The business behind OnlyFans, with CEO Keily Blair

Hey, folks. Jeff Berman here. This week, we're sharing a conversation with the CEO of OnlyFans, Keeley Blair. If you're not yet familiar with it, OnlyFans is a digital platform for creators that lets them share exclusive content with paying subscribers. It's best known for its lucrative not so safe for work content, but it's also an incredible story of scale. In under a decade, OnlyFans says it has grown to about $7,000,000,000 in annual revenue and over 400,000,000 users around the world. Remarkably, it has also distributed $25,000,000,000 to its more than 4,000,000 creators. Keeley 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. Hello, Web Summit. Keely, 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 gonna 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 a 100% who identify OnlyFans 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 OnlyFans have. We also have an incredibly loyal community. We have 400,000,000 users globally, and we have 4,000,000 content creators. In addition to that, as we can see from the room out here, it's a huge draw. Everyone's intrigued by any fans. Everyone's a little bit interested. And the reality is that even though lots of people have heard of any fans, they may never have actually been on our platform. So 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 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 gonna go to Patreon or Substack or what have you. So, let's just level set for a moment before we get to this. The scale of the business is quite extraordinary. 6 plus billion dollars in revenue last year? 7 actually, Jess. 7. Yeah. And payouts historically to creators are now 25,000,000,000? 25,000,000,000. So, massive numbers. But to get to $10.15, 20,000,000,000 in revenue. Payouts, $50,100,000,000,000 …