In this episode of the My First Million podcast, hosts Sam Parr and Shaun Puri discuss the rise of adult‑content platforms that cater to the modern, mobile‑first audience. They start by describing Arsenic, a company they liken to “Playboy for the Snapchat generation,” which runs a curated Snapchat channel featuring attractive models, email newsletters, and occasional live events. The conversation moves to the broader creator economy, focusing on OnlyFans as a dominant platform that lets cam‑girls and web models monetize private photo and video feeds, with Sam estimating north of $100 million in subscription revenue. They compare platform policies, noting Snapchat’s strict nudity rules versus OnlyFans’ permissive stance. Shaun recounts a past venture, Blab, that failed to gain traction until they considered pivoting to the adult‑content market, highlighting the strategic importance of serving creator demand when mainstream platforms shy away. Both hosts express personal and business support for empowering creators in this space, while acknowledging the ethical nuances. Throughout, they touch on revenue models, market size, and the cultural shift toward subscription‑based adult content.
Chapters
I for sure bet, I would bet you for sure they're in north of $100 million in subscription revenue.
Uh, what do we got? Um, I wanna talk about, talk about this idea. Um, it's not even an idea, it's a company, Arsenic.
Yeah, they've been around for about 4 years now. Yeah, I know.
I don't know how they're doing. Do you know if they're doing well?
They were doing okay. Um, basically the way that I knew some like media people who talked about them and knew them. And I'm almost positive that it's run like it looks like it's run, which is a bunch of kids who are good-looking and rent a mansion and they just do— right. So they have debauchery.
And so the idea is Arsenic is essentially Playboy for the Snapchat generation. And so they have a Snapchat channel because, you know, the idea is like, okay, Playboy is a big deal. Uh, what would Playboy be like today? It would not be a magazine. It would be, you know, a Snapchat channel. And so they created this Snapchat channel, which is perfect because it's like, if you follow it, you get it. If not, it's not in your face. So it's not like— like Facebook would be a little weird, Instagram would be a little weird.
And they have email too.
And they just have this mansion and they have all these models and it's not porn, but it's definitely models who are good looking. And they just have one model like sort of take over the channel. At least this is what it was 3 years ago. I just think this is a great idea. They raised $3 million. I don't know how they're doing.
So they've got books, they do like tours. I think that it could be doing a— the idea is cool.
I bet it's a cash cow.
I think it— hmm. Well, I—
because they were getting millions of views back then on their videos. I can only assume it's grown unless Snapchat blocked them, but they're not outside the bounds of what Snapchat allows.
Snapchat allows porn, right?
No, they don't allow porn, but they see a lot of porn.
They allow nudity?
They don't. Uh, if you're putting on your stories, you'll get banned eventually if you're doing nudity. They do— they don't do nudity. What's that?
For a private account, you can eventually—
if it gets flagged, they'll take it down. Like, it's not in the rules to do nudity. Well, that's as far as I know.
Have you heard of OnlyFans? Yeah, love it.
So explain OnlyFans.
OnlyFans. So basically what happened is on Snapchat, all these porn stars were putting up like porn. Yeah, like, well, softcore porn. I don't think it was like sex, but, uh, like, pay me $10 and I'll let you follow me, right?
And you'll follow my account where I post nudes.
And OnlyFans launched and what they did was it was a platform where they— I don't think they started with porn, but now it is that.
Yeah.
So just embrace it. But basically, if you— I don't even think it's porn. I think it's like web girls, cam girls, and you pay $20, however much they want you to, and you get access to their private video feeds.
Yeah, it's like Patreon, but porn, basically. So you pay, you become a contributor, and then you get their private photos and videos.
It's taken off.
Has it?
Yeah. And the reason, yeah, cuz I was doing like, who cares if I consume it or not from a business point of view? That's just how I know about it.
Well, we all care if you consume it or not. And, uh, and, uh, I mean, no surprise.
Like, oh, I did research on it.
I did research on it. Of course this takes off.
Yeah. But so here's, you know why I think these things take off is the people who don't take care of the creators, they, they, they, for these types of things, they, they go away.
Yes. Um, and so there's always demand. So the demand is always there. The question is, does the platform allow the supply to do what they want to do? And the big platforms don't do it because it's not worth their brand and risk and all this stuff because they have big users.
OnlyFans, I for sure bet, I would bet you for sure they're in north of $100 million in subscription revenue and then they take their cut.
That's insane. At one point in time when we had a, we had Blab, like live streaming product. And it wasn't working. We had to pivot, and we pivoted eventually to video gaming. But I definitely laid out a case to the company, that investor. I was like, look, porn is the— porn is where this would be the best.
Like, these— they're not like fucking on camera, I don't think.
Okay, well, whatever you want to call it, like softcore porn or whatever. But like, going after the sort of the camgirl market is a pretty— it's a big market, and the websites that are there really, really suck. And so, so sounds like OnlyFans did well. We had kind of a heart-to-heart. We're like, is this what we wanna build? And, uh, you know, my co-founder felt a certain way. The investors felt a certain way.
What did Furqan wanna do?
Um, he was like, not down with that. He was—
I'm so down with that.
Yeah. So I think it's, you gotta make a personal choice. And since then I've had a bunch of entrepreneurs reach out being like, hey, we saw you did Blab. We read your postmortem. You guys got to 4 million users, but it didn't work. I have a very similar concept. I think it's gonna work. Can you give me some advice? And I tell 'em from the bat jump, I'm like, This version is not gonna work. Consider porn. I think it could work. Consider the camgirl angle because, you know, that's the one stone we didn't turn when we were considering, you know, where to pivot this thing to make it work.
I would for sure do that because think all these like Patreon, all the shit, they're like, we're gonna empower creators. Okay, I'm behind that. But even though a lot of times I think they don't, but if you're gonna empower a creator, imagine this like woman who can just crush it. By not breaking the law and just using her own body. I'm philosophically, I'm so in favor of that, right?
Yeah, I think as a business person I'm definitely in favor of it. I think it's just a personal choice.
As a business person, I love it. As just like a human being, I'm like, yeah.
