48: Is this platform a new era beyond OnlyFans?: Innovation VS ethical responsibility | Felix Henderson

24:14People love the content. Well, there've been some famous cases recently of people thinking someone was real at Wimbledon and elsewhere when they weren't. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's that it's not communicating the reality, which is at the the core of the trust issues right and it's passing something off for something that it isn't which is which causes an awful lot of the worries and panic around the use of ai so what i'm slightly worried about is you know you're this sort of issue around people being more and more disconnected from one another we've talked a lot on the podcast about the importance of community and you know that people end up sort of in their rooms engaging in relationships um on sites such as yours and becoming more and more isolated from each other, maybe thinking, you know, this is a real friend and sort of a lonely person looking to this for some sort of solace when it's not real.

25:04And in the end, it won't give them that, I don't think. It might do, but is that something you've thought about? It worries me a bit. Yeah, definitely something we've thought about. I think the first thing to say is at the moment, memory is a significant limitation of AI. So in terms of being able to engage in a conversation where you and this character are probably spending 12 months non-stop chatting, it can't happen. I mean, it's impossible at a certain level. The context window runs out and the interaction kind of resets. So I'm not sure that product-wise we're at the stage yet where that kind of addiction or engagement is entirely possible.

25:38It doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about it because at some point that will be something that becomes possible and becomes a threat. We do look at the flip side of it as well, though. There are studies that suggest that, take ChatGPT for example, that bizarrely people sometimes feel more comfortable talking to and expressing emotions and feelings to a machine than they might to somebody in the real world. I think at the same time these models can play a role in allowing people to express themselves, to build up confidence around interactions, to have conversations they might not in the real world.

26:07So I don't think we can ever eliminate the risk that somebody is going to enjoy our platform so much that maybe they spend more time than you might think they should interacting with it. It's not for me to think whether they should or not. I mean, it's their life, not mine. I was concerned about the overall sort of risks here. I was just I'm worried that people will become totally absorbed in this and lose sight or not lift their heads above the screen and see what's going on in the wider world yeah I think you know I think there's a threat of that definitely across the industry more broadly I don't think necessarily it's not exclusive to what you're doing Felix I don't want to give that impression no so you've raised 10 million yeah pounds or dollars dollars so far So do you have venture capital investors or family?

27:02Yeah, mostly venture capital investors. So you've got some big investors. Yeah, we've got some big investors. I mean, we have particularly big investors in the AI and crypto space. Generally, funds that operate in that space have slightly looser vice clauses. So you probably know that a lot of traditional institutional investment in the UK have vice clauses that protect against them investing in certain industries, might extend to gambling, certainly extends to adult. But family offices and funds that operate in other sectors don't have quite such stringent vice clauses. And that tends to be the place that we can shop.

27:36So within funds in that section, yeah, absolutely. Some of the biggest names within that space are backers of ours. And then also a collection of angels as well. We probably have seven or eight angels on our cap table who may not have been able to invest through the fund that they are a managing partner of or a director of for the vice clause issue that I mentioned, but have sought to make a small personal investment themselves just because they believe in the potential of the business. Right. And you've assembled a team or an approach that you said your CMO came from only fans. She used to be a global head of marketing and creators there.

28:08Where else have you recruited from at a senior level? So at a senior level, we have two senior team members from Pornhub. So former product lead. So Liv, our product lead in the business. She ran product there for over five years. Our head of growth, Ryan, was previously there in another life. We have a lot of tech developers from a big adult business called Byborg who are operating a lot in the AI space. So how did you find all these people? As a recruiter, I'm curious, who did you ask? We have used recruiters. There are agencies that specialise We have used recruiters, but particularly for the more senior executive level positions.

28:49And then generally what we find, because we have shopped in pools where we've brought people in from big organizations that they come in, they want to fill the rest of their team. And they generally know people within those businesses that they poach effectively. Is it problematic having everyone remote? It feels to me. I mean, I like going into a place where people come together. Yeah, I think. Are you going to change that? Stick with that? We had a lot of conversations around that. I think a bit of give and take. So what's harder? Culture's harder, obviously. Communication is 10 times harder.

29:21You know, the proactive work you have to put into communicating changes or vision or little day-to-day things throughout a remote team is far greater than if you're all operating within the same in-person space. You're all hearing the same conversation. You're meeting the person at the coffee machine and talking to them. And given the communication, in my view, is the lifeblood of any successful person, business. It's something that we struggle with. But on the flip side, like I mentioned earlier, talent density, as we might describe it, is a really important thing for us. And so not being limited by a physical location, particularly on the technical side, allows us to access the best talent and the best person for the job.

29:59So we've chosen to prioritize that and try and cover some of the limitations that a remote culture or business do create, but it is harder. But it sounds to me like you feel you can really scale this up using technology with still a relatively small team. Yeah, absolutely. I really think so, yeah. And your chief revenue will be from subscriptions, I'm imagining. Is that right? Correct, yeah. So the business model within the platform is a subscription model. So you subscribe on a monthly basis to either an individual... How much does that cost? $9.99 on average. So we at the moment have three pricing tiers, although we're condensing that into kind of one$9.99 tier.

30:38that's on the kind of platform side and then on the api side which is our b2b side of the business um you effectively pay for use of so of the software so if i'm another platform and i'm using our ai models to power content experiences every time i want to generate a text message that gets sent to a user on my platform i that costs me one cent do you have much business doing that an awful lot yeah hugely growing i think for us over the next six months that's going to be the boom area for a couple of reasons. And our business there sits in two different categories. So you have your existing AI businesses.

31:10So people that are doing similar-ish things to us or trying to use AI to create content. And the reason they want to use our models is if they feel what we have is better than what they have. And that might be quality. It might be stability. It's often speed because speed directly correlates to price. So existing AI businesses might use our AI models instead of their own because of all of those different considerations. But to do what, for instance? So to power content. So for example, all of our digital twins, so Jordan, Carmen, Electra, some of the ones I mentioned earlier, they can all through our API live on all of our client platforms as well.

31:44So actually, let's say you're a content site like OnlyFans, of which we are speaking and are working with some already. Our AI characters can automatically live on that other platform, interact with fans there as they can on our platform, create content for fans on their platform as they do on our platform. So that's one way of interacting with us, directly taking our characters and the ability for users to interact with them. And then there's also being able to do the same, but for them. So if I'm a real world content platform, like an OnlyFans, for example, and we work with a lot of these types of businesses, we can create AI versions of their existing real world characters that can effectively then populate their own site.

32:20They might just want to create images using the image model. They might just want to use our text model to allow users to have conversations. So it's a whole different format and way of using the software. But I think for us, we really see over the next six months that this is a huge boom opportunity. Because everybody's looking to use AI and explore how they can integrate it within their business. Particularly on the content side. For some, it probably won't work, but I think they're keen to do the experiment. For others, I think this will completely change their business models. So that$9.99 that the customer's paying per month, if you were to divide it up like a pie, how much of that goes to the creator?

32:58How much of that goes to the platform? How much does that go to other API? 80-20 split. So the creator gets 80 % of the net revenue. We take 20%. The net revenue meaning we take off the cost of generation. So every time that the user sends or wants to receive a text message, it costs us money, basically. That's because you're using the chat GP. That's because it's our own models. But every time you want to create a text, we effectively have to pay a GPU, which hosts these models, to use some generation time for that GPU. So how much of that$9.99 would that typically consume? Depends on the usage, but a relatively nominal amount.

33:36I mean, you know, you might be looking at... So people aren't burning through that. No, no. I mean, and again, at scale, the cost should be relatively cheap. So, I mean, you're looking at sort of 0.01 or 0.02 cents for a text message, for example. Right. So for the$9.99, what would you allow in your sort of planning? I think for a good, relatively engaged user, they might use, you know, right now a couple of dollars of the$9.99 in generation cost. And then the rest would be$7.99,$8.20 split. Yeah. And actually, you know, some of our whale users will obviously use an awful lot more of that. We call them whale users.

34:12That's what we call them, the whale users, exactly. How much time are they using it? Quite a lot. I mean, I don't know, in terms of most highest paying users, they might be spending 700, 800 quid so far since we launched. So that works out at what kind of? So the$9.99 is per... So two forms. So you can get Sinbad the Sailor and all of his friends, all of our original characters, of which there are hundreds, male and female for a flat fee of 9.99 you can pay per digital twin much like you would on only fans so if you want so you get simbad and friends for 9.99 yeah if you wanted to upgrade to get jordan you have to pay 9.99 for her as well you'd have to pay that again yeah exactly oh so some people might be spending a hundred a month yeah yeah exactly yeah if they're different yeah i mean the whale our whale users would be um most so you already have whale users yeah as we turn them yeah Right.

35:07I'm just wondering what sort of people they are. So they might be on there for hours and hours and hours? Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what sort of people they are? Mainly men, I imagine? Are they older men, younger men? So generally... Do you know the demographics? A little bit. We're getting more data. I mean, one of the challenging things is in terms of some profile elements, like location, for example. Google Analytics would tell us quite a lot of it, but there are some profile functions which are... So where are these people? Well, US would be 60 % of our users. US. Generally, tier one English.

35:39So the product is English speaking. Do you know, I don't know. I have to come back to you on that. That's interesting. UK, 25%. Right. Which part of the UK? 15. All over. Pretty even spread, I think. Age demographic, 35 to 55, 60, generally. Right. In terms of paying customers. In terms of users, younger demographics. So anything from 18 to 35, we see high user numbers, high traction coming to the platform, high traction using it for free, but generally they're slower to get their wallets out, which isn't really a surprise because disposable income is lower and that sort of thing. So, the user correlations from that perspective, I wouldn't say are massively different to most sort of B2C businesses in terms of where the value lies.

36:20Yeah. So are you worried you're going to get regulated? Uh, I'm potentially... Because AI is a new, you're in those frontier, pioneering, and then the sort of bureaucrats will catch up with you. Definitely. I mean, let's look at age verification as a prime example, right? So as part of the UK's Online Safety Act, they obviously recently extended that for all producers of adult content or over 18 content, they had to do formal age verification processes. And either that comes through the user having to upload their ID to the site to verify their age, or through an approved facial recognition provider.

36:54So Ofcom have a couple of approved ones that UK businesses can use. That's a massive challenge for space like that. Imagine a lot of people don't want to necessarily upload their ID. They don't, no. So we're fortunate. Who does that affect? So I think tube sites. So these are sites like Pornhub who make their money through advertising, for example. So all of the content's free. You can come on. The first thing you see is over 18. That's a challenge for them because the rule stipulates at the point of viewing that over 18 content, you need to have performed an age verification process. So for them, that's a huge barrier to users coming onto the platform because who wants to upload their ID to a site like that really i think a lot of people worry about that data protection and where's it go after that yeah correct imagine yeah um for us i think it's slightly different because nobody can access over 18 content on our site until they have an active paying subscription so we're able to put age verification procedures in after the point of payment before the point of seeing the content and generally what that means is we can significantly lower the churn at that stage because i've just paid 9.99 i'm not going to not you know go through the final steps of the age But if you find out this person is 15, you'd have to refund them, wouldn't you?

38:00You would, yeah, absolutely. And you do that? And you do that, yeah, through the payment processes, yeah. Right. So when you get to the age verification, how do you do that? So we use a facial recognition provider. So it's actually called Yoti, plug for them. Yeah. Approved by Ofcom approved. So effectively, you press a button, you take a scan of your face, and then it will estimate your age and then allow you to proceed from there. And that's a UK specific thing. so in terms of your reg point uk from an age verification still put your face into yeah got a picture of you sort of yeah although generally i think behavior wise particularly amongst young people that's quite a um that's quite a well-trodden part people are worried about that so like banking for example for our business banking app if i have to add a new page to our business banking app i would have to scan my face um yes to be able to to be able to get that approved and uploaded i'd do the same when i log into my iphone so i think people are quite But I imagine you have to keep that data so you can say, well, this person is approved.

38:57Yeah. So we don't keep it ourselves. We don't store any of that data. Yeah. The third party verification provider would store that. They'd have to store it for a period of time. And after a period of time, it's deleted. Right. So it's not forever. And then I understand in some countries, some jurisdictions, I think Denmark is one where you have copyright over your own appearance, I suppose. Yeah. And that people can't earn money from that independently. of you would that affect your business model i don't think it would affect it i generally i think because it's given by permission correct i generally i think it's a net positive yes and it's one of the reasons we we so creators and ownership one of the previous issues with other tube sites or adult sites has historically been that creators don't own their own content and they tend to find that their likeness is basically being abused beyond them when they stop creating content they move on to a different part of their life and their content is still monetized by the platform and there are loose laws around ownership so that's actually one of the reasons we wanted to operate the model in the way that we do which is the creator it's a licensing agreement they license their likeness it's all consensual they own that twin they want to come off the platform the ability to create content on the platform stops and they can take it down whenever they like so for us i think it's it just plays into the business world we've already created but for others that might be trying to approach the same industry in a more nefarious way yeah i think that's a massive challenge so some of the creators earning good money out of this already starting to yeah i'm not only fans and money yet but people and only fans were earning absurd money but certainly for the scale that that we're at um and that's all about scale in the end i think so yeah it's all about scale um and i think what i spoke about allowing creators to create their twin without human intervention that's a huge opener up of scale for us and because at the moment i'm trying to think of a way that we likened it what we're doing at the moment is it's almost as if apple had made every app that exists on the app store themselves right It would never have blown up in the way that it would have done.

40:50It's not a scalable business model. So I think we're about to experience that scale. But some of our creators are making really good money, kind of high four figures a month in the first few months of them being on the platform. And I think it'll only go up from there. Right, right. So what do you see as challenges? What worries you? You're moving fast. You're growing. What worries? A future is quite unpredictable. Yeah, what's on your mind? I think for us, AI is such a hyper-competitive space. We haven't built our own foundational models. As I mentioned, they're our own fine-tuned on top of the existing foundational models.

41:28What that means is that we're relatively at the mercy of what's called the open-source community. When AI houses open-source and release details of their models, we need to be the fastest and most effective to fine-tune, train, and deploy the next best thing to ensure that our infrastructure stays ahead of the competition. Which ones are you using? so we would use uh on the llm side uh a model called llama right um we would use on the image side a model called flux our voice model is actually a third party we have an enterprise grant from a third party um and then our video model which is probably our next big development would be using a model called one basically and these are all open source these are all open source models exactly yeah so um staying ahead of the competition for us and ensuring we're always ready to test and potentially adopt the next best model is of critical importance to us.

42:18For any business that's essentially venture-funded, runway, deployment of capital, how you balance runway with sort of maximum value extraction, that for me probably is a day-to-day consideration when it comes to thinking about team, budgets, marketing, spend, all that kind of thing. Because we want to operate in a business where we're raising enough to be able to get us through a certain period of time, give us enough time to move to the next level. But you're most vulnerable in the early stages in terms of giving away your equity and the value of that. And so also trying to marry that security with what's realistically the shortest time that we can try and prove the most amount to investors, to anyone else, either through driving to profitability or driving to significant value enhancement to get us to the next round.

43:05How can we play with that line? And so I think that's always a consideration that we think about day to day. And what are you doing in terms of marketing this to make people aware of it, to build your audience? Well, the creators are a huge thing, as I mentioned. So creating content that they can push and post on their own social media platforms and to their users is a big thing. Affiliates in our space, affiliate marketers. So these are effectively people who often work independently and they get paid or remunerated each time they bring a paying customer and user to us. and there'd be millions of those around the world.

43:39Like agents introducing people. Sort of like that, exactly, yeah. And they would do so through driving traffic from other sites, for example. And so that for a business in our spaces is of massive, massive importance. But also always social media content where we can through meta, through the existing platforms. So do you have a content team? We do, yeah. We have a video team. They're already actually for a lot of the video they're making, because it's all AI, right? So we have to use an awful lot of AI tools to be able to create videos of our digital twins and of our characters um so we have a content team social media team in-house growth team and then external support around things like seo and that sort of thing but i think the creators are and will always be our number one route to growth because they bring the audience generally they bring an engaged and a vetted audience um and if we can encourage and incentivize them to push content through those channels that still and always is our maximum sort of bang for our buck in terms of users yeah i mean this seems to be a sort of area of british expertise is that fair because only fans of the uk yeah i mean is there something going on here that makes this a good place to start a business like this yeah i do i'm curious yeah it's a very good question i don't know uh there's a sort of cluster of expertise i I think there is.

44:59I think OnlyFans started that. I think OnlyFans started the appreciation of the creator and the power of a creator. What that means is that not just in the UK, but all around the world, including over here, we have millions and millions of people, hundreds of thousands of people who are pursuing content creation as a career path of their own. I think perhaps being British-based OnlyFans starts a natural network effect of that domestically and in the UK, but it exists around the world. But probably a coincidence, but it is a curious one. I'd agree. I'm not sure it is a coincidence. I mean, I think there's a lot of creativity here.

45:33I mean, there are two ways of looking at it. And as a sort of giving people the opportunity to be self-employed and entrepreneurs in their own right, I mean, that's huge. And Britain's always been encouraging of that. Yeah, and encourage creativity and encourage pursuing your own thing and building a business. That's definitely true. But this one sort of troubles people in some aspects. but I still think that those are consistent aspects that are identifiably British in many ways. Yeah, well I think identify British in terms of looking for opportunities, so like, if we go back to the Genesis story of how this happened.

46:08Yeah, I didn't ask you that, how did this happen? Yeah, well, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and do my own thing, my dad was an entrepreneur, and so I've always done my own thing, and so it wasn't a great love of, I've always wanted to create a business in this space why don't we go and do it it was a pretty strategic decision so my business partner and i we were both in other jobs when the lockdown hit um when covid began and i was on furlough he had actually left what were you doing what was your job so i had a student housing business my own business for about three years which we ended up closing i was working for a cosmetics business um which was backed by a previous investor of mine from another business uh really doing something different working for somebody else but i think re-energizing and thinking what's next and i wasn't enjoying it particularly.

46:52The lockdown hit and my business partner who was in between jobs and kind of stranded a bit because he'd left a PR company, was moving to a big firm. Lockdown hit, the big firm pulled the offer. And so he was kind of left in a market where finding a job wasn't particularly easy and there was no safety net of furlough pay or whatever it might be from existing employment. So he put a LinkedIn post out basically saying, do any other marketeers or brand people want to get together with me and do some pro bono work for charities or businesses is fighting the COVID effort. And that got 100 ,000 views in 24 hours.

47:23He had 5 ,000 or 6 ,000 people sign up. And he called me within about 12 to 24 hours and said, listen, Felix, this thing's kind of taken off more than I thought it would. Would you like to build it together? And so I said, sure, absolutely. I'm on furlough. I'm not one to lie around much necessarily. So we did it. So for six months, we built an amazing pro bono business, helping charities in domestic violence space, NHS charities, COVID vaccine, raising money for them, publicizing them, all of this kind of stuff. And we had a network of volunteers from comms director at Disney volunteered some of her time right down to people coming out of university who are looking for something to put on the CV.

47:57And after about six months, bigger businesses came to us and said, you know, we love the story. We love the work. If you guys wanted to do this for profit, give us a shout. So we did. So we set up a marketing agency look after group. And that was a profitable business grew relatively well. We had some pretty good high profile clients, both here in the UK and abroad. But I don't think it was it never felt like the end game for us we really had the appetite and the desire to move into a high growth tech business that we felt had truly global scale and we had a lot of businesses as you can imagine in a company like that come through our doors asking if we can pitch for work or we're struggling with this and and our vision for going into the marketing business was this gives us an excuse to be in any room anywhere in the world to learn about different sectors to learn about the challenges and the issues, what drives them, what doesn't.

48:49And from there, potentially that big high growth idea will come. And we both shared this distinctive view that when something chaotic like a global pandemic happens, the whole narrative and shape of things shift. And my feeling going into it was, if I can't come out of this period, back on the path to the big high growth business idea that I think I can and want to build, then I've done something wrong. It has to be now or never. So we built the agency. We did that for about two or three years. And then we just got chatting and we said, you know, we've done this for a while. We've thought about different spaces.

49:20If we were going to do something, where would we do it? We knew it would be AI. We looked at adult and we felt that if you look historically, adult has always been the trailblazer in the adoption of new technology. So the first ever online payment on the internet was taken for an adult business. Yeah. Since probably the advent of the tube sites, OnlyFans was probably one of the only people to really innovate and shake up the space. But they struggled massively with regulatory issues and challenges. And so I think that we felt that if we could combine AI, crypto with some of the infrastructure elements of how the business can be run and monetized and trying to navigate challenges with traditional payment providers and stuff.

50:03that through that we could overcome some of the barriers to entry. And then we had a blue ocean of opportunity in terms of an industry which has some of the highest user numbers in the world and one that is relatively under-innovated in. And so we took a calculated step to explore something in that industry. And the way we did it was my business partner, Nick, he spent 12 months just researching, immersing himself, talking to people within the industry. And during that 12 months, I continued to run the marketing agency and effectively fund this initial research, then development of an MVP, and then building of the actual business.

50:39So it was a very gradual process until we got to which stage at which we kind of said, listen, this is really exciting and this is the time to jump. And I jumped ship over to join them and did this. So does that marketing agency look after still exist? It doesn't. We'd love it to. But like any business, maybe you were, I'm sure you work with agencies at Reed. We were actually peaked at 11, 12 people. So relatively small, but with some great clients. but fundamentally service businesses are about people. And we were very honest with a lot of our clients to say, listen, we've got this other business idea.

51:09We're going to go and pursue it. What are your thoughts about that? And they were very sort of complimentary and encouraged us to do it. I think most of them felt that, listen, if you guys aren't there to run the day-to-day and build this business, that's the reason we work with you in the first place. It's not quite the same offering that maybe we had. But I'm pleased to say that - But you shared this idea with them, did you? We did, yeah. And they were encouraging. Some introduced us to investors, yeah. did they? Yeah, they did. And actually, I'm pleased to say that some of our team, three or four of them ended up going on and bringing some of our existing clients on there as either freelancers or to new agencies that they went to.

51:39So continuity existed, even if we ended up stopping it. No, that's fascinating. Is there anything you feel you haven't shared with me that you should, that our listeners ought to know about your business or why you're doing it? I mean, I think one thing that I would say is what's in it for users, right? So we've spoken a lot about creators and how they can be given an asset that can help make them money and help them scale their businesses but why are users going to use this instead of a lot of the content that they can already consume on a site like only fans so price is a consideration um you know those that haven't used only fans won't know but those that have know that creators can charge relatively extortionate prices for access to individual pieces of bespoke content from a pricing perspective ours is incredibly competitive and as i mentioned earlier the content quality the experience is not just the same we actually allow you to create anything that you want serve to you within 45 seconds in real time.

52:28So you can really have the content experience and engagement with the creator in the way that you've always dreamed. And that's a bit of a limiting factor of OnlyFans. So the ability to be served something instantly, the ability to be able to create whatever you want of that dream creator of that person that you look up to or like, and the ability to do so at a competitive price is certainly something that's of interest to users. And then if we just look at, we mentioned Jordan, you know, Jordan doesn't exist anymore, but through the use of AI, we can bring back those content experiences that existed 20 years ago that don't anymore.

52:57So there's a lot that we're doing both in terms of enhancing the existing content experience that users might have enjoyed on a site like OnlyFans, as well as using AI to do something that isn't possible in the real world, i.e. bring Jordan back to life, that I think makes it an exciting proposition for users as well as for creators. It's offering a sort of weird sort of immortality to eternal youth. Well, a little bit, yeah. It's kind of weird that you can do that. And conceptually, that could continue long after a real person has left life entirely. I think so. I think so. I mean, that gets into very dangerous territory.

53:34Well, it's kind of interesting. We've crossed it, yeah, but it is interesting. Well, I used to study moral philosophy and that's an interesting question in that space. and I remember thinking with in vitro fertilization someone who's dead could conceive a child and that became a famous case Diane Blood case subsequently. So yeah this is an interesting, this is for me particularly interesting because it's all new I mean you're pioneering new ground and it will raise all sorts of other questions and experiences and developments that we cannot foresee I'm sure of that. I think so and And despite all the chatter around the world being AI, AI, AI, we really are at the start in terms of genuine adoption and the scale and power that these models can create in terms of experiences.

54:21I mean, we haven't even mentioned video in relation to our business. It's something we'll be releasing in the next couple of months' time. But video just adds an entirely new dimension to these experiences. And I think very soon, within a couple of years, you'll get to a stage where people will be able to create two, three, four minute long videos of anything that they want. and that level of personalized content experience, we talk about personalization a lot within our business, that's unprecedented compared to what simply an algorithm to filter you the right content can do. It's an entirely new layer of a bespoke experience.

54:51So I really do think we're just at the start of what's possible and as AI continues to grow and we continue to innovate, the way users can engage with creators and create content, it's going to be crazy and it's going to be hyper-personalized and serve to you now in instant gratification. it's going to be crazy it's going to be hyper personalized it's going to be served to you now that's it those are key messages i think that that's a good point to conclude our conversation because there's a lot coming down the track a huge amount of change and and i'm so glad you came in to talk this through with me because i've learned a lot well thank you and i'm going to follow you and your business with great interest because i i'm sure it's going to develop in all sorts of interesting ways.

55:34Well, thank you for having me. And I wish you all the best. It's been a pleasure.

55:39I ask two questions at the end that I ask all my guests. The first is, Felix, what is it that gets you up on a Monday morning? I think the feeling that we're doing something that can genuinely change the world and can genuinely revolutionize an industry or the space that we're working in. And with this business, I really feel that. I'm honest to some friends when they ask me, this is your third business, really. What's different about this one to others that you've built before? And not only have we already brought it to a scale far beyond what I got to with my previous businesses, this one I genuinely feel, and no, we're holding the ball right now.

56:16We really can be the ones to completely revolutionize and disrupt this industry. And it's a multi-billion dollar industry. And I've not felt that feeling in my gut every day like I do now with any of my previous ventures. So I think you've got to wake up with a yearning, with a genuine excitement to open your laptop, to sit down, to begin going again. And I have that. And since we've been starting this adventure or thinking about it almost two and a half years ago or so, from that day, I've never lost it. And it's just an inside motivation and guttural feeling that makes all the difference, I think.

56:48Okay. Well, the next question, which is from my book, Why You, 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again, fits perfectly because it's where do you see yourself in five years' time? I think from our space, I really believe that we'll have done to the kind of AI content and creator space what OnlyFans did to the creator and the not safe for work space generally. I believe that we will have revolutionized the scale of innovation that is possible through AI and how we apply these models to create content experiences, which are something unique and that the world's never seen before, and provided creators with an asset to be able to make the absolute most out of the value and the IP that they've worked so hard to create through a tool that gives users a way to interact with them in a way that currently isn't possible in the real world.

57:33And I think we can very much be a household name in doing that and maybe in the way that OnlyFans has been. Well, I look forward to watching this space and I hope you'll come back and talk to me in five years' time and we can see where we're going to. Definitely. Thank you, Felix. Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you. Enjoyed that conversation. thank you Felix for joining me on all about business I'm your host James Reed chairman and CEO of Reed a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company if you'd like to find out more about Reed Felix and O all links are in the show notes see you next time