How the Silicon Valley Startup Boom Kills the Sex Toy Industry

There are a lot of money in California now. Newly-born billionaires who have sold their companies to Google or Facebook are also looking for boredom in what to invest. Every year, venture capital invests in 10-15 thousand new startups, hoping that one of them will grow into a “unicorn” (that is, into a company with a price of $ 1 billion). But there is a downside to this celebration of life.

The business logic of rich geeks has led to the development of startups with “sex gadgets” - intimate toys that can connect to Wi-Fi or even are part of a smart home system. These expensive, lifeless, and often creepy products almost have no chance to find their audience. Nevertheless, millions are invested in them, especially if the word “Smart” is somewhere near the name. About how these new "feature-filled" sex gadgets are gradually killing his faith in humanity, writes the author of The Verge Lux Alptrom.

In recent years, the curtain that separates XXX technology from the IT industry has fallen. More and more people from Silicon Valley are trying to create sex toys. One of the former Apple employees founded OhMiBod, which makes vibrators with remote control (initially, the "trick" was that they connected to the iPod, and moved to the rhythm of the music). The recently bankrupt Revel Body, created by one of the business angels who made money with Google, released "supersonic" vibrators for the clitoris. MysteryVibe (in which Alptrom worked as a consultant until 2015), combining sex toys with smartphone applications and making a “first in the world” vibrator, bending under any body shape, was founded by Ford and Gatorade managers.

What is the problem? The fact that when you transfer the way of thinking of successful IT-businessmen to the world of erotica, we get horrible sex toys. They believe that the cooler and more sophisticated the device, the faster it will take over the market - by analogy with the characteristics of Apple smartphones or the speed of a Ford car accelerating.

Take, for example, a ring for (male sexual organ) Lovely . It was created by Jacob Konik, who had previously been involved in the development of dating sites. Ring for $ 169 is put on a member, and works during the entire sexual intercourse. It has a mass of sensors that read a variety of parameters (including, for example, the duration of the act, the number of "jolts", body position, force of strokes, the number of calories burned ...). After each activity, all this is shown in the application on the smartphone. It also provides access to data on new positions, erotic activities, and for $ 30 a month - to chat with relationship experts and sex educators.

This is one of the most terrible sex toys that are generally represented on the market (this is how the ring is described in one of the specialized blogs ). This thing generally kills any idea of ​​sexual intercourse. First of all, the plastic stuff around your penis that produces graphics with mathematics is no longer the most erotic combination. Secondly, the whole point of the device is that it tells you how bad you are in sex. As if it hints that you still do not understand anything in it, and you need a specialist and a number of parameters to understand this (that, perhaps, your passion just “exactly” loves it - is not taken into account). Thirdly, the application itself is organized out of the ordinary badly, and it’s just unpleasant to work with it.

Already at the level of the campaign in Indiegogo, the ring “Lovely” aimed at “brogrammers” - IT people with good finances, but not the widest view of the world. Those who are easier to look at the numbers in the application, than to ask your partner about what she thinks. The creators of the ring approached the idea in the same way as the fitness bracelets: you can “measure up”, those who had the jolts stronger, whose process lasted longer, and try to improve your previous result every time. Also in the application there is a button, after pressing which an illustration from the Kama Sutra is sent to your girlfriend so that she understands that you are already leaving for her and can get ready. Why call or write a message, right? Same for losers! And of course, in the understanding of the creators, the girls have no other activities besides sitting on the bed waiting for the picture from Lovely.

In short, both the idea and the implementation are by no means a super-duper. As expected, Lovely did not even drive on Indiegogo. Of the $ 95 thousand, the ring was “thrown” $ 40 thousand, and then from one person. But - raft twist! - as a result, the creators of this brilliant gadget were in substantial profit. The company's founder, Jacob Konik, in February of this year entered the Forbes-30 to 30 list. And now Lovely successfully works, develops its website and adds more and more new functions to its ring (which, by the way, still has no buyers). Cause? Soft money of Silicon Valley! It seemed to some investor that such an abundance of opportunities was very cool, and Lovely received several million in venture financing. At this stage, selling the gadget is no longer required, Konik is a millionaire. You can come up with the next device. For example, a vegetable cutter with a Wi-Fi connection and voice control support from Alexa.

Want to know how to become a millionaire? Everything is very simple. Once Jacob had sex with his girlfriend. And after a particularly active session, he wondered how many calories he burned now. Got to the App Store - oops, and there are no applications that would tell him such a thing! So you have to forget yours. A few days later, imbued with the idea, the guy got a second insight. “Most sex toys do not have any digital functions,” says Konik in an interview with The Verge. “I decided to study this question.”

This is the same logic that the founders of more mainstream technology companies are now guided by in San Francisco. Janet Lieberman, co-founder of sex toys manufacturer Dame Products, explains:

Now it is very easy to take a ready device, insert the word “Smart” in front of its name, and get the money. An infrastructure has already been created here that offers modules that turn any “stupid” gadget into a “smart” one. And then the matter of marketing.

But if you can incorporate digital functions into an existing thing, it does not at all mean that it should be done. Especially when it comes to very personal, emotional items. “Smart” sex toys - Lovely ring, We-Connect line from We-Vibe, Crescendo from MysteryVibe (also received a good investment) promise a set of futuristic possibilities, from vibration, depending on your mood, to connecting to a smartphone and a TV. But for this you have to pay too high a price. And it's not only about money.

To access these “advanced” features, you must bring your phone to the bedroom, and often even use it during the process. Many already at this stage fights off any intimate mood. And although the creators of devices like Lovely believe that spying on all user parameters is their great advantage, many consumers see this as a drawback. Lieberman says:

People generally do not feel comfortable when the gadget knows how often they masturbate. Studies have shown that buyers of sex toys are more interested in their quality, ergonomics and ease of use, rather than bright applications and the ability to communicate over wireless networks.

But, unfortunately, for investors who have made money in IT companies, such things are not sold now.

The fact is that startups tied to sex toys are initially at a disadvantage. The company from Silicon Valley has two traditional ways to success (from the point of view of the venture capitalist, who decided to invest money in it and is counting on profit). Or "sell" one of those. giants - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Or grow so fast that one of the other large companies will notice you, and buy a part of your shares for a decent amount. The first option for XXX-developers is automatically closed - the “big five” is quite hard-pressed, and is not going to buy anything that is connected with erotica. So, so that millions of investments in a startup can quickly pay off, there is only one way: the exponential, explosive growth of the product.

Nobody believes in the sudden wild popularity of ordinary high-quality metal and plastic products. It is believed that their era is over. They have nothing to capture the minds of users, the roofing advertising campaign for such not build. Investors who risk investing in a company follow the most current trends in Silicon Valley, such as software as a service (SaaS) and the Internet of things. As a result, the ubiquitous development of apparatus overflowing with functions, to which such investors may have an interest.

With the sex toys in the last two or three years, the same thing has happened that happened to this with gadgets for the kitchen. An unforgettable example is the Juicero juicer, which collected $ 120 million for the “revolutionary idea” of providing juice as a service, according to the scheme with cartridges for printers. And when it turned out that no one needed such a thing in real life, its developers calmly shrugged their shoulders and went to the bank to spend their millions.

In the same piggy bank - "smart" combs, useless "smart" toothbrushes and a toaster with Bluetooth for $ 100. The way of thinking developed by geeks in the valley, as practice shows, is not always suitable for ordinary things. But as long as companies develop their gadgets specifically for Silicon Valley venture capitalists, this trend will continue.

One more thing to consider. Exponentially increasing iron sales is an extremely difficult task. If your product was successful, it will quickly be copied or imitated. Therefore, the real long-term super-profit in the “smart” device is the sale of information about its users.

Here the potential is almost unlimited. As long as people continue to work with your sex toy, you will have more and more data, and more and more companies that would like to access them. Producers of tools to increase potency and to increase certain organs, various sex gurus, dating sites, "adult" portals ... There is not much information about the bed life of people with big data, and therefore they are even more valuable. Perhaps that is why IT investors are now all trying to find their “sex unicorn” with which it would be possible to enrich themselves in a year.

But history teaches that such capitalist interest in sex toys will not last forever. When exclusive vibrators from Jimmyjane - one of the first XXX companies in San Francisco to receive huge investments - did not live up to investors' expectations, interest in the erotic topic in Silicon Valley fell for many years. If the same fate awaits a new generation of sex start-ups, with their Internet of things, smart gadgets and connectivity, the river of finance, going in this direction, will dry once or twice. This will be unpleasant news for the wallets of the creators of these firms, but in the future it will help us to see on the shelves and in online stores truly high-quality things. Which will be of interest to real buyers, and not just one ephemeral investor with a big pocket.

Prepared using The Verge , SexSiopa , BoingBoing and OurLovely .

P. S. To buy gadgets in the USA there is Pochtoy.com. We deliver goods from America for as low as $ 8.99 per pound. Readers who registered with the “Geektimes” code receive $ 7 to their account.