Cultural taboos around porn have led to blind spots in Silicon Valley, with VCs missing out on many of the industry's breakout hits like OnlyFans
It always was, it always will be. … One of the biggest and most interesting things happening in the consumer web right now is running almost completely under the radar. Tweets: @arvidkahl , @hkanji , @ericzawo , and @cathyreisenwitz Tweets: Arvid Kahl / @arvidkahl : This is an very thoughtful take on the sudden and explosive growth of OnlyFans and why otherwise visionary SV technologists are still fighting adult content tooth and nail. https://themargins.substack.com/ ... Hussein Kanji / @hkanji : People will pay for porn. Mind blown. And no, I wouldn't invest in it or touch it. https://themargins.substack.com/ ... Eric Zaworski / @ericzawo : “The cavernous disparity between the demonstrably massive popularity of porn and our popular unwillingness to even acknowledge it exists is a truly bizarre facet of American puritanical culture.” https://themargins.substack.com/ ... Cathy Reisenwitz / @cathyreisenwitz : “Why does the same industry that exalts such morally ruinous firms as Palantir, Facebook and Palmer Lucky's actual next-gen weapons startup get queasy about consenting adults wanting to see naked bodies?” P sure it's the DOJ. @ReadMargins OnlyFans https://themargins.substack.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Margins argument lands at the peak of a pandemic-era shift the related coverage already documented: digital sex work went mainstream fast, with OnlyFans posting a 75% signup increase in April alone as performers of every size migrated toward direct-to-fan services. That growth happened almost entirely outside the venture system — Hussein Kanji's quoted reaction ('People will pay for porn... I wouldn't invest in it') is the taboo in action.
What makes the blind spot structural rather than squeamishness is how the sector actually operates. A later profile shows OnlyFans deliberately omitting search and tags to minimize legal liability, and coverage of Meta documents moderation turning more punitive and less predictable since SESTA-FOSTA — meaning the category innovates under regulatory pressure mainstream consumer startups never face.
First-order effects
- Venture firms that publicly refuse the category, like Kanji's, forfeit exposure to one of the fastest-growing consumer subscription businesses of 2020, while OnlyFans scales on creator revenue rather than institutional capital.
- Performers gain leverage: with mainstream platforms hostile, the migration toward OnlyFans, ManyVids, and Snapchat gives individual creators multiple buyer-side options for their audience.
Second-order effects
- Mainstream platforms' tightening enforcement — Meta's post-SESTA-FOSTA moderation that sex workers describe as unpredictable — actively pushes creators and their spending toward subscription sites, subsidizing the growth VCs are declining to fund.
- Competitors in adjacent creator monetization face a template: OnlyFans proves direct fan payments can outperform ad-dependent models, pressuring every subscription and tipping product to justify its take rate.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, a durable tier of large consumer platforms will exist entirely outside venture portfolios — self-funding through creator revenue, shaped by liability-driven design choices like OnlyFans's missing search — leaving VCs structurally absent from a segment of the consumer web.
- Regulation becomes the de facto market-shaper: SESTA-FOSTA-era liability rules determine which platforms host adult content and how they are built, concentrating the category into a few compliant operators.
The trend: High-growth consumer platforms are increasingly being built outside the venture funding system wherever cultural taboos and regulatory liability overlap, with creator payments filling the capital gap.