angeles Adultcon to see what we could learn. You'd think it'd be more crazy, but in fact it was kinda tame.

I think the most disturbing part is how they tried to get her to take her blog or limit access to her blog post. The reason? Because it would hurt their funding round. So instead of a $5 billion valuation they now get $4.5 billion.

Please. The fact is this incident happened on their watch. Trying to pretend they are the hero in this mess and spin it their way bothers me tremendously. I mean, she got robbed as a consequence of using their site. That stuff happens and honestly I don't think anyone really believes they can stop all bad things from happening. But this whole let's try to hide this under the rug deal makes them look 1000x worse I think than her getting robbed (which still sucks!)

When I saw the headlines I was thinking the same thing. Should I eat lobster tonight or filet mignon? Louis Vuitton or Gucci... the choices are driving me crazy!

I just went with Namecheap. I'm moving all my domains all of GoCrappy. GoDaddy is not only a mess to use, but it also costs a lot more.

Why does legislation have to be some confusing. So I get that certain parts of the law have been signed, but what about the affiliate tax? Is that now the law. The article says

"Brown announced signing eight separate pieces of that package Wednesday, though not the main spending plan itself.

The online sales tax law, AB 28 1x, would seek to force online retailers who have no physical presence in California, such as Amazon.com, to collect the same levies as bricks-and-mortar stores."

The use of "would seek to force" seems to suggest this part hasn't passed yet. So the real question is did it pass or not?

I'm not sure if I buy this whole "swiping" is the most important feature. Did you guys watch the video with the SVP of design talking? He talks about how swiping eliminates the need for a home key (jab at Apple), and how later you can swip to show all your active apps "making for the best multitasking experience" (another jab at Apple)... I wasn't convinced.

I wish they went into why they fired Peter. It seemed like a passing thought in the article. What was he doing wrong? Seems like Bill was equally at fault...

I've heard a few different pitches for this idea...booking meals in other people's homes...the one thing I rarely hear being brought up though is the legality of this. Aren't there pretty strict laws about cooking prepared food for others? I thought restaurants and even those street vendors are supposed to be checked out...

Just wondering if you have checked this potential issue out...or maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea.

I'm still waiting for Startup Canoe...We have startup weekend, startup bus, startup ________ ... but I want to build a startup while on a canoe!

Alright, someone smarter than is going to have to explain the popularity of this site... I checked it out real briefly and didn't get the allure. Is it just like the misconnections section on cragislist...only this is for a specific college campus? I thought there was also a UK company doing something similar as well...

Is it a "billion dollar" idea?

That is a great idea. How long have they been out? I'm surprised it hasn't caught on yet. Seems like a win/win proposition.

I like the fact that you don't need to login to play... The only issue was i couldn't find any opponents to play :( Tetris Battle on Facebook is pretty addictive...they always seem to have someone to play against (though sometimes I think I'm playing against AI opponents).

I would have thought they would have included a link to the app in the android marketplace on the home page. I clicked it and it just takes you to the android marketplace home. So far no luck finding on Android...