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Speaker 1: The news came down yesterday that Lennett Redsvinsky, who is

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Speaker 1: the owner of OnlyFans, died at the age of forty three.

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Speaker 1: He passed away after a long battle with cancer. The

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Speaker 1: company said he was a billionaire tech entrepreneur and majority

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Speaker 1: owner of OnlyFans, which was the subscription is the subscription

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Speaker 1: based platform known for their adult content. He acquired the

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Speaker 1: company back in twenty eighteen, and then he grew it

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Speaker 1: into what it has become today, built a three billion

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Speaker 1: dollar empire, took twenty percent of other people's art, and

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Speaker 1: then kept a lot for himself. So the platform, obviously

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Speaker 1: it made a handful of creators extremely rich and left

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Speaker 1: thousands other worse off than what they were before they began.

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Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, money could not

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Speaker 1: buy him time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so this story is really you know, his passing obviously,

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Speaker 2: it's giving us a lot of opportunity to reflect back

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Speaker 2: on the platform that he purchased and really took to

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Speaker 2: where it is today. And it's fascinating that, you know,

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Speaker 2: OnlyFans what it is today was really an accident. OnlyFans

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Speaker 2: was started so that like you, musicians and artists and

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Speaker 2: content creators could have a platform to sell subscriptions so

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Speaker 2: people could buy their content so they wouldn't have to

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Speaker 2: rely on advertising. Look, if you're a content creator, you

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Speaker 2: can go on YouTube and try and monetize that, but

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Speaker 2: again you're living off of the advertising world. This was

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Speaker 2: a really one of the first platforms where people could

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Speaker 2: go and do whatever you want to do, and then

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Speaker 2: the consumer could easily subscribe to get more of that

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Speaker 2: content and get more access to it. And again, it

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Speaker 2: was really designed for musicians. And then COVID hit and

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Speaker 2: all of a sudden, tons and tons of people were

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Speaker 2: without jobs, and it turned into what it is today,

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Speaker 2: which is essentially a porn website, so much so that

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Speaker 2: in twenty two, twenty twenty one, Only Fans announced that

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Speaker 2: they were getting rid of all the pornography on their website,

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Speaker 2: and then people lost their minds and all their investors

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Speaker 2: were like, hey, hold on a minute, we're making a

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Speaker 2: lot of money here. What are you talking about.

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Speaker 1: Twenty percent off of every single one, And so.

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Speaker 2: They changed their tact and they allow pornography on it now,

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Speaker 2: and that's the way it is today. But I think

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Speaker 2: people overlook the fact they sit here and they say, oh,

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Speaker 2: OnlyFans is a pornography platform. That's what it is. We

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Speaker 2: really shouldn't take it seriously. But it was really the

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Speaker 2: first major platform that gave content creators an opportunity to

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Speaker 2: monetize their content and really brought other platforms more legitimacy,

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Speaker 2: things like Patreon, which Patreon is not pornography based, but

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Speaker 2: you can go on there and people can make content

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Speaker 2: and you can subscribe to that and get more access

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Speaker 2: to content. It really kind of changed the way content

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Speaker 2: creators were paid.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people are calling him a tech founder.

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Speaker 1: That is some heavy lifting for a job title. I mean,

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Speaker 1: did he really did he really? Was he a tech

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Speaker 1: inventor or was he just a disruptor?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think, like I said, it was an accident.

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Speaker 2: This only fans today is not what it was originally

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Speaker 2: created for. And then one day they woke up and

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Speaker 2: they were like, hey, people are doing a bunch of

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Speaker 2: porn on here. That's not what we wanted. And so

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Speaker 2: it was really kind of an accidental company that started

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Speaker 2: and it grew into this multi billion dollar company, and

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Speaker 2: you know, he was a billionaire and made tons of

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Speaker 2: other people rich. But it really, like I said, the

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Speaker 2: fact of the matter is it gets over because it's

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Speaker 2: a porn website, people often overlook the way it really

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Speaker 2: changed business models for individual content creators that are even

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Speaker 2: outside of pornography.

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Speaker 1: Well, it is a reminder that life doesn't care about

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Speaker 1: headlines or money because he was only forty three years old,

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Speaker 1: and even if he have three billion dollars, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: enough to save him from cancer. And now there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of uncertainty about future ownership or the direction that

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Speaker 1: only fans may go.

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Speaker 2: Oh, and it's fascinating. And this has been talked about

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Speaker 2: a lot before about how pornography really does and has

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Speaker 2: historically pushed technology forward. It was pornography that really brought

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Speaker 2: us the VCR and brought it into everybody's homes because

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Speaker 2: there was no other way to have that, and so

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Speaker 2: it made that technological device, gave people a reason for it,

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Speaker 2: and it brought it to scale and to homes all

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Speaker 2: across America. The DVD. The DVD was driven by pornography

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Speaker 2: because I could have this in my home, and so

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Speaker 2: everybody adopted the DVD platform and obviously it became big

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Speaker 2: beyond pornography. And here's another example of pornography really being

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Speaker 2: the driver for this kind of ecosystem where content creators

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Speaker 2: can get paid, and that's popped up all of these

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Speaker 2: other copycats, whether it's Discord or Patreon or all these

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Speaker 2: other systems where I can create something, build a community,

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Speaker 2: and then sell subscriptions to people who want that content.