Latest / Low to Grow / Blowing Up the Sex Taboo with Cindy Gallop: What Drives Her to Make the Google of Sex-Ed

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Blowing Up the Sex Taboo with Cindy Gallop: What Drives Her to Make the Google of Sex-Ed · Low to Grow

• 0:00
  When you look at the levels, the heights that mediocre men can
• 0:04
  reach, why the fuck would you have in foster syndrome?
• 0:06
  Today on Low to Grow, we are joined by the Michael Bay of
• 0:09
  business. Investors listening right now,
• 0:12
  fund me and I guarantee you returns the likes which you've
• 0:15
  never seen. We're joined by a woman who has
• 0:18
  made a career out of blowing up the status quo.
• 0:21
  The single dynamic most motivates me is the one that I
• 0:23
  characterize as I'm going to fucking well show you.
• 0:26
  You tell me it can't be done. I'm going to fucking well show
• 0:28
  you. You put a around my path, I'm
• 0:30
  going to fucking well show you. I'm a great believer that when
• 0:34
  you have a truly world changing starter, you have to change the
• 0:37
  world to fit it, not the other way around.
• 0:40
  Cindy Gallup is the founder and CEO of Make Love Not Porn.
• 0:45
  It's a ground breaking social sex platform that's redefining
• 0:48
  how we are learning about intimacy, consent and also real
• 0:52
  world connection. Sex is the area where you cannot
• 0:56
  tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside.
• 1:00
  The people who look like they would totally get it don't.
• 1:03
  The people who look like complete prudes do.
• 1:06
  When you search porn that is not porn, you find Make Love, not
• 1:10
  porn. Cindy started life as an
• 1:13
  advertising legend and is now a fearless entrepreneur and a
• 1:17
  global voice for honest conversations that most people
• 1:20
  are still too scared to have. Deep fakes are destroying the
• 1:24
  lives of millions of girls and women worldwide.
• 1:27
  Where Elon Musk's grok is running rampant, where child
• 1:31
  abuse and grooming permeates all of Facebook, Instagram,
• 1:35
  Snapchat. Because the white guys at the
• 1:36
  top don't give a shit about any of that going on in the pursuit
• 1:40
  of revenue and profits and growth.
• 1:42
  I have a business that is world changing that has the proven
• 1:47
  ability at scale to help end rape culture globally.
• 1:50
  Cindy doesn't just challenge culture, she changes it along
• 1:54
  with business models. I want to prove it's possible to
• 1:57
  operate a safe sex education platform at scale and then exit
• 2:03
  to giant fintech from absolute God I'm fucking shit on the
• 2:05
  mind. Quick note before we start, if
• 2:08
  you have enjoyed this podcast and want to support our
• 2:10
  incredible guests, please follow low to grow podcast on Instagram
• 2:15
  and TikTok. Welcome to Low to grow, the
• 2:18
  podcast transforming life's toughest moments into
• 2:21
  opportunity for growth. I'm Annie, a folks on the 30
• 2:25
  technology founder who's entrepreneurship journey brand
• 2:28
  parallel to a mental health awakening.
• 2:31
  In every episode, I sit down with inspiring individuals and
• 2:35
  delve into how they manage to turn their personal or
• 2:37
  professional challenges into opportunities for growth.
• 2:41
  If you're facing uncertainty in your life, feeling down, or
• 2:45
  simply need a kick of inspiration to keep moving
• 2:48
  forward, this is your space over honest and uplifting
• 2:52
  conversations that you will want to hear.
• 2:54
  It follows so you'll never miss an episode.
• 2:57
  And let's dive in. Cindy, it's a pleasure to have
• 2:59
  you on the Lotion Pro Podcast. Let me start by asking you who
• 3:03
  do you want to be listening to our conversation today?
• 3:07
  There are three groups of people I want to be listening today.
• 3:10
  The 1st is investors who are looking for the biggest money
• 3:14
  making opportunity of them all. The second is philanthropists
• 3:19
  who want to find a truly effective way to change the
• 3:22
  world with philanthropic capital.
• 3:25
  And the third is anybody who wants to know how to
• 3:29
  breakthrough obstacles and achieve what you want to
• 3:33
  achieve. Where would you say that your
• 3:35
  story starts? Honestly, I guess my story
• 3:38
  starts with being born so life. OK, it's interesting because
• 3:44
  some guests take a very philosophical approach on Alice
• 3:47
  progression and other guests point to a point in my career
• 3:50
  where they think the motivation for what they do not really
• 3:53
  started. Let's dive a bit deeper Cindy.
• 3:56
  You started off your career in advertising moving from the UK
• 3:59
  to the US to open BBH and then now you have been running Make
• 4:04
  Love Not Porn for quite a while by following your socials.
• 4:08
  You have talked about struggles of fundraising for that
• 4:11
  particular type of venture and also the types of people on
• 4:15
  social media whose voices and pose are more likely to get
• 4:18
  traction. What triggered you to start?
• 4:22
  Make Love, Not Porn. Complete and total excellent.
• 4:25
  I have never consciously intentionally planned anything
• 4:29
  in my life or career. Everything has happened by
• 4:32
  accident. Make Love Not Porn came about
• 4:35
  because I date younger men and I realized therefore, through my
• 4:40
  direct personal experience having sex with younger men, and
• 4:43
  this is 1819 years ago, long before anybody else realized
• 4:47
  this, I realized very intimately that when we don't talk openly
• 4:53
  and honestly about sex, porn becomes sex education by
• 4:57
  default, in not a good way. I'm a naturally action oriented
• 5:02
  person. And so I went, right, going to
• 5:05
  do something about this 17 years ago, purely at the time, as a
• 5:10
  little side venture I put off on No money, a
• 5:13
  tinyclunkywebsite@makelovenotporn.com that in its original iteration
• 5:20
  was kind of a public service announcement.
• 5:22
  Porn world versus real world. Here's what happens in the porn
• 5:26
  world. Here's what really happens in
• 5:27
  the real world. I launched Make Love Not Porn at
• 5:30
  the Ted conference in 2009. My Ted talk went viral.
• 5:35
  It drove an extraordinary global response that I had never
• 5:41
  anticipated. Thousands of people wrote to me
• 5:44
  from all around the world, young and old, male and female,
• 5:49
  straight and gay, pouring their hearts out, telling me things
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  about their sex lives and their porn watching habits they'd
• 5:56
  never told anyone before. And I realized I'd accidentally
• 6:01
  uncovered a huge global social issue.
• 6:06
  And so that was what then led me to feel that I had a personal
• 6:10
  responsibility to take Make Love not going forwards in a way that
• 6:15
  would make it much more far reaching, helpful, and
• 6:18
  effective. And so I turned it into a
• 6:20
  business designed to do good and make money simultaneously.
• 6:25
  I turn it into what we are today, which is the world's
• 6:27
  first and only user generated, 100% human curated social sex
• 6:35
  video sharing platform. So the way to think about us is
• 6:39
  if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love Not
• 6:43
  Porn is the badly needed documentary.
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  We are a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving sex we all
• 6:51
  have in the real world. We have sex education through
• 6:54
  real world demonstration. How has its reception by the
• 6:59
  public changed from when you first started it to where it is
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  at today in 2026? In 17 years, Make Love Not
• 7:07
  Corners receive nothing but a wholly positive response from
• 7:10
  audiences all around the world. The general public absolutely
• 7:14
  love. Make Love, not porn.
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  It's just that they can't find out about it because we are
• 7:19
  banned from advertising and promoting ourselves anywhere.
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  OK. And what ways or campaigns have
• 7:26
  you found in order to get around that?
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  Well, let me just explain this for our listeners benefit
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  because the problem is far more fundamental and far reaching
• 7:36
  than just that. I and my tiny team have fought
• 7:38
  an enormous battle every single day for the past 17 years, not
• 7:43
  even to grow Make Love Not Porn just to keep it alive.
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  And as I talk about this issue, I want our listeners to be aware
• 7:51
  that our mission at Make Love Not Porn ultimately is to help
• 7:55
  end rape culture globally. That may sound like a very big
• 8:00
  mission, but we have 13 years of proof of concept.
• 8:03
  At a micro level. We help end rape culture by
• 8:07
  doing something very simple nobody else is doing anywhere.
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  We show you how wonderful great consensual commutative sex is in
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  the real world. Our social sex videos role model
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  good sexual values and behavior. And here's the important part,
• 8:23
  we make all of that aspirational versus what you see in porn and
• 8:27
  popular culture. One young man wrote to us saying
• 8:31
  your website makes me want to have sex in a more grown up,
• 8:34
  honest and respectful way. Another man left a comment on a
• 8:38
  video saying this video makes want to be a better man in the
• 8:42
  bedroom and in life. And so I would like our
• 8:45
  listeners to bear in mind that I have a female lens business that
• 8:50
  has the extraordinary power to change people's sexual attitudes
• 8:55
  and behaviour for the better in a way that nothing else can.
• 8:58
  And this is what we are encountering.
• 9:00
  Every single piece of business infrastructure, every other tech
• 9:04
  startup gets a take for granted. We can't.
• 9:07
  The small print always says no adult content, and that is all
• 9:12
  pervasive across every single area of my business in a way
• 9:18
  that people outside this sphere have absolutely no idea about.
• 9:21
  I cannot get funded. I can't get banned.
• 9:27
  I've had banking issues for make my phone's entire life cycle.
• 9:32
  For the first four years of our existence, I could not find a
• 9:36
  bank willing to allow us to open a business bank account.
• 9:40
  Try doing business for four years without a business bank
• 9:45
  account makes life extraordinary difficult.
• 9:49
  Even when I found a bank eventually last year, that bank
• 9:54
  suddenly, after nine years of banking, kicked us out.
• 9:59
  We were then debanked twice more in the space of two months.
• 10:04
  I was debanked 3 times in two months in 2025.
• 10:09
  That's going to be some kind of record.
• 10:10
  Every single text service I need to use to operate a video
• 10:15
  platform. Hosting and coding, encrypting
• 10:18
  the terms of service. Always say no at all content.
• 10:22
  In every single case, with every service I need to use, I've had
• 10:27
  to go to the people at the top of the company, explain what I'm
• 10:30
  doing, beg to be allowed to use their service.
• 10:34
  Sometimes they let me, sometimes they don't.
• 10:36
  This is a very labor intensive process.
• 10:38
  We never get to work with best in class of anything business
• 10:41
  partner wise and we never get to work with best value of anything
• 10:45
  business partner wise because we are in no position to negotiate.
• 10:49
  My two biggest business growth inhibitors are #1 payments.
• 10:55
  PayPal won't work with us. Stripe won't work with us.
• 10:59
  Mainstream fintech won't work with us.
• 11:01
  I have to work with the murky subculture of adult friendly
• 11:04
  payment processors who, because anybody adult doesn't know where
• 11:07
  else to go, charge extortionate fees.
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  I pay out 12% of my revenue every month in payment
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  processing fees alone. When every other tech startup
• 11:18
  gets to pay 3% or less, that is massive business growth
• 11:23
  inhibitor for a business with the proven ability to help end
• 11:27
  rape culture globally. My other massive business growth
• 11:32
  inhibitor is as I mentioned, we are banned from promoting Make
• 11:36
  Love not porn anywhere. We cannot advertise or promote
• 11:39
  on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, YouTube,
• 11:43
  Reddit. Look at what's on Reddit.
• 11:46
  Reddit bans Make Love for porn advertising.
• 11:49
  Look at what's on Twitter X. They ban us from advertising.
• 11:51
  And by the way, our listeners should be aware this is not
• 11:55
  restricted to me and Make Love, not porn and sex tech alone.
• 11:59
  Every female lens sexual health and Wellness venture is also
• 12:04
  banned from advertising across all of those platforms.
• 12:08
  Menstruation ventures cannot advertise.
• 12:11
  Menopause ventures can advertise.
• 12:13
  Fertility ventures can advertise.
• 12:15
  In the meantime, male sexual health and Wellness not a
• 12:18
  problem direct all dysfunction solutions are welcome to
• 12:22
  advertise everywhere there is a massive hypocritical gendered
• 12:27
  bias double standard of play and one is especially frustrating is
• 12:32
  Make Love not porn is banned from doing paid search ads on
• 12:36
  Google. But every day all around the
• 12:39
  world people search for Make Love not porn without knowing
• 12:42
  that we exist. And what I mean by that is the
• 12:46
  top organic search terms that send traffic to us are Make Love
• 12:51
  not porn, real sex, not porn, video sexo now porno Make Love
• 12:58
  not porn where they don't know there's a company actually
• 13:00
  called that one young man told me that he found us when he
• 13:04
  googled porn that is not porn. He was so fed up with everything
• 13:09
  out there he had no idea what to search for.
• 13:13
  Fortunately, when you search porn that is not porn, you find
• 13:16
  Make Love, not porn. That is how much the world wants
• 13:20
  what we do and cannot find us. And that is why I say this is a
• 13:25
  huge opportunity for investors. Because by the way, all these
• 13:29
  barriers fall when I can write big enough checks.
• 13:32
  You bet if I could invest $1 million in paid search ads on
• 13:36
  Google, I'll be allowed to do paid search ads on Google.
• 13:39
  And I cannot even begin to describe to you how shitty my
• 13:43
  life is on a daily basis because of obstructive infrastructure in
• 13:48
  20 bloody 26, OK? That's that's how difficult
• 13:55
  everything about running this business is on a daily basis.
• 13:58
  And by the way, that makes a statement about the kind of
• 14:01
  founder I am that after all these years we are still
• 14:06
  operational and still alive when the entire tech, business and
• 14:10
  financial world has been trying to shut us down for years.
• 14:13
  I am the kind of founder investors claim to want to back.
• 14:19
  I think your grit and also resilience and determination
• 14:22
  comes across what keeps you so dedicated to this particular
• 14:28
  mission and this particular ventures, Indeed, because giving
• 14:30
  you expertise and also your experience, you could have
• 14:34
  easily given up and gone back to another corporate job or started
• 14:37
  another venture. That does not Make Love not
• 14:40
  porn. What keeps you going day after
• 14:42
  day for the past 17 years? Three things.
• 14:45
  The first is our community at Make Love Not Porn writes to us
• 14:51
  every day and tells us how we've changed their lives.
• 14:55
  OK, I have a business that is world changing that has the
• 15:02
  proven ability at scale to help end rape culture globally.
• 15:07
  If I didn't have product market fit, I would have given up many
• 15:10
  many years ago. I have a business that could not
• 15:14
  be more badly needed in the world today.
• 15:16
  So first of all those emails, comments from our community
• 15:19
  every single day keeping going. The second is what is happening
• 15:23
  around us. Make Love Not Porn could not be
• 15:26
  more badly needed in a world where white tech Bros are
• 15:32
  destroying the future of humanity.
• 15:34
  And I've talked about this publicly for years.
• 15:37
  The young white, male founders of the giant tech platforms that
• 15:42
  dominate all our lives today. They are not the primary target,
• 15:47
  online or offline, of harassment, abuse, sexual
• 15:51
  assault, violence, racism, rape, interim image abuse.
• 15:57
  Therefore, they did not and they do not proactively design for
• 16:02
  the prevention of any of those issues on their platforms.
• 16:05
  Because they don't give a shit. Because they didn't happen to
• 16:07
  them. Those of us who are most at risk
• 16:10
  everyday, women, black people, people of color, LGBTQ people,
• 16:15
  disabilities. We design safe spaces and safe
• 16:19
  experiences, but we do not get funded.
• 16:22
  Only 1.7% of all venture capital last year went to female
• 16:26
  founders. That is why 3% of our lived
• 16:31
  experience through technology every day is through the male
• 16:35
  lens, male centric default male setting.
• 16:39
  And that is why we have still not seen how much safer, better,
• 16:44
  happier, and by the way, way more lucrative the future of the
• 16:47
  Internet can be when it's designed and built through the
• 16:50
  female lens. And these are the 2 keywords at
• 16:52
  scale. So in a world where right now
• 16:56
  deep fakes are destroying the lives of millions of girls and
• 16:59
  women worldwide. Where Elon Musk's grok is
• 17:03
  running rampant, where child abuse and grooming permeates all
• 17:09
  of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, because the white guys
• 17:11
  at the top don't give a shit about any of that going on in
• 17:14
  the pursuit of revenue and profits and growth.
• 17:18
  I've, I've built solutions because the only solution to all
• 17:22
  of that is lifelong sex education.
• 17:25
  Sex education as early as possible.
• 17:27
  And I'll, I'll come on to what I'm doing about that in a
• 17:28
  moment. And sex dedication on ongoing
• 17:31
  basis to preempt the appalling digital harms that children and
• 17:37
  young people are now subject to in a way they never were before.
• 17:41
  And reason #3 very straightforwardly is the single
• 17:44
  dynamic most motivates me is the one that I characterize as I'm
• 17:47
  going to fucking well show you. You tell me it can't be done.
• 17:50
  I'm going to fucking well show you.
• 17:52
  You put a bar in my path. I'm going to fucking well show
• 17:54
  you. I take all of that daily
• 17:58
  demoralization, discouragement, attempt to destroy the business
• 18:04
  I'm building for good, and I challenge into motivation and
• 18:08
  inspiration. So I'm a great believer that
• 18:10
  when you have a truly world changing startup, you have to
• 18:14
  change the world to fit it, not the other way around.
• 18:17
  If the ecosystem that is meant to enable you to scale and
• 18:21
  thrive shuts you out, build your own ecosystem.
• 18:25
  So I have a product road map Make Love not porn that is
• 18:28
  focused on infrastructure. At the heart of it is Make Love
• 18:32
  not porn sex tech very challenging to raise funding
• 18:35
  for. Although investors listening
• 18:38
  right now, fund me and I guarantee you returns the likes
• 18:42
  of which you've never seen. And by the way, Make Love not
• 18:46
  porn operates in the single biggest sector of them all, Not
• 18:48
  sex not porn the market of human happiness.
• 18:52
  So around it have a road map that has an edtech product, a
• 18:57
  fintech product, an adtech product and an AI product.
• 19:01
  And by the way, I didn't set out to be an edtech founder, a
• 19:05
  fintech founder, an adtech founder, and an AI founder, but
• 19:09
  I'm being forced to because of the circumstances I'm dealing
• 19:12
  with. So I am building solutions to my
• 19:15
  own problems that everybody else can use.
• 19:17
  And I intend to make an absolute gun and fucking shit ton of
• 19:19
  money out of those solutions. So the first one, Edtech, is an
• 19:25
  idea I came up with 10 years ago because parents and teachers
• 19:29
  began reaching out to me from day one of Make Love Not Porn,
• 19:32
  begging me for this. And bear in mind, Annie and
• 19:35
  listeners, everything I've talked to you about.
• 19:39
  Is not finger. In the wind stuff, this is not
• 19:40
  me going, oh, I think this might fly.
• 19:43
  This is what I've been asked for on a daily basis for 17 years.
• 19:47
  The gap in the market is absolutely colossal.
• 19:51
  So parents and teachers reached out saying, please, will you
• 19:56
  build a zero to 18 and beyond sex education extension of what
• 20:03
  you do? So I came up 10 years ago with
• 20:06
  the idea for Make Love Not Porn dot Academy, which I
• 20:10
  characterize as the Khan Academy of Sex Education.
• 20:15
  Because Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform, tutors on
• 20:18
  every other topic under the sun except this one.
• 20:23
  Edtech. Is exploding as a category not
• 20:26
  in this area. So I conceived Make Love Not
• 20:30
  Corn dot Academy as a global aggregator hub for the best of
• 20:37
  the world. Sex education content is already
• 20:39
  out there, but it's being blocked, censored and
• 20:42
  deplatformed everywhere as we speak.
• 20:46
  Our mission at Make. Love Not Born dot Academy is to
• 20:49
  organize the world's sex education information to make it
• 20:52
  universally accessible and useful.
• 20:54
  That is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission
• 20:57
  statement. Organize the world's information
• 21:00
  to make it universe successful and useful.
• 21:02
  Because today, in this area, Google is not doing that.
• 21:06
  The algorithm is biased. It's censoring.
• 21:10
  Parents and teachers tell me regularly they search for the
• 21:14
  resources they need to educate about sex.
• 21:16
  They cannot find them. And so we are building the
• 21:20
  Google of sex Ed. Now, as I said, I came up with
• 21:25
  this idea 10 years ago. That is how long investors have
• 21:28
  refused to fund it. Investors.
• 21:31
  Have refused to fund the Google of sex Ed listeners.
• 21:34
  Try and get your heads around that.
• 21:36
  I managed to. Raise a small amount of equity
• 21:39
  crowdfunding last year I honestly thought in 202425 I'd
• 21:45
  be able to raise just over $1 million on We Funder.
• 21:48
  I spectacularly failed. How much?
• 21:51
  Have you raised? We raised.
• 21:53
  Just over $400,000, but that enabled us to design and build
• 21:58
  Make Love not porn dot Academy. And so listeners, if you go to
• 22:03
  that URL Make Love up on dot Academy, you will find a very
• 22:07
  bare bones, very early stage beta that we took live very
• 22:13
  quietly under the radar literally just last month, a few
• 22:16
  weeks ago in order to real world test it and make it easier to
• 22:21
  load education content onto the platform.
• 22:24
  So be forgiving when you look at it.
• 22:26
  And we are still loading content on.
• 22:28
  We're going to launch officially as soon as we have a critical
• 22:31
  mass educate some content, hopefully in about a month or
• 22:34
  so. But you will see how The Academy
• 22:38
  Is designed to work. Be aware that it operates our
• 22:42
  unique 100% human curation model on Make Love Not porn.
• 22:47
  There is no self-publishing of anything on the Academy.
• 22:51
  There is no self-publishing of anything.
• 22:53
  Just as we vet every single video on make up, not pull the
• 22:56
  human eyes, we approve, reject. We publish with the Academy.
• 23:00
  We vet every single educator and every piece of work and we
• 23:04
  publish their profiles and their work.
• 23:07
  We can guarantee that all the education on The Academy Is safe
• 23:11
  and we endorse it. Our creation criteria are broad
• 23:15
  but fundamental. Your work must be educational,
• 23:18
  fact based and non judgmental. And then we are accepted for the
• 23:22
  Academy. Be aware also that The Academy
• 23:25
  Is 100% safe for work. This is purely educational.
• 23:29
  There's nothing explicit, but you will see that you can search
• 23:32
  by age appropriateness that simply applies to the particular
• 23:37
  age group an educator has developed their work for.
• 23:41
  You know, with educators, with adult education, with educators
• 23:44
  with child education, teenage education, etcetera.
• 23:48
  And The Academy Is completely free to access to everybody.
• 23:52
  But we do. Have a membership model because
• 23:54
  we desperately need financial support.
• 23:57
  So please, when you go to the Academy, please consider
• 24:01
  becoming a member because that's how you can support our work and
• 24:05
  members get a monthly newsletter access to events.
• 24:09
  We plan to have remote events, RL events, as well as the
• 24:12
  ability to input feedback and help shape the future of the
• 24:15
  Academy and and by the way, philanthropists.
• 24:18
  We have a. Nonprofit vehicle, We've
• 24:21
  partnered with the nonprofit Inspire Access, which was
• 24:24
  started in order to be able to channel philanthropic capital,
• 24:28
  tax deductible donations, foundation grants to founders
• 24:33
  like me of for profit social impact ventures who struggle for
• 24:38
  funding so we can take philanthropic capital and don't
• 24:42
  revise funds donations. So that's the edtech venture.
• 24:46
  And again, investors, I'm being very pragmatic.
• 24:48
  The path to exit is very clear. I want to prove it's possible to
• 24:53
  operate a safe sex education platform at scale and then exit
• 24:59
  to John Fintech from absolute goddamn fucking shit ton of
• 25:02
  money. My second product which I'm also
• 25:05
  working on currently is my fintech product.
• 25:09
  Because. Given the payment processing
• 25:11
  issues I talked about earlier, I've said for years I want to
• 25:15
  build the stripe of sex tech because the first payments app
• 25:20
  that welcomes legal, ethical, transparent ventures like mine
• 25:25
  cleans up. There is a.
• 25:27
  Huge market opportunity in so-called restricted business
• 25:33
  payments and payouts. Not just adult and sex tech like
• 25:37
  me, but cannabis, psychedelics, crypto itself, and
• 25:44
  interestingly, a number of businesses that you would not
• 25:47
  think would be restricted but are.
• 25:50
  So in the past couple of months, I picked up two separate posts
• 25:53
  on LinkedIn from two different female founders.
• 25:58
  Each of these female founders is building a crowdfunding
• 26:00
  platform. They had integrated Stripe to
• 26:03
  take payments. Stripe had suddenly decided that
• 26:07
  crowdfunding is a restricted business and refused to work
• 26:10
  with these women. And by the way, they both spent
• 26:12
  a significant amount of money integrating, striping their
• 26:14
  platforms and now they can't use Stripe.
• 26:17
  So I am. Planning to build and launch
• 26:20
  Block Free listeners. There is a holding play page at
• 26:24
  Block Free dot USI liked the rallying cry of Block Free Us.
• 26:29
  I'm calling it Block Free because I want to free us all
• 26:31
  from the blocks of fintech injustice, but also because this
• 26:34
  is built on the blockchain. I've been looking for years for
• 26:38
  the right crypto partner. I finally found one.
• 26:40
  We have an excellent partner. This is a stable point play by
• 26:43
  the way. So what we're doing at the
• 26:44
  moment is we are integrating our partner into Make Love Not Porn.
• 26:47
  We're going to proof test this solution to make sure it works
• 26:51
  for us. Taking member payments and
• 26:52
  making payouts with all the same issues, by the way, with payout
• 26:56
  mechanisms for our Make Love Not Porn stars.
• 26:58
  Once it's working as we want it to, we're going to turn this
• 27:01
  into a stand alone app called Block Free that everybody else
• 27:05
  can use. And there are two unique things
• 27:09
  about how Block Free is going to operate.
• 27:10
  First of all, Block Free will operate again a 100% human
• 27:15
  curation model. Human Eyes will vet every
• 27:19
  application to make sure that they are legal, ethical and
• 27:25
  transparent. That is how.
• 27:28
  You know, we guarantee we can take restricted business
• 27:30
  payments safely and securely. And secondly, what?
• 27:36
  I've said to our partner. Is, you know, when we launch
• 27:38
  this as block free, the words crypto, blockchain and stable
• 27:43
  coin must appear nowhere near it.
• 27:46
  The crypto community has not told its story well enough.
• 27:49
  Sam Bankman free does not help matters as far as people will be
• 27:53
  concerned using block free, it's money and it's money out.
• 27:56
  And if we can make that work seamlessly and delightfully,
• 28:00
  many more people want to use this and just restricted
• 28:02
  businesses and we can deliver the mass market mainstream use
• 28:09
  case that the crypto community is desperate for.
• 28:12
  And by the way, again, I'm being very pragmatic.
• 28:14
  The path to exit is very clear. When I prove I can take
• 28:18
  restricted business payments safely and securely, John
• 28:21
  Fintech buys me from absolute gut.
• 28:23
  I'm fucking shit on the money. Cindy what?
• 28:26
  Have you learned about yourself over the course of starting Make
• 28:30
  Love Not porn to today? Honestly, I think I've learned
• 28:37
  that there is a path. Around.
• 28:42
  Over, under and through anything, you know, I absolutely
• 28:47
  refuse to be deterred and stopped by anything.
• 28:51
  If you simply use your brain and if you look at the world
• 28:55
  strategically in a way that is very different to the way other
• 28:58
  people look at it, by which I mean, as I said, how can I
• 29:02
  change the world to fit me, not the other way around, then
• 29:06
  anything's possible. Did you ever?
• 29:09
  Have impostor syndrome? Oh fuck.
• 29:12
  Impostor syndrome. The reason I say that, Annie, is
• 29:14
  because as far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as
• 29:19
  impostor syndrome, OK? There are only people,
• 29:23
  predominantly women, who have never been appreciated, valued,
• 29:29
  promoted and celebration champion in the way that they
• 29:31
  should. So I've not had impostor
• 29:35
  syndrome because, and as many women have observed, when you
• 29:40
  look at the levels, the heights that mediocre men can reach, why
• 29:44
  the fuck would you have imposter syndrome?
• 29:46
  I've absolutely felt insecure about something I'm doing.
• 29:51
  You know, will this work? You know, I, I have a theory
• 29:53
  here. I'm, I'm building, you know,
• 29:55
  whatever. Will this work?
• 29:58
  You know, I've obviously felt fear many times.
• 30:01
  But no, you know, imposter syndrome is a complete fucking
• 30:05
  fantasy. It doesn't exist.
• 30:07
  Great, I think. You replied exactly the way that
• 30:09
  I thought you would. I personally have a sense that
• 30:11
  imposter syndrome wasn't part of your vocabulary, and I think you
• 30:15
  would also align with the understanding that imposter
• 30:17
  syndrome is how you know that you are really pushing yourself
• 30:21
  out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to do
• 30:23
  something. It's a new opportunity that you
• 30:25
  should take. We live in a world that's quite
• 30:27
  dominated at the moment by social media performances, by
• 30:30
  dating apps. How do you think that young
• 30:34
  professionals, whether they're living in London or in New York,
• 30:37
  how do you think that they can cultivate meaningful connection?
• 30:42
  In addition to of. Course using Make Love not porn
• 30:46
  so honestly. The answer is very simple,
• 30:48
  because it's why I built Make Love, not porn.
• 30:50
  I built Make Love not porn to use technology to make good
• 30:54
  things happen in the real world. And I encourage everybody,
• 30:58
  especially today, focus on what great connections can I make
• 31:05
  IRL. And I say that very deliberately
• 31:07
  for a number of reasons. The 1st is, and you may not be
• 31:14
  aware of this, but for the benefit of our listeners, for
• 31:17
  the past year of the whole of 2025, I've been waging a battle
• 31:21
  on LinkedIn against the algorithm.
• 31:26
  Yep, and I began doing this in early 2025 because I right now
• 31:31
  have over 143,000 followers on LinkedIn.
• 31:35
  I've hit my limit of 30,000 connections by the way, who knew
• 31:38
  there was a limit? I didn't till till I hit it.
• 31:41
  And when you actually hit say 1000 connections, you can no
• 31:43
  longer send or receive connections.
• 31:45
  And LinkedIn makes it very difficult to call.
• 31:47
  I've I've something like 2200 connection requests on my wait
• 31:51
  list I can do nothing about and my impressions at the start of
• 31:55
  this year fell off a Cliff. My posts on average get a few
• 32:00
  hundred impressions each. So I began.
• 32:04
  Calling this out on LinkedIn, I asked LinkedIn to open a formal
• 32:08
  investigation to what had happened.
• 32:09
  They assured me there was nothing untoward, I wasn't doing
• 32:13
  anything I shouldn't do. This continued and other women
• 32:16
  noticed that happening to them. And in the course of the year
• 32:20
  I've mobilized a very large group of people and we have a
• 32:23
  movement called Fairness in the feed.
• 32:26
  This is if you go to fairnessinthefeed.com you will
• 32:30
  see what I'm talking about. And our group contains some
• 32:34
  brilliant deep tech engineering people whose business is
• 32:38
  studying AI and machine learning and especially the impact of
• 32:44
  algorithms in an char and employment context.
• 32:49
  We have a number of people who specialize in that in our group.
• 32:52
  And one of those people identified is that there
• 32:56
  absolutely is algorithmic bias and it's not intentional, but
• 33:00
  it's the correct term is proxy bias.
• 33:03
  And proxy bias is what happens when you go, we're assuming all
• 33:07
  things are equal. You know, we're building an
• 33:09
  algorithm that that is absolutely balanced and equal,
• 33:13
  but that algorithm has been trained on what has historically
• 33:18
  been deemed to be. Most.
• 33:21
  Credible in a business context, most professionally relevant,
• 33:25
  most weighty and gravitas written.
• 33:27
  And that is white men, and so unintentionally.
• 33:33
  The LinkedIn. Algorithm is absolutely
• 33:35
  suppressing marginalized groups. Women.
• 33:40
  People of color and by the way, bear bear in mind that LinkedIn
• 33:44
  is an American company based in the US trained on American data.
• 33:49
  But globally, you have a global majority, a global S majority of
• 33:55
  professionals who are who are. Being.
• 33:57
  Marginalized. This is very, very problematic,
• 34:02
  first of all, because this ability on LinkedIn is
• 34:06
  absolutely not a matter of oh, I want, likes, want to be popular.
• 34:10
  The way I put it is algorithmic suppression equals economic
• 34:15
  oppression. The algorithm.
• 34:17
  Decides who's visible, Who is visible for job opportunities,
• 34:24
  who's visible for industry thought leadership, and
• 34:27
  therefore gets the paying gigs and the paying consulting gigs.
• 34:31
  Who is visible in terms of their business decides what small
• 34:36
  businesses live or die by the algorithm.
• 34:38
  My friend Jane Evans who's been a campaigner with me on this
• 34:42
  front. We were both especially
• 34:43
  concerned because last year we both launched businesses.
• 34:46
  I launched my onboard Academy and Jane launched a community
• 34:49
  platform called the 7th Tribe, which you can find at 7th
• 34:52
  tribe.com. 7 is number she posts on Arlington last year saying if
• 34:58
  you had shown this post to 10% of my father's I could have paid
• 35:02
  my rent this month because she is doing paid events on the 7th
• 35:06
  drive and that is how she's supporting herself and nobody's
• 35:09
  seen her posts and she cannot make revenue and she cannot pay
• 35:12
  her rent. So a algorithmic suppression
• 35:16
  equals economic oppression and B.
• 35:18
  This is especially concerning because LinkedIn is owned by
• 35:21
  Microsoft. The same data training models
• 35:25
  are being used not just to train the LinkedIn algorithm, but to
• 35:29
  train Microsoft's business products that are integration
• 35:34
  embedded into the working world globally and think about what
• 35:39
  that means. So and by the.
• 35:42
  Way this is interesting. This is not an infrastructure
• 35:44
  point. This is a very, very big
• 35:46
  problem. I really encourage people to be
• 35:49
  aware of it, but but this is also only what I'm saying to
• 35:51
  young professionals. LinkedIn is no longer working
• 35:55
  the way it the way it should, the way it purported to.
• 35:58
  It is not providing equal access to opportunity for everybody.
• 36:03
  I really encourage people to look at how you can make more
• 36:08
  connections IRL, network IRL, consciously think about going to
• 36:15
  conferences and events that enable you to do that because
• 36:19
  LinkedIn is absolutely fallen prone to the syndrome that Cory
• 36:22
  Doctorow describes and certification, which is when
• 36:25
  platforms come too big to care. They're so focused on growth at
• 36:29
  all costs. And by the way, there is no
• 36:31
  coincidence that you know, the LinkedIn algorithm change
• 36:34
  happened at the same time they introduced paid boosting.
• 36:38
  You will see on number of posts, want more people to see this
• 36:42
  post, pay to boost it. What this also means is the
• 36:46
  opportunity is enormous for anybody who wants to build the
• 36:50
  next LinkedIn. That is definitely 5th on my
• 36:53
  product road map after my edtech product, Fintech product, edtech
• 36:56
  product, AI product. I can tell you.
• 36:59
  Also that a friend of mine, a woman, is building something
• 37:04
  very interesting that could well be a LinkedIn killer.
• 37:07
  And as and when I'm able to make that public, I will.
• 37:09
  But in the meantime, professionally, you know, look
• 37:12
  to make IRL connections emotionally and romantically
• 37:15
  look to make IRL connections as well.
• 37:17
  And this is where I Make Love. My porn helps because we show
• 37:21
  you love in action. We show you the power of love,
• 37:24
  intimacy and human connection. We show you what works
• 37:28
  brilliantly in relationships, what the world is really
• 37:31
  attracted to. Countless people have told us
• 37:34
  that they find that enormously empowering, giving them their
• 37:38
  own sexual agency to go out and make sure that they look for the
• 37:42
  kind of relationships they want. As we all know, dating apps are
• 37:46
  fallen prey to and certification as well.
• 37:48
  The dating app industry is again dominated by male founded apps.
• 37:53
  Female founded ones are very rare.
• 37:54
  There's a huge opportunity there through the female lens to
• 37:57
  create something to be different.
• 37:58
  But in the meantime, go to IRL events where you'll meet other
• 38:02
  people. Really look to make IRL
• 38:05
  connections because that's where you find authenticity, that's
• 38:09
  where you find chemistry, that's where you find real connection.
• 38:14
  Cindy, who are some of the unexpected allies that you have
• 38:19
  actually come across and worked with over the course of building
• 38:22
  Make Love Not Porn? And it could be people or
• 38:25
  organizations that you really weren't expecting to be aligned
• 38:28
  to the mission that you are on. Honestly.
• 38:31
  The depressing answer is any very few.
• 38:35
  My challenge is and always has been, and, and I'll talk about
• 38:41
  this in the comics of investors, but it applies to champions and
• 38:43
  partners generally. I know that my investors are out
• 38:47
  there and there are a ton of them.
• 38:49
  And there are a ton of them, by the way, in every single country
• 38:51
  in the world. No matter how repressed you
• 38:53
  think a country is, My investors are there in profusion in Asia,
• 38:57
  in the Middle East. But.
• 39:00
  They are impossible to find by the usual means because they all
• 39:05
  have one thing in common. Your willingness to.
• 39:08
  Fund, Make Love, Not Porn, is entirely a function of your
• 39:12
  personal sexual journey. It's a function of your personal
• 39:18
  lens on sex and sexuality that's been shaped by your own
• 39:21
  experience of it. And I obviously.
• 39:24
  Have no way to research and target for that.
• 39:29
  Not. Least because sex is the area
• 39:31
  where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on
• 39:36
  the inside. The people who look like they
• 39:39
  would totally get it don't. The people who look like
• 39:42
  complete fruits do. And so my strategy is I put what
• 39:48
  I'm doing out there all the time across all my social channels.
• 39:52
  I go on every podcast I do every media interview, because I have
• 39:57
  to make synaptic connections that will attract those
• 39:59
  investors as partners, those champions.
• 40:02
  To me, that has to happen by chance.
• 40:05
  There is no way of telling from the outside who is going to get
• 40:08
  it and who won't. And I'm always looking for the
• 40:11
  people who get it. Cindy, I'm curious in terms of
• 40:14
  geographic locations, which area do the majority of your users of
• 40:20
  Make Love Not Porn come from? I know.
• 40:22
  So how does that correspond, if at all, to where the investors
• 40:26
  of Make Love, Not Porn have been?
• 40:29
  There is no correlation Annie, because llama porn is a global
• 40:32
  platform OK so we have trafficking members and Make
• 40:35
  Love porn stars from over 200 countries and territories.
• 40:39
  Now our proportionate member base is entirely down to
• 40:43
  familiarity. So our biggest market is the US,
• 40:47
  which accounts for about half our membership because we are
• 40:50
  based here and there's, I mean you know, limited awareness, but
• 40:54
  just more awareness over time. Our second biggest market is the
• 40:58
  UK. Our third biggest market is
• 41:00
  Germany. Now also depressingly, that that
• 41:04
  is representing the fact that because we're tiny
• 41:06
  bootstrapping, have no money, we've never been able to afford
• 41:11
  to automate and supervise translation on make up my porn.
• 41:16
  Our site is English language only.
• 41:19
  And that's a problem when every single country in the world
• 41:23
  wants what we do, but it can't always access it.
• 41:26
  During the pandemic five years ago, one of the biggest daily
• 41:31
  newspapers in South Korea show Sun ran an article about us.
• 41:37
  And I found out because I woke up that following morning to
• 41:41
  South Korea as the number one source of traffic to Make Love,
• 41:44
  not porn, accounting for 56% of all of our traffic.
• 41:48
  Wow, that was how much S Koreans wanted what we do.
• 41:52
  The documented porn's Hollywood movie when they found out about
• 41:55
  it. Now South Korea is one of those
• 41:58
  markets where actually English is not like hugely widely
• 42:02
  spoken. So massive traffic, massive
• 42:06
  bounce off rate. It was tricky for them to access
• 42:09
  the site. I'll give you another example of
• 42:11
  how how massive our global appeal is when people find out
• 42:14
  about us. Back in July of last year, I
• 42:18
  gave a talk on make a porn at South by Southwest London and in
• 42:21
  the audience was a journalist from NZZ Neufzoeter.
• 42:24
  German phrasing, but it's it's from one of Switzerland's
• 42:28
  biggest German language like daily publications and so
• 42:30
  shocked if she could interview that one.
• 42:32
  Absolutely. So she published the interview
• 42:34
  in July and tiny Switzerland rocketed to be our third house
• 42:41
  traffic source, you know our 4th house traffic source because it
• 42:44
  knocked Canada out of 4th place. And now look at the relative
• 42:47
  size of those two markets. Switzerland is miniscule, but
• 42:50
  the moment Swiss people discovered make up on that's how
• 42:52
  much they that they all wanted us.
• 42:54
  The appeal is equal everywhere globally.
• 42:57
  It's just how we how we get to tell people about us.
• 43:01
  And also I need to raise funding to be able to operate
• 43:05
  translation on the side. Thank you.
• 43:08
  And I really hope that the evolution of AI tools for
• 43:12
  translation and I see the reduction in cost of that and
• 43:15
  help you spread what Make Love not Porn have been doing.
• 43:18
  Sorry, sorry. Just just to counter that
• 43:21
  because I think in the in the in the age of AI, it's very
• 43:23
  important people understand where we come from on this.
• 43:25
  You know, in our business plan, when we pitch for investment, we
• 43:28
  have an allocation for translation that is a
• 43:31
  combination of automated translation and human eyes
• 43:36
  supervising. And the reason that's important,
• 43:39
  Annie, is because we are talking about a very delicate and
• 43:44
  sensitive area, sex, sexuality, sexual activity.
• 43:49
  We must ensure that translations are fully accurate and
• 43:54
  appropriate, and you do not do that by leaving it purely to AI,
• 44:00
  especially when AI has been trained on literally centuries
• 44:05
  of repression and prudishness and hypocrisy ingrained into
• 44:12
  everything about how society interacts around sex.
• 44:16
  You know, I, I want to be able to bring our 100% human creation
• 44:21
  model to more people and more businesses because I'm all about
• 44:26
  HI, powered by AI, you know, human intelligence powered
• 44:30
  artificial intelligence. Understood, I guess.
• 44:33
  It's the nuance to this in the sector that you're in, as well
• 44:36
  as Cindy, how are you managing to find your employees, right?
• 44:40
  So first of all, I'm not hiring because we have no money to
• 44:43
  hire. I have a tiny team of just five
• 44:48
  employees. I found them because they came
• 44:52
  to us. So our head of curation, Ariel
• 44:54
  Martinez, wrote to me years ago from college saying, I love what
• 44:59
  you're doing. Do you accept interns?
• 45:01
  And we were tiny and I went, we haven't got, we could.
• 45:04
  So she interned for us, you know, then came to work for us
• 45:07
  and worked her way out to head of curation.
• 45:10
  Our head of sales, Abigail Minar, wrote to me how many
• 45:13
  years ago? This was just as I was thinking,
• 45:15
  I need to hire somebody for sales.
• 45:18
  You know, our people have come to us.
• 45:20
  And by the way, every week we get at least half a dozen people
• 45:25
  writing to us saying please, please can I come and work for
• 45:27
  you? Do you have any jobs open?
• 45:29
  OK, we can't hire anybody. We have no money.
• 45:31
  Again, you know, I need to raise funding to do 2 very important
• 45:34
  things, be able to hire, be able to market and promote.
• 45:37
  But as and when I have that funding we will have no problem
• 45:41
  at all recruiting because people want to work for mission driven
• 45:45
  business and more and more people see the appalling sexual
• 45:50
  online harms that the white tech bro founded technical world is
• 45:55
  driving and they want to be a part of a female and solution to
• 45:59
  that. Understood, Cindy.
• 46:02
  It's been a pleasure to have you on to show your experiences,
• 46:05
  honestly your day-to-day experiences on the battlefield.
• 46:08
  What is the one thing that you believe will allow more people
• 46:11
  to have better mental health? It's very simple.
• 46:14
  And again, I'm obviously biased. Better sexual health, better
• 46:18
  comfort with your own sexuality is hugely impactful on mental
• 46:23
  health. I've spent 17 years seeing first
• 46:28
  hand every day the enormous human misery and unhappiness.
• 46:34
  Driven by the. Shame, guilt, embarrassment that
• 46:36
  we've imbued sex with and so absolutely being able to reap
• 46:43
  the benefits of what make lump ones designed to do at scale.
• 46:48
  You know, take the shame, guilt, embarrassment out of sex, make
• 46:51
  people feel a comfort with their sexuality and therefore better
• 46:55
  able to form relationships around love interest and human
• 46:59
  connection that will have a dramatically beneficial impact
• 47:02
  on mental health worldwide. Thank you.
• 47:04
  Cindy, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
• 47:07
  It's been great. To talk.
• 47:09
  Thank you for. Listening you excited for the
• 47:11
  next episode? Follow Loader Rd.
• 47:13
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• 47:17
  announcements.