Who's In This Podcast
Helen Todd is co-founder and CEO of Sociality Squared and the human behind Creativity Squared.
Cindy Gallop is the Founder & CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, the world's first and only user-generated, human-curated social sex video-sharing platform.
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Ep43. Sex, A.I. & the Human Condition: Discover ‘Godmother of SexTech’ Cindy Gallop’s MakeLoveNotPorn Social Sex Revolution through the Female Lens
Cindy Gallop, who is the face of ‘the Social Sex Revolution’, joins Creativity Squared again to discuss sex, A.I., and the human condition.
Cindy is the Founder & CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, the world’s first and only user-generated, human-curated social sex video-sharing platform. Its mission is to end rape culture by socializing and normalizing sex and promoting good sexual values and behavior.
In our first conversation in Creativity Squared Episode 35, Cindy shared her solution to end deepfakes which disproportionately target women. Her answer: Fund female founders.
As she shared, we haven’t fully realized the potential of the internet and technology through the female lens, where we will all be safer, happier, and making more money, including men!
Join Helen and invest in Cindy, a female founder, in just a couple of clicks right now!
You have the opportunity to get equity in MakeLoveNotPorn with as low as a $100 micro-investment.
Support Cindy scaling her core business and building out the MakeLoveNotPorn Academy for the best sex education, based on age appropriateness, on the web.
Invest today: https://wefunder.com/makelovenotporn/.
This is Cindy’s first-ever equity crowdfunding campaign, led by actress Jameela Jamil and hosted on the Wefunder platform.
Cindy also explains the importance of MakeLoveNotPorn’s revenue-sharing model and user ownership of content and data. Additionally, we discuss why Cindy pioneered the SexTech category, her thoughts on A.I., intimacy & the loneliness epidemic, where SexTech is today, and where it can go beyond just the hardware. Cindy also shares how SexTech can be used in gaming and messaging to improve our human-to-human sexual interactions and relationships. Despite an increasingly tech-driven world, Cindy stresses the value of human connection and touch.
Cindy accurately predicted sex in self-driving cars. What are her other SexTech predictions? Listen in and keep reading to find out!
Invest in MakeLoveNotPorn
“I want to build the go-to global hub for the best of the world’s sex education content.”
Cindy Gallop
With the goal to raise one million dollars, the campaign aims to empower MakeLoveNotPorn to scale its core business and bring to life the MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, a groundbreaking platform poised to revolutionize sex education.
Modeled after the wildly successful Khan Academy, the MakeLoveNotPorn Academy will aggregate top-tier, age-appropriate sex ed content from educators worldwide, making it accessible to all.
But the Academy’s mission goes beyond mere access.
By bringing together a diverse array of expert voices and resources, and making them accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, Cindy aims to fill the gaping void in quality sex education that persists in societies around the world. She envisions a future where every person, from curious children to adults seeking to deepen their understanding, can access the information and support they need to lead healthy, fulfilling sexual lives filtered by age appropriateness and other culturally relevant filters.
The Academy, Cindy explains, will be built on the same principles of inclusivity, consent, and creator empowerment that have made MakeLoveNotPorn a pioneering force in the SexTech space. By ensuring that educators retain ownership of their content and share fairly in the revenues generated, she seeks to create a sustainable ecosystem that values and rewards the vital work of sex education.
Centering human curation, prioritizing creator ownership, and implementing a 50/50 revenue share model, this platform will democratize income for sex educators while ensuring the highest standards of safety and consent.
In a world where sex ed is often stigmatized and sidelined, the Academy stands to be a game-changer.
“…one investor said to me: ‘Cindy, the moment one hundred schools sign on the Academy, you’re looking at a completely different value proposition.’ So that’s the game plan.”
Cindy Gallop
Pioneering the SexTech Revolution
As the trailblazing “Godmother of SexTech,” Cindy Gallop knows a thing or two about pushing boundaries. A decade ago, she coined the term “SexTech” and set out to legitimize the category, paving the way for a new era of innovation at the intersection of sexuality and technology.
“I deliberately set out to define pioneer and champion my own category, SexTech,” Cindy explains. “And I did that purely to create a climate of receptivity amongst investors, by giving MakeLoveNotPorn somewhere to live, but by legitimizing my own category.”
Her tireless advocacy has transformed the landscape, opening doors for a wave of founders and startups aligned on using technology to improve IRL human sexuality for the betterment of all.
But as Cindy is quick to point out, the SexTech revolution is just getting started. While much of the buzz has centered on hardware — think teledildonics, VR porn, and sex robots — the real opportunity lies in harnessing technology to bring people closer together in the real world. And that, she argues, is where female founders come in.
Central to Cindy’s vision for a SexTech revolution is the conviction that female founders hold the key to unlocking the industry’s full potential. She argues passionately for the need to funnel more resources and support to women-led ventures, citing the unique perspective and untapped innovation they bring to the table.
“Honestly…the world we would all want to live and work in is the world that women want to build.”
Cindy Gallop
Cindy points to the stark gender imbalances in venture capital funding as evidence of the uphill battle female founders face in bringing their visions to life. With a mere 1.7% of VC (venture capital) dollars flowing to women-led startups, she argues, we are leaving an immense pool of talent and transformative potential on the table.
Investing in female founders, Cindy maintains, is not just a matter of equity and fairness — it’s a sound business strategy. Women bring a distinctive lens to the challenges and opportunities of SexTech, one informed by their lived experiences, their deep understanding of the needs and desires of female consumers, and their commitment to building products and platforms that promote empathy, connection, and well-being.
By channeling more resources to female-led SexTech ventures, Cindy believes we can unlock a wave of innovation that will reshape the industry and, in turn, transform the way we understand and experience sexuality and intimacy in the digital age. “Fund female founders,” Cindy urges.
“It’s as simple as that,” she goes on to explain. “Through the female lens is how we will all be a whole lot safer, a whole lot better taken care of, a whole lot happier — and because of all that, that is a whole lot more lucrative. That’s our future.”
Future of SexTech Beyond Hardware
Looking ahead, Cindy shares her unique vision for the future of SexTech, beyond the hardware.
“If you mention the word sex tech, most people think sex toys, sex robots — that’s about as far as their imagination goes,” Cindy shares.
“I have a very unique vision for sex tech,” she continues. “And in fact, I wanted and still want to, at some point, raise the world’s first dedicated sex tech fund, because I see the financial potential. But my vision depends on what I’m doing with MakeLoveNotPorn right now, which is socializing sets, spearheading the social sex revolution, because there is huge opportunity to bring sex tech applications to numerous sectors that have historically, you know, banned or censored them.”
She envisions a future where SexTech permeates every corner of our lives, from gaming platforms that enhance real-world sexual interactions to messaging apps that prioritize privacy and consent. Cindy sees vast untapped potential in bringing SexTech solutions to bear on a wide range of human needs and desires, from combating loneliness and isolation to fostering deeper, more meaningful connections between partners.
Underpinning this expansive vision is a fervent belief in the power of technology to bring us closer together, to bridge divides, and foster empathy and understanding. In a world where digital interfaces mediate an ever-growing share of our interactions, Cindy argues, it is imperative that we harness the tools of SexTech to promote authenticity, vulnerability, and genuine human connection.
From gaming platforms that enhance real-world sexual interactions to messaging apps prioritizing privacy and consent, the potential for female-led SexTech to transform our lives is boundless. By backing female founders, we not only level the playing field but also invest in a future that is safer, happier, and more profitable for all.
Safeguarding Intimacy in the Age of A.I.
As artificial intelligence weaves its way into every facet of our lives, the question of how to navigate intimacy in a tech-driven world looms large.
Even as she champions the transformative potential of SexTech, Cindy is quick to acknowledge the challenges and pitfalls that come with the territory.
Chief among these is the blurring of lines between the artificial and the human, a danger that looms especially large today. Cindy cautions against forgetting that such technologies are not, in fact, human.
“We will anthropomorphize anything…we will convince ourselves that an animal is talking to us…So I think the danger is in…attributing things like common sense to them.”
Cindy Gallop
As A.I.-powered chatbots, virtual companions, and sexbots become increasingly sophisticated and lifelike, Cindy cautions, we risk losing sight of the essential qualities that make human intimacy so precious and irreplaceable.
While these technologies may offer a balm for loneliness and a simulacrum of connection, she argues, they are no substitute for the depth, richness, and sheer unpredictability of human-to-human intimacy.
To navigate these choppy waters, Cindy believes, we must approach the development and deployment of A.I. in the SexTech space with the utmost care and intentionality. This means designing these systems with robust safeguards and clear boundaries in place, ensuring that users are always fully aware of the nature of their interactions and the limitations of the technology.
More fundamentally, it means fostering a culture of open, honest dialogue about the role of A.I. in our intimate lives—one that acknowledges both its potential benefits and its inherent risks and equips individuals with the tools and knowledge they need to make informed choices about how they engage with these technologies.
“There needs to be some way of reminding people that this is not another person.”
Cindy Gallop
Yet even as we grapple with the challenges posed by A.I., Cindy sees glimmers of hope in female perspectives’ potential to shape a more empathetic future. By centering the female lens in A.I. development, she argues, we can harness technology’s power to foster deeper human connection rather than drive us further apart.
Investing in Our Collective Future
For all the challenges that lie ahead, Cindy remains unshakably optimistic about the future of SexTech and the role of female founders in shaping it. Her parting message is a rousing call to action, urging listeners to vote with their dollars and their voices to support the women who are leading the charge.
In a world where our most intimate experiences are increasingly mediated by technology, Cindy argues, the stakes could not be higher. By investing in female founders and the visions they’re bringing to life, we invest in a future that is more equitable, more empathetic, and more deeply attuned to the full spectrum of human needs and desires.
“The single best thing you can do in any context for a better future for all of us is: When you see a female founder building something you absolutely bloody love, fund or support it in any way you can.”
Cindy Gallop
As we navigate a cultural moment marked by deepening polarization and fraying social bonds, Cindy Gallop’s call to fund female founders offers a beacon of hope.
By betting on the ingenuity, resilience, and unapologetic audacity of women daring to forge a new path, Cindy stakes our claim in a future that is more just, more joyful, and filled with safer, healthier, and happier sex for all.
To learn more about MakeLoveNotPorn and invest in the future of SexTech, visit https://wefunder.com/makelovenotporn.
Links Mentioned in this Podcast
- Wefunder MakeLoveNotPorn Equity Crowdfunding Campaign
- Cindy’s website
- MakeLoveNotPorn
- MakeLoveNotPorn Academy
- Ep.35 with Cindy Gallop
- Jameela Jamil on Instagram
- Women Founders Get 2% of Venture Capital Funding Article
Continue the Conversation
Thank you, Cindy, for being our guest on Creativity Squared.
This show is produced and made possible by the team at PLAY Audio Agency: https://playaudioagency.com.
Creativity Squared is brought to you by Sociality Squared, a social media agency who understands the magic of bringing people together around what they value and love: http://socialitysquared.com.
Because it’s important to support artists, 10% of all revenue Creativity Squared generates will go to ArtsWave, a nationally recognized non-profit that supports over 150 arts organizations, projects, and independent artists.
Join Creativity Squared’s free weekly newsletter and become a premium supporter here.
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TRANSCRIPT
Cindy: Despite all the geeking out about AI from a technological perspective right now, at the end of the day, all any of us wants is human connection. And we all love touch and contact and skin on skin. Yeah, I mean, that is a fundamental human truth.
Helen: Cindy Gallop, who is the face of the social sex revolution joins Creativity Squared again, Cindy is the founder and CEO of Make Love Not Porn, the world’s first and only user generated human curated social sex video sharing platform. Its mission is to end rape culture by socializing and normalizing sex and promoting good sexual values and behavior.
Helen: With over 30 years in the advertising industry, Cindy is an outspoken advocate of diversity and inclusion in advertising tech and business. She consults with brands on radical breakthrough, innovative, and transformative ways to change the game in their industries. In our first conversation, Cindy shared her solution to end deep fakes, which disproportionately target women.
Helen: Her answer? Fund female founders. As she shared, we haven’t fully realized the potential of the internet and technology through the female lens, one in which we will all be safer, happier, and making more money, including men. In today’s episode, you’ll learn how you can easily fund our guest female founder in just a couple of clicks, support Cindy [in] scaling her core business and building out the Make Love Not Porn Academy for the best sex education based on age appropriateness on the web.
Helen: This is Cindy’s first ever equity crowdfunding campaign led by actress Jameela Jamil and hosted on the WeFunder platform. In today’s conversation, Cindy shares the importance of MakeLoveNotPorn’s revenue sharing model and user ownership of content and data. We also discuss why Cindy pioneered the sex tech category, her thoughts on AI, intimacy, and the loneliness epidemic, where sex tech is today, and where it can go beyond just the hardware.
Helen: Cindy also shares how sex tech can be used in gaming and messaging to improve our human to human sexual interactions and relationships. She also shares the value of human connection and touch in an increasingly tech driven world. Cindy accurately predicted sex in self driving cars. What are her other sex tech predictions? Listen in to find out. Enjoy.
Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in this space.
Helen: The intention of these conversations is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity to envision a world where artists thrive.
Helen: Cindy, welcome back to Creativity Squared. It’s so wonderful to have you on the show again.
Cindy: Thank you, Helen. Always a pleasure.
Helen: Well, since our last conversation, which was right before Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl, you’ve been busy launching a crowdfunding campaign. So I thought we would kick off the conversation and let you share what you’re up to with this crowdfunding campaign.
Cindy: Thank you. Well, yes. You know, we have just launched last month our first ever Make Love Not Porn equity crowdfunding campaign. And the reason it’s our first ever is because; as has unfortunately been part for the course for the past 15 years with every piece of business infrastructure, previously, no crowdfunding platform would touch us with a large pole.
Cindy: Because Make Love Not Porn is a sex tech business and the only reason that we’ve been able to make this breakthrough and actually launch an equity crowdfunding campaign is because the wonderful actress Jameela Jamil of The Good Place, She-Hulk; she’s a big fan of Make Love Not Porn.
Cindy: She interviewed me for her podcast for her I Weigh community, last year and she’s actually very keen to encourage her community to fund female founders and so she proposed very kindly that she lead an equity crowdfunding campaign for us as the lead investor. And so she got WeFunder to embrace us.
Cindy: And that’s how we were able to launch just last month. And I would love to encourage all of our listeners to please go to WeFunder.com/MakeLoveNotPorn and consider investing. Minimum investment is $100. So you can invest at any level you like, but in the, you know, four weeks since we launched we’re already up to $260,000.
Cindy: We’re targeting a million in total. And honestly, I am just so moved by the messages that people are sending with their funding. About, you know, how much they want Make Love Not Porn to exist, how important it is for the world. You know, we need to fund the female lens on the future. So yes, I would love everybody listening to check out our equity crowdfunding campaign and become an investor in Make Love Not Porn, because I am determined to do my damnedest to add several zeros to whatever you put in.
Helen: Oh, congratulations on that first milestone and I’ll be sure to put all of the links to how you can find the WeFunder campaign in the description. And I have become an investor, so I definitely encourage all of our listeners. It’s very easy. It takes a couple of minutes and you don’t have to be an accredited investor.
Helen: That’s one of the beautiful things about these crowdfunding campaigns. Anyone can really contribute and be part of the success. And I’m also a huge fan of – what is it – The Good [Place]. It’s such a great philosophical TV series too. And for those who didn’t listen to our first interview, which I highly encourage you.
Helen: One of the main themes that Cindy addressed was, you know, how do we prevent deep fakes? And the answer is fund female founders. And here’s an opportunity to do that right now by supporting Cindy. And one of the things; so I think if I understand it correctly, the funding will go specifically to the Make Love Not Porn Academy, is that correct?
Cindy: So basically, what raising this funding will enable us to do is scale the core business, but very importantly, finally build what parents and teachers have been literally begging me for the past 15 years, which is the 0 to 18 and beyond sex education expansion of Make Love Not Porn.
Cindy: MakeLoveNotPorn.Academy; And if our listeners go to that URL, they’ll see my vision laid out there. But basically, this is what I characterize as the Khan Academy of sex education. Because Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform, tutors on every other topic under the sun, except this one. Educational technology, ed-tech, is exploding as a sector, not in this area.
Cindy: So I want to build the academy on the same principles as Make Love Not Porn.TV, which is user generated, crowdsourced, curated revenue share. Because I’m not about reinventing the wheel. This is an aggregation play. I want to build the go to global hub for the best of the world’s sex education content. And so the way it works is, when we have this funding, we build a platform and we will invite sex educators all around the world to share with us their own content.
Cindy: Coursework, materials, books, videos, comic strips, whatever it may be. And I use the term “educator” very broadly, you know, sexual health and wellness experts, therapists, anybody informing and educating this entire area. Now, we will curate because at the heart of everything we do at Make Love Not Porn lies human curation.
Cindy: Humanize will vet every piece of content before we publish it. To make sure it’s safe, we endorse it. And we will then publish all of this content segmented by age appropriateness. So if you’re a parent freaking out, going, “Oh my God, my six year old just asked me this, what do I say?” You know, we will provide the entirely age appropriate tools and content to be able to have that conversation with a six year old.
Cindy: You know, if you’re a teacher of 14 year olds, here are your age appropriate teaching materials. If you’re an adult, access all areas. Adults are just as desperate for information about all of this. But the important thing, Helen, is that the academy will be where children and young people can access sex education without parental teacher gatekeeping.
Cindy: And here’s why that’s important. So, I have a friend who’s a mother, and as you have to these days, she monitors her kid’s browsing history. And this happened a few years ago, her son was eight years old, and she saw to her horror that on the family computer, he had googled ‘sex [00:10:13] for children.’ So she freaked out, but did the right thing, stayed calm, sat him down, you know, “darling, you know, I see you were looking for this, just explain to me why.”
Cindy: And this anecdote is adorable and horrifying in equal measure. because her son won’t learn about sex. He was a child. He knew he was a child. He won’t learn about sex in a child appropriate way. He sweetly, innocently googled ‘sex for children.’ You can imagine the kind of thing that came back, utterly traumatized.
Cindy: And so the academy will be when an eight year old boy can enter his age and we will only serve him age appropriate sex education content. Now, some of this will be free to access, per that example, but we’ll also charge to download, subscribe, bulk buy if you’re a school. There are different revenue streams for different use cases, and we will then split the income 50/50 with its creators, the educators, in the same way that we currently do with our Make Love Not Porn stars.
Cindy: Because right now, nobody goes into sex education to make money. I have friends all around the world who are brilliant sex educators. They face all the same problems I do. Their content gets blocked on Facebook, Instagram, et al. You know, their accounts get suspended or deleted. They’re banned from advertising.
Cindy: They can’t even make a living doing this. They’ve had to take other jobs to survive. And I want to change that because this is enormously valuable work. But I have three other agendas with the academy. The first is, when I can build an educational component to Make Love Not Porn, I reframe Make Love Not Porn. I give us social legitimacy.
Cindy: The second thing is, you know, given my challenges, because we are banned from advertising anywhere, I believe in building solutions to my own problems. I designed the academy to be a very effective growth engine for the core business. Because when you’re 18 and over you can graduate to sex education through real world demonstration.
Cindy: We can send all the parents, teachers and adults straight through to Make Love Not Porn. But the third reason is because I’m out to prove concept. And what I mean by that is, for years people have said to me, “Oh Cindy, you should go to schools. Make Love Not Porn should be on the curriculum.” And I’ve always gone, “no I shouldn’t.”
Cindy: Because anybody trying to bring sex ed into schools comes up against parent teacher association, moral panic. But here’s the thing, The people keeping sex ed out of school don’t know what it’d be like if they allowed it in. They just know it’d be really bad. In their heads they have this abstract concept, Sodom and Gomorrah will ensue.
Cindy: When I can show you what doesn’t exist anywhere at the moment, all in one place, the best of the world sex education content, and you can see for yourself at a glance how brilliant, informative, educational, healthy and non threatening it is. And when you can search according to age appropriateness and sensibility, because we’ll have Christian sex education, Muslim sex education, Jewish sex education, that is when I can get sex ed into schools.
Cindy: And in fact, one investor said to me, Cindy, the moment 100 schools sign on to the academy, you’re looking at a completely different value proposition. So that’s the game plan and that’s what funding us that WeFunder will enable us to build and launch
Helen: Oh, I’m so excited to be part of it, have you on the show to talk about it and so you hit the 1 million mark, within the next month or so and one thing that came up actually, I just got back from SXSW and there was a woman who was building a great platform to capture black change makers.
Helen: And when it comes to scraping I asked her what she thought about that. And she’s like, “we are not to be scraped, we will license our content.” So I was wondering in the age of LLMs and all these AI chat bots, how you currently think about that with Make Love Not Porn and with the academy and your plans, how you’re thinking about scraping versus licensing and data and privacy around all of your users and content.
Cindy: Sure. So first of all, Helen, you know, a very important component of Make Love Not Porn, true of the academy as well is, you know, with Make Love Not Porn, you know, our real world sex videos are the property of our Make Love Not Porn stars.
Cindy: You know, we have no ownership over them. You know, we showcase them on our platform, which is the documentary to porn’s Hollywood blockbuster movie. But basically, you know, our Make Love Not Porn stars are free to withdraw their videos the moment they want. In fact, our commitment to our Make Love Not Porn stars is the moment anything changes, your relationship, your life, your circumstances, even just your mind, you tell us we take your videos down immediately, you know, they’re gone and when I say immediately what I mean is, we have no application form to fill in there is no online process, there’s no waiting period.
Cindy: All you do is you message us and the moment you get your message we take your videos down within 15 minutes; as happened the other day. Nobody else anywhere on the internet does that. So, where we come from is, you know, that content is the property of the contributor. You know, in the case of Make Love Not Porn, the Make Love Not Porn stars.
Cindy: In the case of Make Love Not Porn Academy, the educators. And, you know, if we ourselves were to deploy that content anyway; and so, you know, when we last spoke, I talked about my AI plans for Make Love Not Porn and our algorithm for consent. We would absolutely ask our Make Love Not Porn stars for permission to use their videos.
Cindy: And by the way, there’ll be nothing identifiable in this particular usage context at all. But you know, that’s what we would always do, ask permission. And by the way, we have a very mission driven community. So, I think permission would be very readily granted, given the fact that the algorithm of consent is designed to help end rape culture.
Cindy: You know, but equally, The moment somebody no longer wants their videos on our platform, we would withdraw that from everywhere, including a large video model as well. So it would be a dynamic model because it would be, you know, fluctuating depending on who had given that permission at any one time. So, you know, where we come from is, you know, you have ownership of your content.
Cindy: And by the way, we want you to make money out of that. You know, I designed Make Love Not Porn’s revenue share model 15 years ago to democratize access to income in the same way that, as I just said, you know, I want every sex educator I know to make a huge amount of money very deservedly for the very valuable work they’re doing.
Cindy: And so, you know, you own your content, you make the money out of it, and we help you do that.
Helen: Well, one thing we talk a lot about on this show is, you know, AI kind of has been forcing us to think about what makes us uniquely human and the last episode that came out, we talked about human tears that they actually have depending on why you cry; unique chemical composition to either heal or console or what not. And when it comes to sex, I know you’ve said on many stages before that it’s this beautiful, messy, wonderful thing about being human.
Helen: And as we think about the human condition in the age of AI, what do you want people to really, I guess, think about what makes us uniquely human from the seat that you sit?
Cindy: Well, Helen, at the risk of, you know, banging on endlessly about the same thing, repeating myself, I’m going to say, I want people to take away from this particular part of our conversation, fund female founders.
Cindy: And I say that because to, to use an analogy historically in sex tech, which is the sector that I operate in, you know, people find it enormously uncomfortable to talk about sex, generally speaking. And this is true across the board, including in the area of journalism and reporting. And in tech, journalism is dominated by men, you know, as all sectors [are] dominated by men.
Cindy: And tech journalists find it a lot easier and more comfortable to geek out on the side of sex tech that they feel a lot more comfortable talking about, which is the hardware. You know, Teledildonics! VR porn! You know, sex robots! It’s a lot more uncomfortable to talk about the side of sex tech that I and many other female founders operate on.
Cindy: Which is the software using technology to bring people closer together in the real world. And so historically infuriatingly, all of the attention and coverage and funding has gone to the hardware. And I bring this up because, you know, we are looking right now at a future of AI that is massively male dominated and is being designed and built through the male lens.
Cindy: And you know, just as I’ve said for years, you know, which do you think is more important for the future of humanity, the technology that is about driving us further and further apart into our own little virtual worlds, or the technology that’s about bringing us closer together in the real world? Equally, you know, humanity in the era of AI depends on the female lens being as funded and as scaled as the male, you know, because we look at using AI completely differently and we are not geeking out on how you can live in a completely artificially generated world.
Cindy: We are not the ones deep faking porn all over the shop. You know, we are the ones building solutions to that, you know, and we are the ones who want to use technology. To celebrate humanity and reward it and make it even better, you know, and, you know, what I will say Helen is, you know, despite all the geeking out about AI from a technological perspective right now, at the end of the day, all any of us wants is human connection, and we all love touch and contact.
Cindy: And skin on skin. Okay. I mean that is a fundamental human truth, you know, that is a key part by the way of the famous epidemic of loneliness we keep hearing about in all the media, you know, loneliness is as much about not touching somebody else as it is, you know engaging with or communicating with.
Cindy: I remember many years ago a girlfriend of mine who was stunningly gorgeous, very bright and as is so often the case spectacularly failing to find anybody nice to date. So she had not dated anyone in a very long time. I remember her saying to me that she booked herself regular massages because she just thought it was enormously important to have her skin touched by somebody on a regular basis.
Cindy: And that was so moving and, by the way, so sad at the same time. And incidentally, I’m happy to report that this girlfriend did indeed find true love. With an amazing man that she’s been with for many, many years. So it all ended up happily but that is all any of us really want, and it doesn’t matter.
Cindy: You know, how much you’re an early tech adopter or how much you geek out and nerd out every hour, whatever, you know, we all want human connection and the desire for that is never going to go away, but, you know, we will see less and less of how we can preserve that in the era of AI unless female founders get funded.
Helen: So beautifully put and as you were saying that it made me think just the other day on Instagram I saw a review of a massage robot. We’re seeing humans being removed from human to human contact which is striking.
Cindy: And that destroys the point of a massage because again, you know, what you want is, you know a massage is a very empathetic sensitive connection between the, you know, in this case a massage technician the human sense of the term and the person being massaged because you know, you want that human checking in with you as they do, you know, how is the pressure?
Cindy: Is it too deep etc? You know you want that human sensing, you know what the knots in your back mean you will not get that from a robot, you know, it’s not a mechanical process
Helen: And going back to, I guess, last week’s interview of what can be automated and what can’t there’s like, there’s something to human presence and energy that just can’t be replicated.
Helen: And I think that highlights that. But one thing I didn’t know, and before our first interview that I discovered afterwards is that you actually get credit for inventing the “sex tech,” coined for the industry which I thought was very cool. So could you kind of give us a glimpse, cause you mentioned the geeking out of the hardware, kind of the beginning, since you’re the pioneer of the sex tech where it’s at and where it’s going to, cause I didn’t realize that I was speaking to the inventor of sex tech.
Cindy: I should explain for our listeners why that is the case because honestly, Helen, that was born out of desperation. And what I mean by that is, 10 years ago, I was trying to raise funding to Make Love Not Porn and spectacularly failing. And I realized that I was going to have to pave my own way. You know, I was going to have to break down these barriers in my path, because as I like to say, when you have a truly world changing startup, you have to change the world to fit it, not the other way around.
Cindy: And so that’s why 10 years ago, I deliberately set out to define, pioneer and champion my own category, sex tech and I did that purely to create a climate of receptivity amongst investors by giving Make Love Not Porn somewhere to live. By legitimizing my own category. So I literally wrote the definition of sex tech. If you Google sex tech, I’m result one on page one, and sex tech is any form of technology or tech venture designed to innovate, disrupt and enhance in any area of human sexual and human sexual experience.
Cindy: I coined the hashtag sex tech, and by the way, I didn’t invent the term, but I’m directly responsible for propagating it as widely as it’s used today. And I began speaking at tech conferences all around the world on why the next big thing in tech is sex tech, because I thought at base level, if I just say this loudly enough, often enough, in enough places, people start to believe it.
Cindy: And they did. You know, 10 years later, sex tech is a thing. It’s a known category, and you know, as you’ve said, I am acknowledged as being, you know, the godmother of sex tech. And it’s basically you know, legitimized as a category in a way that enables all of us who work within it to be able to point to a sector and to, you know, over time, because this is a slow process, you know, give it more and more legitimacy.
Cindy: You know, give it more and more financial gravitas you know, we are still waiting for what needs to happen, which is either the really big exit or the really big IPO, you know, which we haven’t had in this categories yet but, you know, that really was the reason that I pioneered the concept of sex tech. Now to your question about the future.
Cindy: Here’s what’s interesting because, you know, because we’re so narrow minded about sex and because historically, you know, no one was ever encouraged to be an entrepreneur in this area, people still have absolutely no concept of what the sex tech sector could be. And what I mean by that is, if you mention the word sex tech, most people think sex toys, sex robots.
Cindy: That’s about as far as their imagination goes. And you know, I have a very unique vision for sex tech. And in fact, I wanted and still want to at some point raise the world’s first dedicated sex tech fund because I see the financial potential. But my vision depends on what I’m doing with Make Love Not Porn right now, which is socializing sex.
Cindy: Spearheading the social sex revolution. Because there is [a] huge opportunity to bring sex tech applications to numerous sectors that have historically, you know, banned or censored them. So, for example gaming, okay? And I bring up gaming because, you know, for many years I’ve championed women in tech, women in business.
Cindy: And as I think we all know, gaming is one of the most sexist areas of tech. I know a ton of brilliant female game designers and game developers who have not been able to start their own studios because they can’t get funded, you know, same old, same old. But I’ll give an example of what I mean. So one of my friends is brilliant, Phoenix Perry, who’s a game designer who’s based in London.
Cindy: And many years ago she said to me, “Cindy, I want to build you a Make Love Not Porn game.” And I went, “oh my god, when I have funding, you bloody bet.” Because I knew exactly what she meant. Because when I talk about bringing sex tech to gaming, I don’t mean sex in games. What I mean is, the ability to design and build games that, actually, as you play them, improve your ability to interact sexually in the real world.
Cindy: You know, games that enable you to explore your sexuality, and by the way, these do not exist. You know, and so there’s a huge opportunity for gaming sex tech that hasn’t even begun to be real. Then other areas are and, you know, this is one where I actually have a product in the pipeline that I want to raise funding for to build myself.
Cindy: But messaging and the reason I bring that up is because apps like Snapchat and Whatsapp refuse to admit that their exponential growth, huge rounds of funding, gigantic IPOs have been driven by one thing and one thing only, sexting. And they literally refuse to admit it. I mean, I’ve seen interviews where they won’t answer questions about it.
Cindy: They evade any mention. Here’s the problem. When A, you refuse to admit that sexing is a perfectly normal universal human activity, B, you refuse to admit that a shit ton of it goes on in your app, you then do not proactively design for it. You don’t design for privacy, confidentiality, security, and consent, and that is why we have a huge revenge porn problem globally.
Cindy: So, when I talk about socializing tech in the context of sex, you know, I want to build, I’ve talked about this publicly for years, I want to build the Make Love Not Porn, openly, healthily, unashamedly, dedicated to sexting; safe sexting app. It’s called CoSensual, you know, I’ve registered the name, bought the URL, all of that and it does two things. It enables you to sext completely safely and securely, you know, using state of the art cyber security, you know, inability to screencap, inability to screen record, everything lives within the app.
Cindy: Nothing goes on the other person’s phone. But the second thing it does because again, this is the only app where you’re going “this is for people to sext.” The second thing it does, because this is what we’re all about to make Love Not Porn is, it has built in features designed to improve your communication around sex to improve your sexual relationship.
Cindy: So, for example, you know, CoSensual will have our equivalent of Snapchat’s filters. We’ll have some already generated because you can also create your own. And you can overlay these filters on your sexy videos, photos you’re sharing with each other. But what our filters do is they say things like, “I really love it when you do that.”
Cindy: “Actually, I’m not so keen on you doing that. I would really rather you do not do that.” In other words, they make it easy to communicate what people find impossible to say face to face in bed. You know, we have a ton of things like that. And so that’s what I mean by bringing applications of sex tech to very big tech sectors where historically sex has been banned or excluded. Huge opportunity!
Helen: It’s brilliant. And I know just in relationships I’ve had, I’m very, very strict about the types of photos I share and don’t share on texts, because if it were to get online, women get the most harm done. And some of the guys I’ve dated just don’t understand why. And it’s like, I don’t feel comfortable because if your phone got hacked, my phone got hacked, like who knows what happens.
Helen: So, having a safe environment for that is a brilliant idea. And since geeking out on the hardware I did think it would be worth sharing just because I know I learned from Bryony Cole, who’s the founder of the Future of Sex podcast. We were both speakers at SXSW one year about how some sex tech is really opening the doors for inclusiveness, even through the lens of sex toys with, like, disabilities in mind.
Helen: And since, you know, not everyone’s had the pleasure of getting to meet her or you, I thought this would be kind of an interesting opportunity to share about the inclusive opportunities when it comes to sex tech as well.
Cindy: No, absolutely. So I’m an advisor to a wonderful company called Bumpn you can find them at GetBumpn.com, B-U-M-P-N dot com which was founded by Heather Morrison and her brother, Andrew Gerza. Andrew is disabled. And what Bumpn does is it basically creates sex toys by disabled people for disabled people. But the one of the things about it is, it’s like anything else. When you make the world more accessible for people with disabilities, you make it more accessible for all of us.
Cindy: You know, and so their first sex toy is hands free, it’s called the Joystick. When they first heard about it, they went, Oh my God, I love that idea, because, you know, my hand cramps when I have to hold my vibrator in place for too long. You know, so that’s something everyone can benefit from. And so, yes, absolutely.
Cindy: You know, the future of sex tech includes all sorts of opportunities to, you know, make things far more accessible. Another example is the wonderful Glenise Kinard-Moore. So she’s a black female founder based in Atlanta. And so she invented the VDOM because she wants to be able to make love to her wife spontaneously.
Cindy: And so she created this brilliant prosthetic which completely reinvents the strap on and makes life so much easier because it comes with, the VDOM comes with its own special pair of briefs that it fits into. It inflates and deflates at will. And what that means is, it’s not only obviously fantastic for, you know, lesbian couples as Glenise and the wife are, but it’s fantastic for anybody with erectile dysfunction issues, you know, cancer survivors, you know, people who for whatever reason need that sort of assistance.
Cindy: And I just think that’s absolutely genius, you know, and again, when you make things more accessible, It improves the world for all of us.
Helen: It came up in the interview with Alejandro that we should really not be designing for the average because that actually excludes people [and] that we should be designing for the extremes.
Helen: And especially when you design for the most marginalized, as you said, you lift everyone up. So I couldn’t agree more. And when it comes to sex tech and predictions you said on one interview or somewhere where I got it that we’ll see people having sex in these self-driving cars. And I heard on the Hard Fork episode, which I love with Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, that they pretty much predicted that’s what happened in one of the Waymo cars.
Helen: Cause out of nowhere, all of a sudden there were more cameras and announcements like reminding people that they were being filmed. So I was curious that [it] was such a great prediction that we’ve already seen. What other predictions that you have in the sex tech space as well.
Cindy: Well, you know, the way I’d contextualize this to be frank, Helen, is that, you know, whatever’s out, it’s a bit like rule 34 of the internet goes, if it exists, there is porn of it. Okay. Gallop’s rule of sex tech goes, you know, if the tech exists, it can be sex tech. And the fact of the matter is that people will have sex on, around, under, over, in the vicinity of anything.
Cindy: So, you know, this goes back to my point about you know, when you acknowledge that openly, you can design for it. You know, so if I were Waymo I would absolutely be designing a self-driving car, specifically to be able to have sex in. I’ve made this point in a broader context which is, you know, and this is part of me trying to open up my industry’s minds, you know, advertising, brand marketing to understand what they’re missing out on when they don’t acknowledge this universal human experience and capitalize on it. So, you know, what I say to people is, all around the world, people have sex in cars, especially in markets where for sociocultural reasons, you know, premarital sex is frowned upon.
Cindy: In markets where young people live at home until they get married, which by the way, given the economy is now the U. S. as well as, you know, Asia or Italy or wherever, in markets where, you know, this is especially the case in Asia, where whole families live together commonly in households. So even husbands and wives can’t find privacy to be intimate.
Cindy: So all around the world, a huge number of people are having a huge amount of sex and a huge number of cars. But the automotive industry is spectacularly failing to factor that into product design and marketing. Even more fundamentally, people have sex in bed, but the mattress industry focuses all its R&D on sleep.
Cindy: People have sex on kitchen counters. But the kitchen industry isn’t taking that into account with height, depth, width, comfort. The point being, there is a far broader business application of all of this than simply within directly sex related products. And communism brands are leaving money on the table when they don’t acknowledge that and design for it and market it accordingly.
Helen: I hope after everyone listens to this episode, they’ll look at their kitchen counter a little bit differently or any of the products that they’re working on if it’s tied to that. Well, one thing that you had mentioned, or that we talked about a little bit with the robot massager and the AI chat girlfriends that we are seeing like a rise in this AI or loneliness in general, a loneliness epidemic.
Helen: But a rise in these AI girlfriends where people are finding somewhat of companionship with these fake things. And there’s even an art piece. I think we shared in one of our newsletters called The First Woman to Marry a Hologram and in offline conversations one guest on the show actually shared like, Oh yeah, we’ll be debating soon for a human to marry a robot like that’s inevitable.
Helen: I don’t know if I share that view, but it has come up in conversations. I’m curious, like what your thoughts are, if there is any good that comes from these virtual you know, chatbot companionships, if we should watch it with caution or yeah, I’m just curious what your thoughts are in this moment in time as we’re witnessing all of this.
Cindy: No, I actually think they’re a social benefit. I mean, if you think about use cases like elderly people who live alone and who are desperate for companionship then, you know, I think they can absolutely serve a useful purpose. The difficulty is that, you know, I mean in the same way we will anthropomorphize anything, you know we will convince ourselves that an animal is talking to us or you know, and so I think the danger is in, you know, attributing things like common sense to them, you know, you know, mentally giving them qualities that they do not possess, you know, I think that’s where the danger lies in the same way that, you know, using chat GPT to write your essay or make your law argument is a very bad idea, you know, and and so, [00:41:59] you know, I think there needs to be some way of reminding people that this is not another person, you know, and and I’m not sure exactly what that is but I think that sort of framing is important to prevent, I mean, again, you know, in the same way that depressingly, the entire fraud industry keeps up with every possible development.
Cindy: And obviously now they’re using AI to mimic like your child’s voice when they tell you that they’ve been kicked their up and you’ve gotta pay ransom, et cetera. You know, it’s entirely possible for bad actors to hijack these forms of AI in a way that could be very detrimental. And so, you know, some kind of reminder that this is artificial, and this is not a real person, I think is very important.
Helen: And I could see that actually being hard. I was listening to some interview the other day where a woman had a robot dog and she knew it was a robot dog, but then before long she [anthropomorphized] it and was treating it like a real dog.
Helen: And like that, that blurred line of what we know to actually be true and then how we act to it. And even, I think Kevin Roose in the last Hard Fork episode that I listened to was talking about the Apple Vision Pro, that when he took it off, you know, the AR overlays of what was in his house, like he was still expecting to see them there so that there’s this very much blurring of reality and not reality.
Helen: So I think that’s very important that you called that out, especially as things get way more blurred in our minds too. You are so creative and have so much experience in the advertising industry. One of my guests, Claire Silver, she actually tweeted this, that we’re leaving the information age and we’re entering the imagination age where it’s not so much what you can do or your productivity.
Helen: It’s really about the value of your ideas and your imagination. That, that’s what the real value will be as we leave the information age and enter the imagination age. So I’m curious cause you’ve mentioned before, we haven’t yet seen the full realization of the internet through the female lens.
Helen: What gets you excited from a creativity, sex tech, female lens in the imagination ages.
Cindy: Yeah. Well, what I would say to that quite frankly, Helen, again, I’m going to sound like, you know, I just keep repeating myself, but, you know, you cannot make that sweeping statement when the creativity and imagination of women is not being welcomed and not being funded.
Cindy: And I say that across the board. I mean, one really obvious place is Hollywood. Movies, TV, you know, male dominated, male studio heads, male showrunners. Goddamn superhero movies out the wazoo. You know, no female creativity and imagination is not being respected, not being welcomed, not being backed, not being championed, not being funded, not being given free rein.
Cindy: So, that’s my view on the imagination age. The imagination age is missing the imagination of half the population. I’m absolutely serious about that. You know, it’s the same point that I make when I say that because only 1.7 percent of all venture capital goes to female founders. We have not yet seen what the future of the internet could be designed and built with a female lens.
Cindy: So, you know, the world is a poorer place because of that. We live in a world where the default setting is always male. And, you know, I’ve said to men for years, men, you have no idea how much happier you would be living in a world that was 50/50 equally. Designed, led, managed and manifested by all of us.
Cindy: So, that’s my view, you know, we do not have an imagination age until the imagination of half the population is welcomed and championed and funded and supported in the way the imagination of the other half is.
Helen: Oh, I of course fully agree. And one thing that was extremely depressing to hear on international women’s day, I was at SXSW, and there was a panel with, you know, all star amount of women and actually female representation in film has decreased and a lot of measures of just women representation in media has actually, you know, taking the four steps back and we’re we’re going backwards instead of forwards.
Helen: So there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement on that front as well. I read an article since you mentioned you know, Hollywood and, you know, everything the default is by the male lens. And I’ve talked to a few of my female friends before about this.
Helen: There was a great article and I forget who wrote it that said that we don’t need another female heroine, but more or less the point was taking a male hero and substituting a female for it. And the point of the article was our entire reference point of what a hero is all pivoting around the male definition and benchmark. And that even from a female perspective, it’s sometimes hard to unlearn that and understand what does a female leader mean?
Helen: What does it mean to be a female hero? And we have, you know, some fabulous women like yourself who are redefining that, but to maybe some of our female listeners, cause it’s so ingrained in our society of our reference points and culture. I’m really curious what your reactions or thoughts on, you know, just even redefining what it means to be a female leader given our society and where we’re currently at.
Cindy: Honestly, Helen, I just keep it very simple. You know, being a brilliant female leader is leading the way that you would naturally choose to lead. Okay? You know, there’s no point in twisting people up in knots even more by going, Oh, my God. Now I have to rethink being a leader, and what’s a female? And, you know, I’ll give you my own example.
Cindy: Over the years, a very standard interview question is: “Cindy, what’s your definition of leadership? What’s your definition of a leader?” My answer is always the same: “A leader is somebody who puts their people ahead of themselves.” Now, I feel very confident saying to you that a man would never give that answer.
Cindy: So you lead as a woman the way you naturally are inclined to lead and then you’re a female leader.
Helen: I appreciate that. So thank you for sharing. I think we’re actually getting close to the end of our interview, looking at the time, one thing I did want to ask before we hop off, cause you have said before making money and doing good is something that you are a big proponent of and re-imagining a more shared future.
Helen: And one thing we’ve mentioned in our last interview and conversation too, is like how important it is to envision or having a vision of what we want. But I’d love to have you surface that in this conversation as well as we’re, you know, imagining what the future of the Internet and what could be if you could share your thoughts on, yeah, what a shared future is to you.
Cindy: You know, I think it’s just and again, you know, this is what I keep banging on about fund female founders because we build businesses with a female lens; are about making the world better for all of us. You know, honestly, you know, the world we would all want to live and work in is the world that women want to build and that we are not getting funded to make real and scale at the moment, you know, and it’s as simple as that, you know, through the female lens is how we will all be a whole lot safer, a whole lot better taken care of.
Cindy: A whole lot happier and because of all that is a whole lot more lucrative. That’s our future for the people who get it and are willing to fund female founders
Helen: That’s a great segue to hit us home with our closing thoughts. If you want to plug your WeFunder campaign one more time and any last thoughts that you want to leave our listeners and viewers with.
Cindy: Sure, happily, I mean, you know, obviously listeners, if you believe in funding female founders, and I’d love you to help fund me by going to WeFunder and micro investing in Make Love Not Porn but also, you know, I would just say the single best thing you can do in any context for a better future for all of us is when you see a female founder building something you absolutely bloody love, fund or support in any way you can, no matter how small.
Cindy: Help her get her show on the road. Tell people about it. Champion it. You know, send her words of encouragement. Because, trust me, as female founders, we all need that. Because things are a lot more challenging for us than they are for male founders. And we need all the help we can get.
Helen: That’s a beautiful way to end the show.
Helen: Cindy, thank you so much for coming back on, sharing more of your time. And I know I’ve already invested in Make Love Not Porn. And again, encourage all of our listeners and viewers to do the same and go to CreativitySquared.com and we’ll have links to everything we’ve discussed in today’s episode.
Helen: So thank you again, Cindy.
Cindy: It’s been a pleasure.
Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today. We’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared on your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback. What topics are you thinking about and want to dive into more?
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Helen: I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. This show is produced and made possible by the team at Play Audio Agency. Until next week, keep creating.