If only every mid-life crisis could be so fruitful.
Cindy Gallop, the former chairman and president of Bartle Bogle Hegarty US, told the audience at the Coins2Day Most Powerful Women Summit in London on Tuesday that she left her job at the British advertising agency after 16 years when she turned 45 in 2005. She took stock, she said, and “felt it was time to do something different.”
She eventually launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, a venture inspired—interestingly enough—by her experience dating men in their 20s. Through these intimate relationships, she realized that because of the reluctance to talk about sex openly, hardcore porn had become a default form of sex education. Her Ted Talk on the topic went viral. MakeLoveNotPorn.com aims to provide an alternative by serving as a platform that celebrates real-world sex and makes it shareable. The site depends on contributors for its library of real-world sex video, which viewers can rent and watch. Half of the revenue goes to people who submit the videos.
Gallop’s biggest challenge so far has been finding technological infrastructure to support the site since most mainstream hosts like Brightcove and Amazon have fine print that doesn’t allow their products to be used for adult content, she says. “We are fighting the fear of what other people think,” she says.
Her goal now is to raise $2 million—money she says will go towards building the “Khan Academy of Sex Ed,” a reference to the non-profit online education organization that free provides technology-focused instruction in subjects like math, economics, and computer science. Education technology has neglected the topic, she says. “No one goes into sex education to make money.” Gallop wants to change that.
Watch more of Coins2Day‘s discussion with Gallop here: