A TED talk can introduce your idea to the world. It can’t guarantee you a business bank account.
Cindy Gallop discovered that while building MakeLoveNotPorn. Her idea attracted international attention, but many of the services she needed wouldn’t work with a business connected to sex.
Before she could grow the company, she had to persuade people to let it operate.
Listen to the interview
In F*ck the Fear and Fly, Cindy talks about leaving advertising, building MakeLoveNotPorn and challenging the assumptions that kept closing doors.
Recorded in 2021. The conversation includes frank discussion of sex and pornography, and explicit language.
Leaving without a ready-made plan
Cindy didn’t leave advertising knowing she’d become a sextech founder.
In 2005, aged 45, she resigned as chair of BBH New York without another job lined up. After years in advertising, she wanted to explore what else she might do. Consulting gave her an income while she worked that out.
MakeLoveNotPorn grew from something she’d noticed in her personal life: pornography was influencing sexual behaviour, while honest conversations about sex remained difficult.
She created a small text website comparing “porn world” with “real world” and introduced it at TED in 2009.
The response suggested she’d touched on something much bigger. She began developing a business that would make real-world sex easier to talk about and give people an alternative to what they were seeing in porn.
Getting noticed wasn’t the hardest part
Cindy had senior business experience, an international network and a highly visible launch. None of that guaranteed access to the services other founders could take for granted.
Banks, payment providers, advertising platforms and technology suppliers frequently excluded businesses under broad “adult content” policies.
MakeLoveNotPorn could be rejected before anyone looked closely at what it was trying to do.
Cindy describes taking four years to secure a business bank account. Even buying essential services could mean finding someone senior enough to consider an exception.
These weren’t small administrative frustrations. Each refusal could delay the work, increase costs or force the team to find another way.
Fundraising brought further obstacles. Cindy calls herself the “quadruple whammy of un-fundability”: female, older, a woman of colour and working in sextech.
She had to find investors willing to look beyond their discomfort with the subject and consider the business.
Building what she couldn’t buy
When existing video services weren’t available, MakeLoveNotPorn built its own technology. Human curation formed part of its approach to consent and safety.
The commercial model reflected the mission, too. In the interview, Cindy described sharing half the income from submitted videos with their contributors.
Those choices affected what the company needed to build, what it cost to operate and how money flowed through the business.
Cindy kept explaining the difference between MakeLoveNotPorn and the category suppliers assumed it belonged to. That meant repeatedly making the case for the business to people who controlled whether it could function.
What does your business depend on?
There’s plenty of determination in Cindy’s story. There’s also a practical issue that can get lost in conversations about having a great idea: who else has to say yes before you can deliver it?
Customers might want what you’re offering, but you could still depend on a payment provider, marketplace, landlord, distributor or funder whose rules don’t accommodate your business.
Working around those restrictions takes time and money. Sometimes it means building something yourself. Sometimes it means finding a different partner or reconsidering the model.
Cindy’s experience makes those dependencies visible.
Which service or relationship would be hardest to replace if it became unavailable — and what could you do now to give yourself another option?
Keep exploring
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Venture Capital: Explained
Understand how equity investment works, what investors expect and what funding could mean for your business. Read the Explainer in the Library.
How to assess your business environment
Identify the outside rules, technologies and changes that could affect your business decisions. Get the guide in the Library.
