Speaker 1 (0s): This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to adult site broker talk, where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry And we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be speaking with author Bobby Bidochka.
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My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Bobby Bidochka The Friendly Feminist. Bobby is a sex positive advocate who authored the book, Sexual Intelligence in Business as co-chair of the academic conference, Love and Sex with Robots Venture Associate for a tech and VC incubator and founder of imagine ideation, specializing and connected experiences and ecosystem diplomacy. Bobby, thanks for being with us today.
Adult Site. Broker Talk.
Speaker 2 (4m 20s): Thanks, Bruce. Pleasure.
Speaker 1 (4m 22s): Let me tell people a lot more about her. Bobby's a tech enthusiast with a vision to help grow the Sex Tech community worldwide and is currently developing a training program to help reduce sexual harassment in the workplace and business without compromising the opportunities for love and relationships, hopefully not between people in the workplace. She hopes to affect change towards a sex friendly world, one opinion at a time. So Bobby, what was your first connection with the adult industry?
Speaker 2 (4m 57s): I think I could categorize that as my first time I stumbled onto my dad's porn magazines. I just remember in my laundry room there was this box up on the shelf and I was nosy as hell. This kid, I ransacked the house. How
Speaker 1 (5m 19s): Old were you?
Speaker 2 (5m 20s): Oh, five, six years old. Yes. Really, really young. And yeah, I, I pulled down the box, here's these magazines, and I remember grabbing a few from my brother, took them over to the neighbors.
Speaker 1 (5m 36s): I'm sure your brother really appreciated that, by the way.
Speaker 2 (5m 39s): You know what? They, I, I found that everybody, so I, I lived next door to, they had four kids over there and me and my brother on this side, and then a couple other neighbor kids, mostly boys. They really weren't all that interested a as I was, that I just remember flipping through the pages saying, wow, like, these women are so beautiful and they looked like they were enjoying themselves. And yeah, I thought I, I wasn't appalled.
I thought it was like a very, very nice thing and I seemed to be the only one that was actually kind of interested in
Speaker 1 (6m 16s): It. That's amazing. So Bobby, what was your take on where the industry is today and where do you think it's going?
Speaker 2 (6m 26s): I think we are at the best spot we've ever been as far as, you know, me too. You know, that had quite, quite an effect on the industry. Of course, yeah,
Speaker 1 (6m 38s): Ron, Jeremy.
Speaker 2 (6m 40s): Yeah. Yeah. You know, the new wave of, you could say domestic porn of people just making videos of themselves and posting them and PornHub and all of that, that side of the industry went kind of for a loop, right? And so it sort of democratized it, if you could say it like that. A lot of sex tech itself is developed as an industry, but of course with, with all that like much social change, you know, there is pushback.
There's still sort of a right wing, you know, hardcore patriarchy, you know, a real dig in there. You can see how that's manifested in abortion rights in the US and stuff like that. You know, it's just, I think the, the train has left the station in a way. I really think that we're in a new sexual revolution where the female empowerment is coming, female pleasure. You know, there's a lot of FM tech and sex tech products that are targeted towards women.
Women have purchasing power now, and they are mostly women run as a matter of fact. And so the, the amount of leadership in the industry is also changing. So I think this is all very good. It's still a sort of a relatively western thing as far as what, you know, what's out in the open, of course, you know, you see how well mushroom's doing and, you know, so India's up and coming there,
Speaker 1 (8m 13s): Oh, time
Speaker 2 (8m 14s): East Asia has always been, you know, very kinky group of folks, but not very like underground, right? So, you know, everyone's sort of gonna have their time, but I think it's, it's never been better
Speaker 1 (8m 28s): When you talk about female empowerment. I remember the whole women's lib movement when I was a child. It's really come a long way. I mean, if you go from women's lib to now with Me Too, that's a big jump.
Speaker 2 (8m 49s): Yeah. It's it, when you get sort of more women into leadership positions, you've now got, you know, there's more laws in place when it comes to violence, you know, sexual assault now, sexual harassment, all of these things, it still does happen, but it's gonna be hard to, you can't unring that bell, right? So if you think about sort of the every 500, 2000 years when sort of, we have these moments in time during sort of enlightened period where, you know, there's some sex going on and then they sort of pull back and they get a bit restricted and, you know, Protestant work ethic, and then that gets pulled back.
And so, you know, each time sort of like two steps forward, one step back, but still, everyone's making ground. They're, we're moving in the right directions. And then, you know, with the lgbtq, lgbtq plus community, you know, this is, the conversation is always on the table. I mean, change doesn't happen overnight. I mean, as you can see, it took decades and it will continue to take time, but it feels like, you know, we've got some momentum going on here. Unstoppable momentum.
Speaker 1 (9m 60s): Yeah. But the only problem is with the right-wing politicians and the religious right, the entire abortion thing seems like it's being set back 60 years.
Speaker 2 (10m 11s): Yeah, it was definitely a setback, but it's because it's one of the last things that they actually have still a bit of control over legalizing. It's true. It's, it's, it's been that, that's what I mean by, you know, you can't really beat women up like you used to be able to do, to shut them up. You can't really, of course still happens and it happens all over the world, but very slowly we're sort of, we're we're getting out of that. And so, and the, the focus on pleasure too, like if you even look back to, to science, people used to just study the things that went wrong.
And, and then in around the sixties and seventies, there's this movie called Positive Psychology. Oh, wait a minute. We can also study happiness and pleasure and what are the good things that can come out? It's not always about diseases and teenage pregnancy and death. Oh, now we can, you know, actually think about studying the positive sides of things. Then that started people, you know, going down the road of we can actually study pleasure and women's pleasure specifically.
Speaker 1 (11m 12s): Exactly. So let's talk about your book, sexual Intelligence in Business. Why don't you tell us about the book and why you wrote it?
Speaker 2 (11m 21s): Well, I wrote it, it was kind of my reaction to the Me Too movement, which if it's not obvious by now, I'm supportive of the movement, but it did cause some sort of weirdness in the professional business environment. It felt like all of a sudden people just didn't know what to do and say, and I had a lot of individual conversations with, with people and, and, you know, men and women, but mostly men because mostly men were in leadership positions.
And you know, me, I'm trying to build something and I'm trying to sort of collab, climb the ladder, as it were. And, you know, a lot of my male mentors and friends were like, well, Bobby, I don't know what to say or do anymore. I, I'm confused and so I'm just gonna shut up. And women too, it's like we kind, I can't even, you know, compliment you or, or it's, it's weird to have a meeting with the door open and it's like, now I don't know if I should go for coffee with you, or you're not recognizing that I, I maybe don't wanna go for dinner with you. It's just people were like, ah, I don't know what to do.
I felt like, okay, somebody's gotta say something about this. But I think everybody was afraid, like, if, if you say things like this, then that sounds anti me too. And nobody wanted to do that either. So since it, there was frozen weirdness going on, so I decided to, to write a book about it. And in, in doing so, and doing a lot more research, just realizing that companies were just kind of writing policy and then hoping for the best,
Speaker 1 (12m 52s): Having their attorneys writing policy and hoping for the best.
Speaker 2 (12m 56s): Yeah, it's like you can't write out policy when it comes to like human sexuality and emotions like that just doesn't work, right? So people, over 50% of people meet their spouse or their partner or their someone at work or in the professional environment, like in a consensual like, yes, I wanna do that kind of way, right? And so how do we eliminate sexual harassment without getting in the way of like natural organic relationships that are, that are going to form and that people want. And then just going down that road, then I ended up also writing about that.
There's two sides to this story, right? So there's an education on both sides. You know, men need to understand where their boundaries are, and women need to understand how to communicate their boundaries so that, you know, you could be more explicit about what you're interested in either talking about, joking about. And so a lot more needs to happen than just writing policy and defining what is sexual harassment is the case, but then how do I navigate this environment? And then I also talked a bit about, you know, some of the, the male identity crisis that's going on.
It's like, well, if I'm not the breadwinner and I don't, can't lift boxes for you. Like, what's my role here in society? And then, you know, also talking about the chemistry of sex and how you can actually leverage sex to get yourself into a flow state and be more productive. And then you can help your business and just be like, it's, it's a state of mind that you can get in. It's called flow. It's an altered state that you can sort of induce sometimes, like, it's like runner's high, you can get it through, you know, you can get it through sex, you can get it through doing sort of like mountain climb, like doing kind of dangerous things.
Like you get into this, it's a literal brain state change that can make you more productive, more creative, more genius like kind of thing. And sex is one of those triggers. So
Speaker 1 (14m 52s): Of course I never feel too terribly intelligent when I'm having sex, but anyway. So as I understand you're in the midst of your second book, what's that gonna be about?
Speaker 2 (15m 3s): Well, the working title is the first time, and while I was taking my master's in sociology, I decided to also start doing some qualitative research on our early and first time sexual experiences and how those sort of affect different things like decisions and partner choice and preferences and career choices and like, over the life course. So I interviewed about 40 people and got a bunch of different stories and, and experiences to illustrate a few things.
You know, number one is that everybody sort of has the u their own unique experience. There is no ideal first time experience. And it runs the, runs the gamut. You know, for people who think, oh God, mine was kind of weird or whatever, you're like, no, it, it probably wasn't as weird as you think it was.
Speaker 1 (15m 55s): There are others,
Speaker 2 (15m 56s): There are others, you're not alone. But then also that they matter, they can be formative experiences. And I'm not, I'm not making a testament to abstinence or not. It's just that these experiences, they matter.
Speaker 1 (16m 13s): Well, it's all what's right for you, right?
Speaker 2 (16m 16s): Yeah. Again, I'm not promoting like, oh, you should go and try to have the best sexual experience, you know, that you can, I mean, of course you could say that about anything that you should go and try to have the best experience you can across the board in all things, but that's not the reality. But o only that sometimes it can affect choices and decisions and experiences is, you know, throughout your life in ways that maybe you didn't expect.
Speaker 1 (16m 40s): Yeah, the first time is rarely gonna be quote unquote perfect
Speaker 2 (16m 45s): Ra far from it. And it is quite, so yeah, there's some interesting things coming through out of the research and I won't, I won't give it all away just yet, but yeah, I'm about half done, so I, I hope to have something up by the end of the year actually.
Speaker 1 (16m 59s): Okay. So you've published articles in Kiss and Tell Magazine, I gotta check that one out. Sexual Health and a s n who I know well, in fact, they did a feature and a cover on you. Tell us a little more about that experience.
Speaker 2 (17m 16s): Adorable. Yeah. I, I I love the folks, folks there. They're really supportive of the community.
Speaker 1 (17m 21s): My is the Prince. I love the guy. Yes,
Speaker 2 (17m 24s): Totally. Yeah. I mean, I just wrote a few articles and, you know, we got to know each other and yeah, he just said, Hey, do you, do you wanna do this? I'm like, okay. I mean, that also meant writing quite a bit about my, my personal experience and sort of delo disclosing the stories and all that. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, I think I, I think I can do that. So I, I was very honored to do that. And yeah, it was a real, it was a real pleasure. And I actually, I printed my own version of it.
'cause it's a digital magazine, right? Can't buy it on shelves, but I printed one for real, just to have.
Speaker 1 (18m 3s): That's nice. How have your own sexual experiences experiences influenced what you do?
Speaker 2 (18m 12s): I mean, it's hard to, hard to say. They haven't, I had such a variety. I've had a very enriched experience, I guess you could say. Mostly positive for the most part. I mean, I, you know, knock on wood, I haven't, I haven't had any, you know, really bad experiences. Like I, so I guess I, I'm lucky there, but they were kind of all over the place, right? So different people at different times doing different things and different configurations. Some things long, some things short. And I don't know, I, like I said it, you know, I, I was sort of, the spark was interesting at a young age, you know, I, I started having sex early, like, I was very quite young.
Speaker 1 (18m 54s): I I was gonna say, if you were looking at magazines at six years old, I was gonna kind of guess that.
Speaker 2 (18m 60s): Yeah. So, you know, I, I discovered my own orgasm at 10. I was having sex by 13, you know, I didn't do a lot of, like, I can't say I was overly promiscuous. I was just curious. And, you know, over a lifetime, when you look back, I mean, I'm, I'm 48 now, so I've had time to have different types of relationships and, and experiment. But I, I think through all of that, what it's really done is it's just made me comfortable and super open and very liberal.
So I'm, you know, not judgmental, and I'm really okay talking about all this stuff I always have been. And so I'm that person that people just talk to about it. And I've, I've always been like that. I can't say that I ever had any desire to be a sex therapist per se. I'm not so sure that I have solutions for people. But I, I definitely have an openness that seems to really resonate with people. And, and I just think when it boils down to things, everything really comes down to love and sex.
Like as a species, if you think about our, our role as a species is to reproduce, and we are biologically programmed to do certain things. There is a biological imperative with whether people like to hear that or not. You know, you have certain things that's going on in your body, like going to the bathroom and eating that. You don't have a choice in the matter. These are survival things. Your body will do them whether you want them to or not, or you die. And so, everything, it's my opinion that everything else comes from that.
You know, our, our, our thirst for power, our thirst for money, for, for achievement, for legacy, all of these things are really tied directly to species survival, which is staying alive and propagating.
Speaker 1 (20m 55s): Yeah, absolutely. So is society ready for the topics you write about?
Speaker 2 (21m 2s): Nah, maybe not. I mean, I don't think what I'm saying is so new. It's just that I, I put it together in new ways. Like the, the first book is really, it's tying together a lot of concepts that don't usually get talked about together. And the way that sort of academia operates, and even like your average book, they're really like one idea, one book, one thought, one book. The types of things that I do is, I'm, I'm, I'm more of a systems thinker, so I'm trying to connect dots where I'm trying to connect multiple ideas together so that people can get a more full picture.
And maybe that's because like, my level of analysis is like, as a sociologist, I like to look at society and how that operates. And so looking at one individual thing, I mean, sex is so multifaceted that you sort of have to look at it from a global and like, from a macro point of view, like abortion isn't just about abortion, right? Abortion falls within all sex. Abortion is as important as porn, as condoms, as pregnancy, as pleasure. Like, these things all go together.
All the pieces together need to get looked at. So I, I think maybe, maybe that's something that, that I do a bit differently. Like people putting together sex and business together, people have been trying to like, no, no, no, we need to separate that. No, no, no, not together. I'm like, no, no, no, you have to look at them together. If you ignore that, this is why we have the sexual harassment going on, because you're trying to tear apart two things that are go together.
Speaker 1 (22m 39s): Yeah. Do, do you watch porn? And if you do, what's your preference?
Speaker 2 (22m 45s): Well, in my twenties when I was younger, and maybe it was like the partner I was with, it felt uncomfortable because I was insecure with myself. Now, I would say I, I watch it very often. Every now and again, I might, I might look at something, but it's more just like curiosity to see like, oh, what's going on in that world? Like, what's out there? Just to like take a look so much that rather than actually like watching it for, for any kind of like necessity or pleasure of, of course it's very like, it's hard not to look at imagery and not to have some kind of biological reaction to it.
Yeah. So it's, I'm more of a dabbler. I wouldn't say I, I am looking for curious things. What's got me curious these days though, is the squirting. I'm like, wow, what, how, I mean, I think some of it is not its stage, but I don't know well enough to know the difference. But I am fascinated by the concept of it all. I'm like, huh, if that's like really going on, I'm like, you know? Wow, that's, it's interesting. So I, yeah, I, I look at it from that point of view. I'm like, I, I'm just looking at it from like a, Ooh, that's interesting point of view.
Speaker 1 (23m 57s): So you're the co-chair of the Academic Congress on Love and Sex with Robots. Now maybe you can share with the audience what that involves.
Speaker 2 (24m 9s): Yes. So it started from Dr. David Levy when he was taking his PhD. He was writing about, he has a computer science background, and he was writing with a prediction that, I mean, you could see, so he published the book in 2007. We were already, well in our way towards this technology revolution that we've been undergoing the last 30 years. You're seeing a trend, it's like, okay, I think that, you know, we're gonna start to have relationships with Robots.
Although his original prediction of when that would be sort of a ubiquitous thing is probably a bit off. He's not altogether crazy. Maybe if you would've asked me last year, but this year now, with the whole chat G P T ai, that's, yeah. Driving people crazy. And even on some regular podcasts, I'm noticing that people are now starting to sort of talk about it. 'cause it is, you know, kind of seeping into, into the mainstream news a little bit here and there and sort of raising a bit of eyebrows.
But, you know, the, the conference was started because also within academia researching sex and sex tech specifically has started to proliferate, right? So more and more people and universities are now having researchers studying all different types of sex. Like I said before, it's not now, it used to be just about teenage pregnancy and aids and diseases and things like that, and pregnancy.
And now, you know, they're starting to look at everything from porn studies to sex work pleasure, sex toys, and sex Robots. So there are legitimately people studying topic, right? From a a broad perspective, you know, some people are talking about researching the positive impacts, current and future, and then the negative potential impacts and the implications and, and all this. And so they started the conference this year.
We're coming up to our eighth iteration. It's my fourth. Yes, academics need somewhere to present. And you know, back then there just wasn't a place for those academics to present their research. And even some of the sexuality conferences were a bit, you know, not sure if that's like appropriate because it's mostly about psychology and sex therapy and things of that nature. And so over the years it's, you know, it started out very small and each year we, we grow a little bit larger and a little bit larger.
And, of course, now the, the amount of manufacturers, I mean, it's not exploding, but year over year there's a little bit more and a little bit more you're getting into now VR porn and, and different types of things like that. And, and so the different, like, they're getting a lot more clever. And as you know, from my first article in a s n about sort of the history of sex and technology and how the sex industry has been at the forefront of pushing new technologies forward.
And so the world can really should thank the sex industry, the adult industry for the tech where technology is at these days. And, and we keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (27m 39s): Absolutely. So the whole idea of sex Robots is pretty revolutionary and obviously controversial. Where do you see all of this going?
Speaker 2 (27m 49s): I mean, you could see where now you have like robot pets, there's robot manufacturing, there will be robot companion there currently is Robots in hospitals. There's robot servers in some restaurants. And, and so we are moving towards that. And so assume there will be less of a distinction between a robot companion, maybe one that is sitting with a senior citizen, so they have someone to talk to and someone to, to sort of monitor them in case anything bad happens, you know, they can alert police, whatever.
But it will be inevitable to start to have a relationship with this. When the AI is sophisticated enough to have a pretty decent conversation, you're going to get attached in the same way that you can get attached to pets, even though they don't speak, you know, English or French back to you, you still, you know, learn the cues and, and you get attached to them. And I would also argue that quite a few people in the west are quite attached to their phones. Feels like an appendage some days.
And a lot of the medical, medical device and technologies are getting more sophisticated. You know, you're gonna have certain parts in your body and your, that are digital or mechanical. So like, we're
Speaker 1 (29m 3s): My left tip. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (29m 6s): Exactly. Exactly. And so you think about all these things, it, it seems, it doesn't seem that farfetched because really if you think about robotics, what is robotics, right? So a lot of dildos these days vibrate and move. So, you know, the mechanics may not be humanoid, but they are definitely robotic. And so we are already having sex with Robots in such a way. It's not that farfetched, it's just that by nature we anthropomorphize things and we will do the same.
We are doing the same with, with these robot companions. Well,
Speaker 1 (29m 44s): Yeah, I mean you've got a mini version of it when you talk about tele ds. So the idea of that being attached to something that looks like a human is a not at all farfetched.
Speaker 2 (29m 59s): We've also been, you know, sex dolls have been around for quite a while. It is a natural evolution, even though it does kind of scare people. You know, there's, there's some legitimate concerns. Although,
Speaker 1 (30m 14s): Let's talk about that because I think people are fearful. I am a bit that a sex robot could potentially turn against you.
Speaker 2 (30m 26s): Well, in that case than any robot can turn against you. Oh, of course. The fact that you would've sex it is really not the factor. And if I could make an argument against that, it's more likely that if you're going to have a sex robot and it has the ability to turn on you, then it also has the ability to be turned on. And if it's self-preservation, its self would realize that sex is a good thing. Let's
Speaker 1 (30m 53s): Face it, it's a lot more likely that your wife's gonna slit your throat than your robot.
Speaker 2 (30m 58s): Right? Or, you know, I mean, it is, women are more often homicides from your husband than you are from a stranger.
Speaker 1 (31m 7s): Oh, I know that.
Speaker 2 (31m 8s): So it's, you know, those deaths are, are there too, the thing that some people are concerned about, I mean, I could talk all day about why I think that there's not much concern for, for people to be afraid of AI and Robots. We have the capability to program these things in such a way, whether we do or we don't, but we do have the capability. So if something does go wrong, it's really not the robot's fault, it's ours.
Speaker 1 (31m 32s): Oh, well of course it's never the robot's fault, but I mean, can they be hacked?
Speaker 2 (31m 36s): Of course. So can your phone. So can so can everything else, right?
Speaker 1 (31m 40s): Yeah, but your phone's not gonna kill you.
Speaker 2 (31m 44s): No, but I don't, I I don't think a sex robot is, it's not gonna kill you either. If it is designed for sex, specifically, sex programs, sex, it's
Speaker 1 (31m 53s): All how it's programmed. No, I get it. Yeah, I get it, I get it. But I mean, people have these images like you've got this thing here and it could turn against you.
Speaker 2 (32m 4s): Yeah. I don't know, maybe I'm just, I'm not a dystopian type of anchor, But the people who are legitimately researching this, you know, some are concerned sort of where technology is going into the sex robot is an extreme example of that. Meaning if, if people are afraid that if, if the sex robot is sufficient or better than a human person, we already see the, the impacts of too much reliance on technology for relationships which actually don't form real relationships, right?
With you. We do require the human interaction and, you know, social media and our, our addictions to our, our technologies and our phones is demonstrating that it's actually causing people problems, right? And so people are thinking, well, if someone has a sex robot or a sex robot companion instead of a real one, what kind of, you know, effects will that have on humanity from, from a relationship satisfaction or happiness point of view and, and things of that nature. But again, I said that to me that counts for all technologies, not just sex.
Robots in particular sex robot is just an extreme example of that. But at the same time, you know, there are, people forget that not everybody say has the same social capacity to be able to just go out there and meet people. For real.
Speaker 1 (33m 30s): Yeah. Even online. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (33m 33s): It's just, and so are they not allowed to have some form of sexual satisfaction?
Speaker 1 (33m 40s): Yeah, I mean right now it's pretty much sex dolls.
Speaker 2 (33m 43s): Yeah. And wouldn't it be nice if they at least had someone to talk to, you know, there are also people who just are not able bodied who really just can't get out there and do the same things that, that everybody else does.
Speaker 1 (33m 54s): Bobby, I'm married sometimes I'd love to have somebody to talk to, but I digress. So do you have any strong opinions on where sex tech is going?
Speaker 2 (34m 7s): I mean, it's, I guess I do. I mean I, I see it going in a, in a positive direction. I see the industry, I mean, it's still in an infancy, but it is, it's growing. This is a positive thing. I think there's money to be made all of that at the same time. You know, there's certain, like any tech industry, you know, there's certain things right now that we're a bit flooded the market like, oh my god, there's so many places to buy toys. Like, it's insane.
Speaker 1 (34m 35s): Yeah. I don't know how anybody makes money except for the big companies, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (34m 41s): I mean, but that's kind of how a lot of the technology goes, right? The, the first, there's the new people and so it's, it's very new and then it gets widely adopted and then there's a proliferation of companies and then, yeah,
Speaker 1 (34m 54s): Well look at the only fans type of companies. There's a new one popping up every day, literally. Yep.
Speaker 2 (34m 59s): Yep. But then there will be a retraction, right? Because a couple of the big players will end up gobbling up the smaller ones. And then, so it's sort of like this fluxx of fattening up the industry and then it gets lean again. You know, these, these trends are, they're noticeable in technology. I mean, right now there's, if you, if you are in in tech right now, I mean B two B SaaS, there's so many companies doing B two B, sas, you know, workplace tools, and none and none. It's like, oh my god, there's just hundreds of them. But soon they'll all get either other, the, you know, the ones that are mediocre will fail, the rest will get bought up.
Even take a look at like restaurants, right? So there used to be only one off restaurants and then there became chains and the chains became too, too big. And then, then we went, you know, a retraction back to sort of gourmet places. And so there's always this expansion retraction thing that happens in circle
Speaker 1 (35m 50s): Of life. Yep.
Speaker 2 (35m 51s): Yep. That's it. So we're in an expansion mode right now in the industry. There will be a retraction and then new things will come onto the market and all that. But with, like I was saying earlier with this, I feel like we're in a new sexual revolution. And so there's a lot of opportunity here to be had, and especially for women. And the more women that are in sex tech, then the more ethical from the female perspective comes into play, which is also good for the industry.
Speaker 1 (36m 22s): I can't agree more because women tend to be a lot more ethical. So, se I was raised by a woman, I know this sex tech companies seem to be struggling to get Venture funding. Now, with your experience as a Venture Associate for a tech incubator, what do you see as the challenges there?
Speaker 2 (36m 42s): I mean, the challenges, I mean, it is still kind of taboo the, you know, vice industry as, as there, you know, call it, there's a few quite a bit of no go. And it, it also happens to be that the majority of, of VC funds are in the United States. And the United States quite polarized on these issues. But one of the biggest problems in my opinion is there's not enough market data and VCs need market data to make decisions about. So they can't really do due diligence into the viability of the companies because there's not enough market data to, to rely on.
I'm hoping in the near future to, you know, contribute to solving that problem. But I, I think that, that, that's where it comes from. And I, I also think that, you know, if you see the, the trend in the last five years of VCs becoming, realizing they need to be more diverse in not only the companies that they fund, but themselves. You know, you need to start hiring people. There's a lot not enough, but there's more now than there were institutional VCs that are focused on diversity.
You know, you have to have a, at least one female founder or one from, you know, diverse backgrounds, something like that, that it will help inch it forward as well. And so you get, get more of that. The fem tech industry is getting more attention now. And I think fem tech is sort of, is the gateway to the sex tech because there's a lot of crossover there. If we're talking about menopause, you know, reproduction. And so that was a bit safer, quote unquote for VCs.
'cause it's really like strictly medical for the most part.
Speaker 1 (38m 26s): And it's 50% of the population.
Speaker 2 (38m 29s): Hello? Yes. And so, you know, solving a lot of female problems. And then when, when that starts to get enough traction, and we sort of age out, you know, a lot of the managing partners of funds right now, you know, they're all white guys. And you know, now that I don't want my own white guys. I do, I love my guys. But you know, there's a, a thinking that I think will change as, as the new generations come up. So with a little bit of time and some market data, I think that, and, and a couple, you know, brave souls, like we have Amboy Ventures, vice Ventures, so there's a small, but then, I mean, this is not enough to support a whole industry.
Right. So,
Speaker 1 (39m 8s): Agreed. What are your thoughts on the acquisition of MindGeek from Ethical Capital Partners?
Speaker 2 (39m 19s): Yeah, they got,
Speaker 1 (39m 21s): I love that. I love the term, but anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (39m 24s): Yeah, I mean the, the irony is not lost there. So I mean, it's yet to be seen, right? So, you know, PornHub in a way has helped the industry in that it has demonstrated the, just the sheer amount of ubiquity, like the data, you cannot deny the data now, you know, it's no longer, you know, this small group of guys alone in their basement masturbating de porn like that, that, that, that notion, the data is there.
Speaker 1 (39m 55s): And if you add all the other tube sites this company owns and all the other pay sites this company owns, not to mention X N XXX and everything they own. That is like a majority of the traffic on the internet.
Speaker 2 (40m 12s): Yes, yes, yes. And so what does that tell us? That tells us that a lot of people, women too, right? So because they can tell, they can tell. And, and the, the creators, there's so many more creators now. And these creators aren't the typical, you know, back from the eighties, you know, blonde, blue eyed, big boobs. They're just like everyday people getting online and making money from having sex and stuff. And you know, of course there is still some bad actors out there, but for the most part, there's a lot of just everyday people on there just, just doing it.
Speaker 1 (40m 51s): Not to mention only fans, which is a phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (40m 54s): Yeah. So the, the, at the, at this point in time, it, it's very hard to deny the numbers. Now, the, of course, there're just a certain group of people that no matter what, you know, they're just not gonna get into it. But that's okay over time that that group is getting smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1 (41m 11s): Yeah. If you say so, you know, stupidity takes a long time to clear, Hey, what do you think about all the female oriented porn that really seems to be growing?
Speaker 2 (41m 23s): Yeah. Love it. Love it. This is a huge help to the industry. When you have like the les of the world, you know, making ethical female led female gaze porn. It's great.
Speaker 1 (41m 37s): The, the site shush is just, is just amazing too. Yeah. How to pronounce it, because it's a lot of Ss and Hs, but it's
Speaker 2 (41m 45s): Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 (41m 46s): Exactly. I like the way you said it better. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41m 49s): There's a few more. I just, I can't remember them off the top of my head.
Speaker 1 (41m 52s): I saw Angie Roundtree at Miami. I know her husband Colin very well too. So
Speaker 2 (41m 57s): Yeah, it's, it's gonna help legitimize that, that side of thing. 'cause I think people can get behind the whole sex toys and, and stuff like that. It, it's the porn and the, the objectification of women. And there's a whole group of people that think that everything to do with sex is like automatically connected to you human trafficking. But if you look at it, you could take any industry and show the dark side.
Speaker 1 (42m 22s): Well, there of course there's a dark side. There's the Ron Jeremy's of the world. I had Leanne Young on my podcast is for my hundred 50th episode, who, I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she was flown out from the UK to LA to testify to the grand jury about Ron Jeremy raping her. Allegedly. So look, the me too movement has come to adult too adult, and it's, it hasn't, it's, it's a long time coming. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (42m 52s): Yeah. And, and rightly so, right? So, because I think most of us in the industry wanna clean that up.
Speaker 1 (42m 58s): I mean, Bobby, Bobby, here's the thing, okay? There's two sides of the industry. There's the legitimate side and there's the dark side. The people I deal with, the people I know are in the legitimate side. Okay. The other people I don't pay any mind to.
Speaker 2 (43m 15s): Yeah. I mean, they gotta be brought to light in some way or another, but giving people options, right? So now people have options. So I don't have to use that site. I can use this one and feel good about it. And so that's the idea of, of, you know, having people legitimize the industry, keeping some ethical standards going on, you know, really, really open women led, you know, all of that stuff. So that, that's a huge help, I think.
Speaker 1 (43m 43s): And in the end, we'll find out if Ethical Capital Partners is really ethical. So I, I understand you've taken on a new role. Maybe you can tell me a little bit more about it.
Speaker 2 (43m 55s): I can't tell you too much.
Speaker 1 (43m 57s): Oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (43m 58s): No, I really can. I'm under N D A, but what I can tell you is that we're going to be starting an international sexual health and wellness research institute. I mean, the, the full mandate is not ironed out yet, but the biggest thing here is to connect business and corporations with the research community, because there's a lot of great stuff going on in academia, but like in all under industries, what goes in academia tends to stay in academia and, you know, it's all behind a paywall.
And if you don't actually subscribe to academic journals, then people just don't ever hear about what's going on there. And so we wanna really bridge that and lean on the academic research to make more informed data-driven decisions from, you know, the, in the industry itself. And, you know, just bringing forth research to the public domain so that people, you know, we will, it's a, it's a exercise in knowledge translation of taking a research paper, which, you know, when if your average person would really be like, I don't know what these people are saying to me, translating that in a way that can resonate
Speaker 1 (45m 12s): What you mean, you're gonna write it in real English,
Speaker 2 (45m 16s): In, in terms that is digestible in small bits. You know what I mean? And in turn, you know, that will help academia and it helps industry, helps the general public. So, so that's the mandate. I'm super excited to be the director of this two B institute and yes,
Speaker 1 (45m 39s): Exactly. That was gonna be the next thing I was gonna say, Bobby, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk. And when you've got that thing up and running, let's do it again.
Speaker 2 (45m 49s): Sounds great. Thanks Bruce.
Speaker 1 (45m 51s): Thank you. My Broker tip today is part two of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week. We talked about converting traffic and improving user experience. Make a good offer. If you're selling something and the offer isn't good, you won't make money. It's plain and simple as that. And if your offer is to contact you or to get more information, then make the offer attractive and easy to understand. If you're selling something, make buying easy. Show them an easy way to buy and then leave.
Help them by making suggestions on what to buy. amazon.com is the best at this. They always have suggestions on what to buy based on your buying and browsing history. They use AI to do this. There are AI engines available these days at a modest cost. Look into this if you can. Don't clutter up your site with unnecessary items, buttons and images, keep it as simple as possible. The best and most successful sites are the simple ones, the ones that lead you to take the action you'd like them to take.
It's not that hard. Just remember when you're putting together any site, try to think through the buying process like a human being. Whatever you do, don't turn over that process to your designer. Don't just say, build me a website. What you'll get out the other end will not give you what it is you're looking for. Give them as much direction as possible and make it easy for them to build a site for you that makes your business succeed. We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be speaking with Oscar Gracie of Fan two Media Adult Site.
Broker Talk has been brought to you by Webmaster Access September 12th through the 15th. The show will be in beautiful Cyprus at the stunning grand resort on the beach. Go to the events page on our website at Adult Site Broker dot com for a 25% discount. For Adult Site, Broker Talk listeners. To register, go to webmaster access.com. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Bobby Bidochka.
Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.
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