Cindy Gallop shares how a personal observation became MakeLoveNotPorn - and what it takes to build outside the assumptions of mainstream finance and technology.
The big idea
Cindy Gallop did not leave advertising with a start-up plan.
At 45, after a long career with BBH, she decided to review what she wanted next.
In 2005 she resigned as chair of BBH New York without another job lined up, explored the opportunities that came to her and used consulting to support herself.
MakeLoveNotPorn began separately, with something Cindy had noticed in her personal life: online pornography was influencing sexual behaviour while open, honest conversation about sex remained difficult.
She created a small text website contrasting “porn world” with “real world” and launched the idea at TED in 2009.
The response persuaded Cindy that the issue was larger than a personal observation.
She chose to develop a business intended to make talking about real-world sex easier, while creating a commercial model around content that mainstream platforms would not host.
The turning point
The TED talk gives the idea global attention, but attention does not remove the operational challenge.
Cindy is building in a category that payment providers, banks, advertising platforms, email services, funders and technology suppliers have frequently excluded under broad “adult content” policies.
This makes the business model inseparable from the infrastructure around it. Services that other technology companies can buy off the shelf are not always available.
Cindy describes taking four years to secure a business bank account and having to seek permission from senior people at suppliers simply to use essential services.
How she is building it
Cindy continues to explain the category and negotiate access rather than changing the mission to fit the assumptions of existing platforms.
MakeLoveNotPorn uses proprietary technology where conventional video services are unavailable, with human curation forming part of its approach to consent and safety.
The model combines social purpose with revenue. During the 2021 conversation, Cindy explained that half the income from submitted videos was shared with contributors.
This illustrates how closely the social purpose and revenue model are connected, although the current arrangement may be different.
Consulting has supported Cindy since she left BBH and remains part of the wider working life through which she builds MakeLoveNotPorn.
Where the business stands
MakeLoveNotPorn has attracted global attention, but Cindy’s experience resists a simple “visibility leads to growth” narrative.
A prominent TED talk and a strong international network have not created straightforward access to funding, banking, payments or advertising.
When Liana Fricker sat down with Cindy for episode two of Unfinished Business, Cindy described herself as facing a “quadruple whammy of un-fundability”: being female, older, a woman of colour and working in sextech.
She explained the additional time and money required when ordinary business services are unavailable, as well as the difficulty of finding investors whose personal values allow them to consider the category.
Food for thought
A few things in Cindy’s story are worth thinking about:
- A business can have customers and still be blocked by the systems it needs to operate. For MakeLoveNotPorn, banking, payments, advertising and distribution shape what the business can do—and create extra costs when mainstream services are unavailable.
- For Cindy, the social purpose and the revenue model are inseparable: the business needs to earn money if it is going to keep doing the work.
- Visibility is not the same as access. Attention can help, but it does not automatically change institutional rules or investor decisions.
“F*ck it, I’ll show you.” — Cindy Gallop
What may not transfer
Cindy brings decades of senior advertising experience, an international network and the visibility generated by launching the idea on the TED stage.
The barriers she describes are specific to sextech and to the policies operating at the time of the conversation. Other founders may face different forms of exclusion, regulation or dependency, so the infrastructure each business relies on—and its access to it—will differ.
This is not a simple story of persistence overcoming resistance. Some barriers are structural and expensive to work around.
For another founder, the relevant question is not whether they are determined enough, but whether they have the resources and appetite to operate under those conditions.
Related Resources and Stories
Resource — Use the Business Model Canvas to see how the parts of your business fit together
Story — Jen Rubio on launching Away before it was ready
Listen to the full conversation
Content note: this story and the embedded episode include frank discussion of sex, pornography, funding and discriminatory barriers. The episode is marked explicit.
Listen to “F*ck the Fear and Fly” on Spotify
