The sulphurous Cindy Gallop is an entrepreneur who knew how to combine her passion, her commitment to sexuality and her talent for business by creating MakeLovenotPorn (MLNP).
Who is Cindy Gallop, the founder of MLNP
Cindy Gallop is a British businesswoman born in 1960. She studied English literature at Oxford University before working in the advertising industry. In particular, she was president of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), a renowned advertising agency, and worked for brands such as Coca-Cola, Ray-Ban, and Volkswagen.
It should be noted that Cindy Gallop has always been committed to both feminism and sexuality. In particular, she launched the advertising campaign. “Keep Walking” by Johnnie Walker in 1999 for a limited-edition bottle of Whisky. The campaign was focused on interracial and gay couples, which was a phenomenal revolution for the time.
In 2005, she started the agency IF We Ran The World, whose mission is to help businesses have a positive impact on the world. She also founded the platform in question today, MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP), which focuses on sex education and empowerment, through ethical porn.
The beginnings of Make Love Not Porn
The idea for MLNP came to Cindy Gallop when she realized, after a date with a man much younger than her, as she explains during Her interview for The Imposterous podcast. She noticed that young people were dLess and less well informed about sexuality and that representations of sexuality in the media were often stereotyped and unrealistic. So she wanted to create a platform that would allow for people to share their sexual experiences in an authentic and positive way, through amateur videos that show the reality of what is happening under the sheets.
The first version of MLNP was launched in 2009, but it has quickly encountered problems with online payment services, who refused to process transactions related to sexuality. This is not an isolated case, since even today, many Startups that start in the sexual field struggle to have access to the resources necessary to start a business. But Cindy Gallop didn't give up and decided to call on a team of developers to create the platform on her own. That's the way it is What has MakeLovenotPorn resurrected where couples can now add videos of their personal lovemaking.
Shortly after, Cindy Gallop went on a roadshow to raise funds: she badly needed it to develop the platform since, being a porn platform, had many obstacles in the works to grow.
Make Love Not Porn Today
Today, MLNP has stuck to its original concept, where couples can submit their videos themselves. The content is obviously checked before being accepted on the platform. The site's business model is based on shared revenue : part goes to couples who post and part of it goes back to the MLNP platform. Cindy Gallop even explained that some couples manage to live off their income generated with MakeLoveNotPorn.
Cindy Gallop's platform encourages users to share videos of all sorts of sexual experiences, whether they are heterosexual, homosexual, transgender or others. MLNP thus wishes to promote a more realistic and open image of sexual relationships. It also makes it possible to raise public awareness about different sexual orientations and different genders.
Next to MakeLoveNotPorn, Cindy Gallop also organizes events and conferences for promote sex education. In this way, she wants to break taboos and stereotypes around sexuality, and encourage people to talk about it openly and positively. Besides, she is very involved in the Sextech world, which needs support in order to develop.
The challenges of entrepreneurship in sextech
Setting up a company in Sextech is an everyday challenge. As Cindy Gallop has explained in numerous interviews, online payment services often refuse to process transactions related to sexuality, and investors are still reluctant to invest in this sector. This is also the case for email providers or marketing services. In Europe in particular, sexual data is classified as sensitive data by the RGPD regulations and must be the subject special treatment, often inaccessible with standard suppliers. Indeed, companies dealing with this kind of data often refuse to work with Sextech startups.
If the current state of affairs is complex for Sextech startups, it's because the porn industry still has a very poor image. Indeed, in the past, there has been too much abuse on porn platforms, especially with videos published under duress, or with the popularization of revenge porn. For this reason, we must continue to promote ethical sites, like MakeLoveNotPorn, Afterglow or even Femtasy, which offers ethical audios in order to appeal to your imagination.
Fortunately, more and more actors are moving to help Sextech companies to develop and to gain visibility. It is therefore a bright future that awaits beautiful startups, even if it will surely be full of pitfalls.
