Welcome to our #124 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we spotlight The Purse Podcast interview with Cindy Gallop.
Cindy updates us on her sextech startup, MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP) and what her female founder journey has been like since January 2021.
We also ask Cindy to share her views on the overturning of Roe vs Wade.
Listen to the full interview here.
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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Sextech: the trillion dollar market opportunity, fundraising and the female founder journey
Cindy Gallop rejoins us on The Purse Podcast to talk about her startup and her female founder journey since January 2021.
We welcomed back Cindy Gallop on The Purse Podcast.
Cindy Gallop is the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP) launched at TED 2009 – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’.
In 2013 she turned MLNP into the world’s first user-generated, human-curated social sex video-sharing platform, socialising and normalising sex in order to make it easier to talk about, to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and good sexual behaviour. MakeLoveNotPorn is spearheading the Social Sex Revolution (the revolutionary part isn’t the sex, but the social). Given the challenges Cindy has faced finding investors, she is raising the world’s first dedicated sextech fund, All the Sky Holdings.
She speaks at conferences globally and consults, describing her approach as ‘I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business.’
We asked Cindy to talk about what’s changed in MLNP since January 2021 and what her female founder journey has been like.
Here is a short extract from the interview (we have edited down the response for ease of reading only):
Question: Have you seen a, a shift since January of last year (towards sextech & MLNP)? And why do you think that is?
Cindy’s response:
I've spent 13 years parallel passing two things: working to build MLNP and working to change the cultural and business context around it.
Because when you have a truly world changing startup, you have to change the world to fit it, not the other way around.
And the great thing is that I'm absolutely seeing all of that work pay off, especially because as you know, there are many other female sextech, femtech founders like me, dedicated to the same thing.
But the second thing that is especially encouraging is, I have had to operate a very different investor finding strategy to most founders.
And that is because in the conventional funding world ie venture capital, my biggest obstacle there is the social dynamic that I call ‘fear of what other people will think’ which operates around sex unlike any other area.
And in VC, there are too many stakeholders, too many partners, too many LPs ‘fear of what other people will think’ about investment choices runs rampant.
So I don't even go near that world myself. And what that obviously means is that when I decide to raise funding, I can't do the usual thing of right: let's do the road show, let's target these investors who are used to having founders pitching them one off the other.
So my approach is driven by my another challenge.
Which is that I absolutely know that my investors are out there and there are many of them. They are impossible to find by the usual means because they all have one thing in common:
your willingness to fund MLNP is entirely a function of your personal sexual journey. It is a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality driven by your own experience.
And I have no way to research and target for that. Especially because sex is the one area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside.
The people who look like they would totally get it, don't. The people who look like complete prudes, do. And so my strategy has been- I put what I'm doing out there all the time.
I promote MLNP across all my social channels, I go on every podcast I'm invited to, because I have to rely on making synaptic connections that will draw those investors to me.
Now, this is a very long, slow, painful, and highly inefficient process. But the good news is that in the past couple of years, it's been working more and more.
I've had investors reach out to me out of the blue going: I saw your post about MLNP on LinkedIn, I'm intrigued, tell me more.
And by the way and I say this to all the founders out there: I am gobsmacked at how effective LinkedIn is for bringing incoming investor interest. You know, it is absolutely worth it.
So absolutely put what you're doing out there on LinkedIn, highlight the fact you're raising funding because I continue to get investors reaching out saying: oh, I saw you're raising funding, I'd like to talk.
And then the other thing that's been enormously helpful is a demonstration of something that I've had to say many times to reporters over the years, because I have regularly been called up by journalists who say: Cindy, I'm writing a piece about why investors won't fund sex: I'd love to interview you.
And my response is always: I will only agree to be interviewed if you change that headline. And I explain that when you run a headline that says why investors won't fund sextech, it makes investors feel enormously good about not funding sextech.
I will only agree to be interviewed if you will run a headline that says: the trillion dollar sector investors are missing out on!
And so I was very pleased when Sifted reached out to me and asked to interview me and said: Cindy, we'd like to interview you about all of the challenges you face raising funding. And I said: no, you wouldn't. And that is why I was thrilled last month to have Sifted run an interview with me where the headline was: Cindy Gallup on building the next sextech unicorn.
And that interview has brought me a tonne of incoming investor interests, which is fantastic.
So I'm feeling very optimistic and I am talking to all of those investors as we speak and we'll see what happens…
Listen to the full interview with Cindy Gallop here.
What next?
News in Brief
Financial news
China growth crashes, putting GDP target out of reach. GDP disappoints as growth weakens to 0.4% in Q2, slowest since Pandemic and way below forecast of 1.2%. That means Beijing will likely miss its goal of 5.5% growth for the full year by a wide margin.
The US Federal Reserve has already stopped the shrinking of the balance sheet. Total assets grew by $4bn the past week to $8.896tn. Fed balance sheet now equal to 36.5% of US's GDP vs #ECB's 81.9% and BoJ's 135%.
US inflation hit 9.1% over the past year highest rate (40 year high) and way hotter than expected. Core CPI dropped to 5.9% vs 5.7% expected.
The UK economy has surprised us with 0.5% growth in May, following April’s 0.2% decline (revised from a 0.3% drop).
Average UK household £8,800 a year worse off than those in France or Germany.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs
Although Bitcoin has dipped about 3.5% over the last seven days to approximately $20,831, Ethereum has added 11.1% over the same period, now trading approximately $1,357.
'Merge' rally pushed Ethereum almost to $1,400. The bullish momentum spilled over from Friday after an Ethereum dev release a timeline for the long-awaited ‘merge.’
Investment bank JPMorgan estimates that the production cost to mine one Bitcoin has dropped from $24,000 at the start of June to just $13,000. According to the New York-based bank, Bitcoin’s bottom could very well be a lowly $13,000, marking a 45% drop from today’s prices.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a national ban on using digital assets for payments, although it’s still possible to buy and hold cryptocurrencies.
Celsius bankruptcy documents claim $1.2 billion balance sheet gap. As of July 10, the company held 410,421 staked ETH (stETH), and as a result, approximately $467 million of the Company’s ETH, based on the market value of ETH, is illiquid.
The Purse Podcast
We cover the following in our conversation:
Sextech: the $1tn opportunity
MLNP & raising $20m
Female founders
The overturning of Roe vs Wade
And more
Please enjoy! Listen on Apple Podcasts & Spotify+
Coffee Break? Read This
We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and @janicka.
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The Purse provides content for informational purposes only, we do not recommend products or services or provide investment advice. Please do your own research or speak to a financial adviser.
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