The business behind OnlyFans, with CEO Keily Blair

0:28Hey, folks. OnlyFans says it has grown to about$7 billion in annual revenue in over 400 million users around the world. Remarkably, it has also distributed$25 billion to its more than 4 million creators. Keely joined me on stage in Lisbon at Web Summit for a lively conversation about how she leads this rapidly growing business. We talked about scaling in the face of massive regulatory hurdles and the intense scrutiny that comes from making and platforming adult content as part of your business model. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

1:16Hello, Web Summits.

1:21Keely, welcome to Masters of Scale Live at Web Summit Lisbon. Thanks, Jeff. It's lovely to be here. Thrilled to have you. Keely, I think you have perhaps the most intriguing, I'm going to call it brand problem, of any CEO we've had on the show because you have, I'm guessing, 99 % brand awareness in this room. And with those folks, you probably have 100 % who identify only fans with adult content, not safe for work content. Is it a brand problem? so I disagree with the fact that it's a brand problem because most brands would love to have a level of brand awareness that only fans have we also have an incredibly loyal community we have 400 million users globally and we have 4 million content creators in addition to that as we can see from the room out here it's a huge draw everyone's intrigued by only fans everyone's a little bit interested and the reality is that even though lots of people have heard of only fans they may never have actually been on our platform.

2:24So there is a bit of a disconnect between the reality of how we approach the world of content creation at OnlyFans versus, I would say, the general perception or mood music sometimes. But I love a challenge, so I like to change that. And yet there is a stigma, right? I mean, when you all hire, you ask people, are you prepared to sit at a holiday dinner with your family and talk about what you do, right? For creators who might otherwise use OnlyFans, maybe there's a hesitation. Even if your tools are better, they're going to go to Patreon or Substack or what have you. So let's just level set for a moment before we get to this.

2:57The scale of the business is quite extraordinary. Six plus billion dollars in revenue last year? Seven actually, Jeff. Seven. And payouts historically to creators are now 25 billion. So massive numbers. But to get to 10, 15, 20 billion in revenue, payouts 50, $100 billion in revenue. I assume you're going to have to go beyond the core of this adult content. Well, Jeff, OnlyFans was never created as an adult content site. It was always created as a site for adults, so people who are over 18 plus, and they can choose to share whatever content they wish to share that's allowed under our terms of service.

3:35What adult content creators realized quickly was that OnlyFans was the only platform that was built with monetization in mind, direct monetization of your fan base, right? At a fair 80-20 split where the creators retain 80 % of any payment on the platform and we retain 20%, that's applied to every creator on the platform, right? And from day one. So you don't need to achieve a certain minimum number of followers or have something else in your back pocket or already be a celebrity. You can start earning and monetizing your content with your fan base immediately as soon as you sign up and go through our creator onboarding process.

4:13Adult content creators are exceptionally savvy, exceptionally smart, and have been marginalized from other areas of the internet. We also know that adult content appears on a lot of other traditional social media platforms, but without the safety and controls that we have in place to help keep our community safe. And many of those other social media platforms are accessible by people as young as 13. So to my mind, it's not a stigma. It's actually something to be incredibly proud of. Okay, fair, yes. And particularly in the US, we have a less sex-positive culture. You've got United States senators who are not your biggest fans in the world.

4:48And yet, I have to imagine that for a Brene Brown or a Mel Robbins or for a Reid Hoffman, for example, they might hesitate to come on the platform because of the association with the spicier content. That's true, but we don't try to be everyone's cup of tea. We're happy to be someone's glass of champagne, is how I would put it. So I think for us, we recognize that actually the creator economy is exceptionally broad. Yes, please. I mean... You know, always pick to be the champagne. Never pick to be the tea. And I think for us, we recognize that the creator economy is exceptionally broad. Most creators appear on a variety of different platforms.

5:28In fact, over 200 million internet users now identify themselves as a creator. That's one in 30 people who use the internet says they're a content creator. You're a content creator, Jeff. Not a great one, but yes. You are? I'm a content creator with my amazing LinkedIn posts, obviously, and my OnlyFans account, which is on beekeeping. But more and more people are sharing more and more of themselves online as content creators. And they're not typically doing that on one platform. Each platform has its place in the ecosystem. OnlyFans is not going to be a place for everybody who wants to share their content.

5:59But I'm seeing it as being more and more of an avenue for people within the adult content space, but also athletes, musicians, race car drivers, anything and everything in terms or the content that people want to share, as long as it's within our terms of service, and they can directly monetize. And the thing that makes me very proud about that 25 billion figure, Jeff, is that for me, a lot of tech companies do not actually create wealth for other people, right? They create wealth for themselves and they create wealth for others in the tech ecosystem. But this is putting money back into the hands of real people who are creating content and cutting out the middleman, which I think is a pretty incredible business model.

6:38And as I said, I don't view it as a stigma. my view is something to be very proud of. One more question on this before we pivot a bit. When we shared that we'd be in conversation for Masters of Scale on LinkedIn, we got some flaming. And I responded. And one of the things that I was saying is not only is your scale and your creator tools and your monetization, all of that, your place in the ecosystem clearly merits this conversation and this stage. But there are creators creating sex content who otherwise might be on the streets, who otherwise might be in much more dangerous positions than they are today.

7:10How do you think about your role in society, not the internet, not monetization, but in society in what OnlyFans does? I think it's twofold. So I think when we look at it from the adult content creator perspective, I do think we have made things an awful lot safer for the people who create adult content. So a lot of people don't understand that in order to open an OnlyFans account, you have to basically complete what is bank KYC on steroids, I would say. So you've got to give us your name, your date of birth, your address, your social security number or tax ID information number, your bank account details, your other social media accounts, a copy of your government ID, and then go through a third-party age assurance or age verification process.

7:51So it's not something you can just do like that, right? Then all of the content that creates a share on our platform is not end-to-end encrypted. So we can moderate and do moderate all the content that appears on our platform. And we actually have a lot stricter terms of service than people think. It's not the wild west of the internet. there's things that happen on other traditional social media platforms that simply don't happen on OnlyFans and one of the main reasons is actually because everybody is verified so it's a true social network in that sense we know who our creators are we know who our fans are and so we believe that that creates a unique opportunity for them to engage in sharing content in the way that they want to so circling back to do we feel like this is a good thing for society I think that we need to be realistic about the society that we live in.

8:38Sex has always been a part of the human experience, right? We wouldn't be here without it. We wouldn't be here without it, exactly. Kind of necessary, and I think we would actually be a whole lot better and healthier as a society if we talked about it and acknowledged it, and if we said, okay, we know that the majority of adults look at adult content online. Wouldn't it be nice if that content was consensual, ethical, directly monetized, monitored, and was made in a safe way. And so that then as a fan, you can be like, I'm making an ethical choice in choosing to engage with adult content in this way.

9:12It's also a huge part of the LGBTQ plus community as well. So we're very proud of those members of our community. And it always kind of pains me a little bit because when people talk about stigma or anything else, they always talk about it in the context of women. They very rarely focus on our male content creators either. Oh, interesting. And we attribute this to misogyny. Your words, not mine, Jeff. But I mean, I can tell you what the empirical reality is that I'm seeing. And the questions that I always get asked are always about why are women doing OnlyFans? It's never why are men doing OnlyFans?

9:44Or shouldn't these women be doing something else with their body? Or shouldn't they be earning money in a different way? That question never gets asked about our male content creators. And I can guess why. Still ahead, more with OnlyFans CEO Keely Blair.

10:23Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in.

10:40You're listening to Masters of Scale, and you can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel. Also, be sure to check out the link in our show notes to subscribe to our newsletter. This week, the newsletter has an epic book list of all our favorite reads, just in time for your holiday shopping. You embrace your Not Safe for Work content creators. You are proud of them on the platform. And you want to diversify. Yes. You want to push into other categories. If you look at the history of the big platforms, and YouTube quite famously with a$100 million creator fund, they started seeding an ecosystem.

11:18Do you think about market makers? Do you think about going to a Brene Brown or an Andrew Huberman or a Reid Hoffman and saying, look, we want to incentivize you to come on our platform? How are you thinking about that? So we like to do things very deliberately at OnlyFans. We don't like to take risky big bets for no good reason. So one area where we've been exploring that is in comedy. So we have OFTV, which, unlike the platform, is a free streaming service. It's all safe for work content, so don't get too excited. Very good content, but not that kind of content. and what we did with OFTV and comedy is that we started a grassroots comedy show called LMAOF.

11:52It looks better written down rather than said out loud. But for us, we were like, comedy is a place where you have fanatical fans, incredible creators, and unless you're in the top 1%, you're getting paid nothing, basically. You have no exposure and it's very hard for you to make a living. So for us, we were like, this is an area that's ripe for disruption. So we started doing a touring grassroots live comedy show where we pay the comedians and they turn up on the night they have to open an OnlyFans account where they're sharing comedy content and connect with their fans we record LMAOF and then we put that on OFTV and so for us that's been a really great experiment in that sort of premium creator payment structure model we've done the same thing with a number of different athletes as well and we're starting to see really great success there the hard thing is threading the needle I would say because a lot of people want to put everybody in a box they want to say you, Jeff, are only a podcast host.

12:47And you're like, but I'm not only a podcast host. I also do amazing conferences. And I do this, and I do that. Most people are multi-hyphenated in terms of how they are and what they do. And for OnlyFans, people are always very keen to say it's just an adult content platform, even though factually that is simply not correct. Well, factually not correct, and yet 98 % of your revenue, 99, I mean, some huge portion of revenue does come from there. and it is where the brand is currently associated. And I very much appreciate what we're doing with OFTV and using platforms like YouTube to promote it and bring people back to the platform.

13:22It's a very smart playbook being executed. These are ripples. And there are splash opportunities out there. Should we expect to see OnlyFans splashes with a set of huge globally known creators in comedy, in wellness, et cetera, coming on to OnlyFans in the next couple of years? I would expect to see more of that, yes. Are you having those conversations to get them there? We are having those conversations, but for me, it's also really important that it's with the right creators and it's the right brand opportunity, right? So I always look at actually Red Bull's brand evolution as being a really good character arc for OnlyFans.

13:57You know, if you think about Red Bull originally, it was seen as a sugar water, highly caffeinated sugar water drink that had no place in sports. And obviously they built an incredibly successful Formula One team. They branched out into doing everything else. So when we look at the creator economy, it's not every creator is going to be right for us we're not going to be their cup of tea and that's okay so it's about finding the right big moments the right big deals the right big partnerships that align with our brand values as well like the reason why I ask people that question during our recruitment process is because I need them to be true believers we are a mission driven company a lot of people don't understand that about us and so it's incredibly important for me to understand that the person who I'm looking at hiring because we only have 42 full-time employees, is actually really believes the mission, can articulate the mission back to me, understands why they want to work somewhere, not just because it's cool and we have awesome merch, but because actually they believe in what we're doing and they understand the story and the role that we have to play in society.

14:57I think we just slid over something very powerful here. 42 full time employees with north of$7 billion in revenue, one of the highest revenue per full time head count of probably any company in history. How are you doing that? Yeah, so that's another thing that we're very proud of. I think it's just over 37 million per head in terms of revenue. So we're pretty efficient bunch, to be honest.

15:27It's why every hire is very important. You got to make sure you keep the revenue back up to make sure it matches that. For us, it's actually a structural decision about how we run the business so we hire incredibly senior talent and then we hire incredibly hungry junior talent and we look for attitude and aptitude in hiring rather than experience and we do not have that sort of squidgy layer of middle management in the middle because nobody's ever had a really good middle manager in my experience and so for us we were like actually let's get rid of that model let's keep things very lean let's scale up teams when we need to for projects so we have 42 full-time employees but we've got a big dev project to do we might hire some additional dev engineers in on a contract also what that means is that i also get to try before i buy in terms of hiring so i know whether they're going to be a really great culture fit and really have that roll up your sleeves attitude that we need to continue to maintain that lean team.

16:22I also think as well, though, that actually a lot of big companies reward empire building. As a leader in that company, you think, well, I'm going to be judged on the number of people who are reporting to me. I'm going to be judged on the size of my team. Whereas we've said to our teams, you know, you can be a team of one and deliver exceptional results, and that will be so valued. And you will not be metriced on like your KPIs will not be how many people report to you. In fact, if you come and you tell me you need a hire, I'm going to make you say, what is the project you can't do right now without this person?

16:55Yeah, and I think one of the important things here also is in so many companies, you can be an extraordinary individual contributor, and then you hit a ceiling, and you have to become a manager to move up in compensation and title, etc. And it sounds like you have built a team and a culture where actually that's not the case. No, we actually say there is no manager track. Like we have said that to people. And in the past, where people have started to sort of get that in their head that's what they should be looking for they should be looking for like oh a bigger title or i would say a bigger office but we remote work so that's not a case here either but we actively sit down with them and say that's not how your value is measured here that's not what we're looking to see from you everyone is an individual contributor i'm still an individual contributor our cfo is still an individual cto is as individual contributor and that means that we're close to the business and we know what's going on operationally and we can make decisions fast.

17:47So it's a very different business model and it's very deliberately structured that way. As we sit here in November of 2025, I think we're actually legally required to talk about AI. It's a mandate. I know that OnlyFans has been deploying AI slash machine learning for years. I'd like to focus in on the creator side of AI. You all have banned a set of AI content. Can you talk about what your policies on that are and what the rationale is? So if we all got given a dollar for every time AI was mentioned at Web Summit, we'd all be tech billionaires, it'd be great. But instead, that's only for a few.

18:21But for us and AI, the key thing for us is actually every business decision needs to benefit the creators, right? So for that reason, we've made the decision not to allow wholly AI accounts, because ultimately that would cannibalize our creators' ability to directly monetize their real content. In addition, all of the research points to humans not wanting AI to produce media and entertainment content. So Ipsos have been tracking this for the last three years. And now it's three in four Americans say they want humans to produce their media and entertainment content, not AI. And that figure has been increasing over the last two years, not decreasing, right?

19:00So don't buy the hype. I do not think that we all want to be scrolling through millions and millions of AI generated content. And so for us, when we say to our creators, what do they want and what do they want to see us bring in? It's ways that they can use AI to enhance their content, right? So it's still clear it's their content. There's still that human element to it. You still have that connection to the creator. But let's imagine they've got a funny background on or your hair is pink, Jeff, or whatever you want to do in that sense. As long as we can tell that it's still you, then that's fine.

19:33And they should be able to, the fans should be able to know that it's AI content as well. So that's very clear. So I want to come back to how creators might use AI in an appropriate way on the platform. I want to spend one minute on the AI creators because I hear you in terms of what people say they want. And I believe that they believe that that's what they want. And yet, we can go back to the movie Her as sort of a rudimentary prototype of what is coming. I was having a conversation here yesterday where I'm like, look, we're going to have a Kim Kardashian AI that is going to be able to engage with you and give you everything from beauty advice to marketing advice to business advice, etc.

20:07And you're going to feel like you have a one-to-one relationship with Kim, and that's how she's going to scale her brand and her business in this next generation. There's some version of that that's coming. The ability to personalize content through AI, where someone in a more wholesome way could generate an image or a video of that customer sitting with that AI creator, that completely computer-generated creator at a coffee shop or walking down the beach or in a much more spicy situation. I have to believe that there's a meaningful set of people who will want that and that that begins to eat away at the one-to-one relationship that your customers and your creators have through your platform.

20:46See, I disagree. I don't think there is a meaningful set of people who want that. I think if you actually turn to the person next to you and you said, do you want a real friend or an AI friend? What's the answer that they're going to give you? A hundred percent, but that real friend may not be available at three in the morning and play to your particular interest at that time. That's fine, but that's not going to replace people. It's going to be an augmented set of reality, that's absolutely sure. I love to video game, but I don't video game 24-7 and I now all of a sudden don't do anything else.

21:14It's again this idea that we have to be all or nothing, that it's either going to be wholly AI or wholly human. I think it'll be a combination of the two, but I think we're going to crave more authenticity, we're going to crave more human. As we get fed more AI slop, we're going to go, actually I think I like the human bit over there more. In terms of your human creators using AI there's been a good bit reported about OnlyFans creators using chat farms effectively to engage directly with the audience and try to pull them into these one-on-one relationships pay for custom content or what have you that feels like a quite natural use case for AI what's your view on that piece of it should they be doing that are they doing that?

21:57Yeah I mean that's the difference When you look at AI, I would say that's operational AI. Are there AI tools that can help creators to optimize their business? Absolutely. That's very different from content creation AI in that sense. Our terms of service have always been very clear. Creators can and do use third parties to help them manage their accounts. If you're a creator with billions of fans, it's natural that you're going to use some tools and some individuals to help you to prioritize. But the content that you're making is your content. That person is subscribing to your content or purchasing that content on a pay-per-view basis.

22:30I mean, I should say that people always associate OnlyFans with subscriptions, but actually for the last three years, one-off purchases is actually dwarfing subscription revenue. So it was 67 % last year. It was one-off purchases, which I think is also showing a real trend in terms of how people want to engage with specific pieces of content and have a much more a la carte approach to how they consume media on the internet. You and I are both lawyers by training. We both practiced. I think we both actually liked being lawyers. It's true, I do. We didn't hate the job. And it clearly gives you some special expertise in this role.

23:04One of the things, I was at MySpace, which half of you probably don't even know what it is. We took a proactive role in shaping early social media legislation. You have taken a proactive role in shaping online safety legislation. Bringing it back to AI, how should regulators be thinking about AI regulation right now? and how should industry be leading or following on that front? I think we can look at what went wrong with the early days of social media and privacy. So really good caution retail about the importance of getting regulation right and getting it right early. But you need to also not stifle innovation as well, right?

23:45So, and the problem is actually that a lot of the people writing the legislations don't understand the technology, right? So it begins with dialogue. and I think there's far too little dialogue in general at the moment in the world but when it comes to AI regulation I really believe that technology companies need to accept that regulation is necessary it's responsible and that they should be helping governments to understand how to legislate in a way that doesn't stifle innovation and in a way that the proclamation that China's going to win the AI race doesn't become a reality but first of all that requires A, an acknowledgement from government that all technology is not bad.

24:25B, an acknowledgement from technology sector that all regulation is not bad. And then everyone to sit down and get some really smart people in the room and figure out how they're going to navigate through this and to not be too prescriptive. I think when it comes to legislation, principles-based legislation is often easier and then more detailed guidance as particular threats emerge. But that's just my view. If I was queen for a day, Jeff, that's what I'd do. We could explore what else you would do there. if we only had another half an hour, we really royally screwed up the first version of the internet.

24:53Going through Web 1.0, the social media era, creators create, they give it away for free. It's not like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, etc. built monetization in. Everything was given away. You had to move people off platform. You, Patreon, others evolved to create monetization, but it's not native to the behavior and it's super difficult to say, you've been getting all this for free, now you have to pay for it, right? I know you and I agree on this. So as we move from what is likely more of an open web into more of an AI agent-driven engagement world. How do you imagine that evolving from a monetization perspective and the role that you all will play?