This Gen Z founder made an OnlyFans rival that has no nudity and offered it for $65 million
Harry Gestetner , 22, runs Fanfix, a subscription platform reported to have offered for $65 million.- He mentioned platforms resembling TikTok had “failed” to assist creators generate profits, leaving him a gap.
Harry Gestetner is eager to reassure people who he does not stay along with his dad and mom.
He is sitting in entrance of a mannequin airplane in his dad’s dwelling workplace as he talks to Insider over Zoom from Los Angeles.
“I am at my dad and mom’ home now as a result of I had a household dinner final night time, however I did truly transfer out,” he mentioned.
The 22-year-old definitely does not must stay along with his of us: He grew to become
Gestetner is the co-CEO of the platform, which he cofounded in 2020 and which lets social-media creators and influencers monetize their fan bases by providing a month-to-month paid subscription for content material resembling day-in-the-life vlogs, DMs, and unpublished first-draft TikToks.
It is a mannequin broadly much like OnlyFans, however with a significant distinction: It does not enable nudity.
Not like OnlyFans, which is understood for its grownup content material, and Patreon, which permits nudity in some contexts, Fanfix markets itself as providing an revenue stream for
Gestetner believes most well-known creators on OnlyFans are “not truly doing any nudity for probably the most half — however they’re related to the acute pornography that is happening” which means they “lose out on model offers.”
Avi Gandhi, the founding father of Associate with Creators who was beforehand the pinnacle of creator partnerships at Patreon, instructed Insider that firms doing model advertising and marketing have been “impossible to put money into partnering with creators on OnlyFans due to the model affiliation.”
Some heralded the sale of Fanfix to SuperOrdinary, a “model accelerator” that helps firms market themselves by means of influencer partnerships, as signaling that “the creator economic system is right here to remain.”
Fanfix mentioned in April that it had over 10 million customers and anticipated to pay out $50 million to its 3,000 creators by the top of the yr.
Knowledge seen by TechCrunch confirmed {that a} creator’s common annual revenue on the platform is $70,000.
Gestetner does not maintain again on criticizing opponents, calling Patreon an “outdated, cumbersome desktop-first platform catered to our dad and mom’ technology” and OnlyFans a “porn web site” with a “huge stigma surrounding it.”
However Fanfix is tiny in contrast with OnlyFans, which instructed Insider in 2021 that it had 180 million registered customers — about 18 occasions the variety of Fanfix customers immediately.
An entrepreneurial household
Gestetner grew up in London and has a background of wealth and innovation.
His great-great-grandfather, David Gestetner — whom he counts as an inspiration — invented an early photocopying machine in 1879. Ricoh purchased the enterprise in 1996 for $226 million, The Guardian reported. The publication additionally reported that Harry’s father, Daniel, was one of many UK’s richest younger entrepreneurs in 2000.
He attended Highgate College, which presently has charges of $29,000 a yr, earlier than transferring to Los Angeles for highschool.
It was there, finding out at Harvard-Westlake College — whose alumni embrace Lily Collins and Jake Gyllenhaal — the place he met his cofounder, Simon Pompan.
The pair studied enterprise whereas in faculty and launched a charity referred to as Gasoline Our Heroes through the coronavirus pandemic, utilizing social media to lift over $350,000 for healthcare employees.
Throughout that point, Gestetner’s cousin posted a TikTok, which acquired tens of millions of views. Gestetner was pissed off that his cousin “could not make a penny” from it.
Working from their dorm rooms, Gestetner and Pompan raised $1.3 million from the venture-capital companies Antler, Tough Draft Ventures, and Day One Ventures, to discovered Fanfix.
The previous Vine star Cameron Dallas additionally got here on board as a cofounder and raised the platform’s profile.
‘We do not enterprise into any of the extra specific areas’
Fanfix’s content material tips outline nudity as “pictures, movies, and a few digitally-created content material that present sexual activity, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks.”
However although Gestetner described it as a “strictly clear platform,” a glance by means of a few of the hottest creators’ accounts reveals it isn’t all protected for work.
There are close-ups of bikini-clad buttocks, photos of toes, and movies of creators spitting. In DMs, there are photos customers can unlock for $25, captioned with the peach emoji.
Clips of women dancing in bikinis that creators declare TikTok took down beneath its ambiguous moderation coverage on seminude movies typically get re-uploaded to Fanfix.
“We enable what is the societal norm, and we do not enterprise into any of the extra specific areas,” Gestetner mentioned. “Probably the most lewd stuff on our platform will probably be much like probably the most lewd stuff on TikTok or Instagram.”
Savannah Demers, a 22-year-old with 2.2 million TikTok followers, mentioned the no-nudity rule was the principle draw for her to affix Fanfix, explaining that she wished “an outlet that’s at a calmer degree and fame than different platforms would possibly give” to let her create content material she is “snug with.”
‘Not a staff of middle-aged males’
Gestetner calls Fanfix “Gen Z-first, TikTok-first, mobile-first.”
It has greater than 50 employees members, who’re principally of their early 20s. “We’re not sitting in a room with a whiteboard, theorizing what Gen Z would possibly need, as a staff of middle-aged males. We speak about what we wish, after which we construct that,” he mentioned.
The finance class on the location’s “discover” web page is playfully labeled with the “Stonks” meme, and Fanfix’s desktop interface is designed with the proportions of a cellphone display screen, but it surely does not have an app in app shops.
Gestetner instructed a Spotify podcast in 2022 that making use of Apple’s 30% charges on in-app purchases would imply creators’ earnings would drop dramatically, which he mentioned can be “a completely ludicrous idea.” Fanfix takes a 20% fee on creators’ earnings — the identical price as OnlyFans.
When SuperOrdinary purchased Fanfix, Insider’s Geoff Weiss reported that there have been plans for product collaborations with the platform’s creators.
Gestetner mentioned he is open with Fanfix creators in that he thinks they’d all the time make more cash on OnlyFans than Fanfix on a “per creator foundation,” due to the expectation that followers will be capable of see nudity on OnlyFans.
Gandhi instructed Insider he did not suppose the 2 platforms have been opponents as a result of they aim totally different audiences.
“Each of those platforms are constructing manufacturers for very particular creator demographics and psychographics. Increasing exterior of these as soon as established will probably be difficult,” Gandhi mentioned.
Gestetner mentioned that he felt the booming subscriptions market was up for grabs and that Fanfix might even “eclipse” OnlyFans in just a few years, although he acknowledges that is an ambition relatively than a projection.
“The fact is, the creator economic system itself should not have existed within the first place, as a result of Instagram, Fb, after which finally, TikTok, ought to have taken care of monetization, in addition to discovery,” Gestetner mentioned.
“They failed at that. And so they took benefit of the creators, and so an enormous hole opened up for platforms like Patreon, platforms like us.”
Correction: Might 30, 2023 — An earlier model of this story included one reference that misattributed the supply of Fanfix’s sale worth. The $65 million determine got here from Crunchbase, not Harry Gestetner; Fanfix and Gestetner declined to verify the quantity.