What does it take to turn a groundbreaking idea into a reality, especially when it challenges societal norms and confronts widely held taboos? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood explores this question with her guest, Cindy Gallop, a trailblazer reshaping conversations around sex, pornography, and sexual wellness. Cindy's journey into entrepreneurship is anything but conventional, providing a fascinating look at how one can use business to drive social change. Cindy Gallop is not only a veteran of the advertising world but also a pioneering advocate for open and honest discussions about sex. Her unique background, which combines decades in brand building and personal experiences, led her to found MakeLoveNotPorn, a platform aimed at socializing and normalizing real-world sex. Cindy’s venture started as a response to the adverse effects of pornography being the default form of sex education and has since evolved into a crusade for better sexual understanding and education. Listeners are in for an enlightening discussion that dives deep into Cindy's mission to transform societal perceptions through her two interconnected ventures: MakeLoveNotPorn.com and the upcoming Make Love Not Porn Academy. The episode addresses critical issues such as the impact of porn on youth, the cultural stigma around sex, and the struggles of funding a venture in the sex tech industry. It's a must-listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship that's grounded in social impact, the challenges of being an underrepresented founder, and the importance of using innovative platforms to drive change in global issues.
What does it take to turn a groundbreaking idea into a reality, especially when it challenges societal norms and confronts widely held taboos? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood explores this question with her guest, Cindy Gallop, a trailblazer reshaping conversations around sex, pornography, and sexual wellness. Cindy's journey into entrepreneurship is anything but conventional, providing a fascinating look at how one can use business to drive social change.
Cindy Gallop is not only a veteran of the advertising world but also a pioneering advocate for open and honest discussions about sex. Her unique background, which combines decades in brand building and personal experiences, led her to found MakeLoveNotPorn, a platform aimed at socializing and normalizing real-world sex. Cindy’s venture started as a response to the adverse effects of pornography being the default form of sex education and has since evolved into a crusade for better sexual understanding and education.
Listeners are in for an enlightening discussion that dives deep into Cindy's mission to transform societal perceptions through her two interconnected ventures: MakeLoveNotPorn.com and the upcoming Make Love Not Porn Academy. The episode addresses critical issues such as the impact of porn on youth, the cultural stigma around sex, and the struggles of funding a venture in the sex tech industry. It's a must-listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship that's grounded in social impact, the challenges of being an underrepresented founder, and the importance of using innovative platforms to drive change in global issues.
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Marcia Dawood
Cindy, welcome to the Angel Next Door podcast. I'm so excited that you're here.
Cindy Gallop
Thank you, Marsha. I'm thrilled to be here.
Marcia Dawood
Well, I. We have so much to talk about. Oh, my gosh. I was just telling you before we hit record that I literally went down a Cindy rabbit hole on Sunday and saw just all of the amazing things that you've been doing, especially in the last, you know, couple of months, and all the things that you have been doing for all of these years to change our mindset about sex, about Por. And yes, we are going to talk about those things today. So if you have little listeners around, maybe you want to have them clear the room. But Cindy, I would love for you to tell us a little bit just about your background and then maybe we can get into some of the things that are going on more recently.
Cindy Gallop
Sure. So I am half English, half Malaysian Chinese. My father was English, my mother is Malaysian Chinese and I was born in the uk. But when I was six, we moved to Brunei in Borneo where my father got a job. So I grew up in Brunei in Asia, went back to the UK for school and university, started my career in theatre. Actually, I studied English literature at Oxford University at Sunwell College. I fell madly in love with theatre because Oxford has a thriving student drama scene. Decided that was all I wanted to do career wise.
Cindy Gallop
And so for several years I was a marketing and publicity officer for various theatres in the UK until I got completely fed up with working 247 and earning chicken feed, which is the theatre pretty much anywhere. And at the time I was the marketing officer for the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool in the uk. And part of my job was promoting the theatre by giving talks about it. So I gave a talk to a group of women and one of them came up to me afterwards and went, young lady, you could sell a fridge to an Eskimo. And I thought, that is the universe telling me something. Time to sell out, go into advertising. And so I did. And so my career background is 40 years working in brand building, marketing and advertising, which I always say was actually very good training for what I do now because I've spent 40 years working in the business of getting people to do things that they originally had no intention of doing.
Marcia Dawood
Love that. 40 years of getting people to do things they had no intention of doing. Love it. So, so then tell us how this came about. You're really, I guess you're a pioneer in this whole crusade against how do we make people more comfortable, more open about their own health, their own sexual Wellness and things like that. We've had a couple people come on the podcast before talking about sexual wellness, which we can talk probably for an hour about all the things, all the algorithms and all the things that are really tailored toward men, not toward women, and how advertising doesn't allow for such words to be said even when you're talking about things that are trying to make things a place. So tell us how that all got started.
Cindy Gallop
Sure. So basically everything in my life and career has happened by accident. I've never consciously planned, intended anything. My ex boss in the advertising world, Sir John Hegarty, who was the H in BBH where I worked for a very long time, he has this wonderful mantra. John says, do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you. And I'm a great believer in living my life that way. Though not porn. My company was a complete and total accident.
Cindy Gallop
It came about because I date younger men and I began realizing 17, 18 years ago now through dating younger men, that when we don't talk openly and honestly about sex, porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way. So I found myself encountering a number of sexual behavioral memes in bed. I went, what? I know where that behavior is coming from. I thought, gosh, if I'm experiencing this, other people must be as well. I didn't know that because 17 years ago, no one talked about this, no one wrote about it. This is me in isolation as a naturally action oriented person going, I'm going to do something about this. So 16 years ago, pure. As a little side venture, I grew up on no Money, a tiny clunky website@makelovenotporn.com that in its original iteration was kind of a public service announcement.
Cindy Gallop
Porn world versus real world. Here's what happens in the porn world. Here's what really happens in the real world. I launched at Ted in 2009. I became the only TED speaker to say the words on my face on the TED stage several times in succession. The talk went viral as a result, and it drove this extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated. Thousands of people wrote to me from all around the world, young and old, male and female, straight and gay, pouring their hearts out, telling me things about their sex lives and their porn watching habits they'd never told anyone before. And I realized I'd uncovered a huge global social issue.
Cindy Gallop
And so that was the point at which I went, oh my God, I now have a personal responsibility. I have to take make love, not corn forwards in a way that will make it Much more far reaching, helpful and effective. So I turn into a business designed to do good and make money simultaneously, which I know we both believe should be the future of all a business ultimately.
Marcia Dawood
That's right. That's right.
Cindy Gallop
And, and what I did was, you know, for 16 years I've said the issue isn't porn. The issue is that we don't talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world. Because if we did, people would then be able to bring a real world mindset to the viewing of what is produced, performative, scripted entertainment. So I went, okay, you know, I need to find a way to make it easier for everybody in the world to talk honestly about sex. So I decided very simply to take every dynamic in social media and apply them to this one area of universal human experience that no other social platform allows in order to socialize sex. And so I turned Make Love Not Porn into what it is today, which is the world's first and only user generated and importantly, 100% human curated social sex video sharing platform. So we're kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed you to openly, healthily sexually self express, which it clearly does not. The way to think about us is if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love not porn is the badly needed documentary.
Cindy Gallop
We are a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the real world. And what we're doing, as I said, is we are socializing, normalizing, destigmatizing sex, bringing it out of the shadows into the sunlight to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and behavior. We are literally sex education through real world demonstration.
Marcia Dawood
Wow, that's amazing. And you know what really scares me today is how readily available very bad pornographic videos are to children on YouTube. I am terrified. And one can lead to another and it can just very, very bad. Then younger and younger and younger children are getting exposed to this. So I know that is also part of what a pro. Big part of the problem. You're trying to.
Marcia Dawood
You're already solving a big problem, obviously, but this other part of the problem too. So can you talk about that?
Cindy Gallop
Sure. So you're absolutely right, Marcia, because I have to tell you, I mean, kids have been writing to me since day one of being up not porn, you know, teenage boys, teenage girls. And in fact, you know, I will just share with you and our listeners because, you know, there are moments in the past 16 years I've never forgotten. I was at, I was at an event, a kind of gathering, bit like conference, which was for families. And I spoke On a panel about Make Love not porn. And there was a family in the audience, mother, father and a boy, you know, blond haired, blue eyed, angelic looking, you know, young teenage boy who actually put his hand up and asked a question, which was terrific. Anyway, later on I was in the audience for another session and this boy came up to me, you know, 16 years old I think he was, and he said to me, and he came up to me because clearly, and this is many years ago, this is literally like 15 years ago, soon after, you know, my TED Talk because obviously he felt I was somebody to talk to. And he said to me, you know, I've never had a girlfriend and I've been watching porn and I've been watching more and more hardcore stuff because it takes more and more of that to get me going.
Cindy Gallop
And I'm really terrified that when I do have a girlfriend, I won't be able to have a probation with her because I will only be turned on by the stuff I'm watching. And I mean, I was honestly, you know, in that moment I was speechless because I didn't know what to say to what he just said to me, you know, and, and you know, I think what I said was, listen, you know, when, when you meet a girl you like, you know, start from scratch with her, talk about what she likes to, you know, I mean, you know, I gave that. But, but, but, but I've always, you know, long, blue eyed, innocent looking, young boy asking me this question. So, so reaching out to me for the past 16 years have been parents and teachers and I can, I've spoken to a lot of both. Basically because Make Love Not Porn is, we are more legal than evil. We're for 18 and over. I will just tell you that, you know, has a very powerful capability. We have the ability to change sexual attitude, behavior for the better.
Cindy Gallop
And so parents for years have bought their teenage children subscriptions to Make Love Not Porn because they tell us, I want my kids to see what happy, healthy, loving sexual relationships actually look like. And in the past year we've gotten more and more of those requests and they've gotten more desperate. You know, two months ago a motherburg class and said, I've just discovered my 13 year old son is watching Pornhub. I'd rather he watch Make Love not Porn. I know he's underage. Can we work something out? And our policy is, as I said, we have 18 over. But parental judgment trumps that. You as a parent know what's right for your child.
Cindy Gallop
And so that mother has Gifted her son a subscription. And I hope it really helps. But what that illustrates as well, Marcia, is that for years I've wanted to start educating way more upstream than Make Love Not Porn is. And so I've had a product in the pipeline for 10 years. It's been in the pipeline because nobody would fund it, but we are finally able to start designing and building it because last year we were able to launch our first ever equity crowdfunding campaign. And it's our first ever because historically, like all other business infrastructure, no crowdfunding platform would admit make love not porn. But I know. Oh yeah, no, I mean the no adult content clause is ubiquitous with every single piece of infrastructure other tech startups get to take for granted.
Cindy Gallop
Fortunately, the wonderful actress Jameela Jamil is a huge fan of Make Love not porn. She interviewed me on her podcast. She is very candid about how porn impacted her self esteem, her relationships growing up. And so she proposed that she lead an equity crowdfunding campaign as our lead investor and brought us to we funder. So we're able to launch a campaign. We're targeting just over a million dollars. We've raised just over 400,000, but that has enabled us finally to begin designing and building midclubnotporn.academy, which is the 0 to 18 and beyond sex education expansion of what we do. This is what I characterize as the Khan Academy of sex education.
Cindy Gallop
Because Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform, tutors kids on every other topic under the sun except this one. Educational technology. EdTech is exporting as a sector not in this area. So we are designing and building Make Love Not Corn Academy on the same principle as Make Love not Porn user generated, crowdsourced curated revenue share. Because I'm not about reinventing the wheel. This is an aggregation play. We are building the go to global hub for the best of the world sex education content. And so the way it works is, and we're in full educator outreach as we speak, we are inviting educators, I use the term very broadly, you know, sexual health and wellness experts, therapists, podcasters, health professionals, anybody informing, educating in this entire area from cradle to grave.
Cindy Gallop
And because we're all embracing, you know, menstruation, menopause, I mean every possible area of education. And we're inviting them to share on the academy their own content, you know, their course materials, books, videos, anything they want to sell as well. Now, very importantly, with everything we do, we operate what I call the human curation layer on top of the Internet. You know, I designed to make Knock knock Paul through the female Lens to be the safest place on the Internet. There's no self publishing of anything and they won't be on the Academy. Human Eyes watch every video submitted to make lovemort porn from beginning to end before we approve or reject and republish it. Human Eyes will vet every educator, every piece of content on the Academy. And by the way, our criteria is very broad on make love not porn.
Cindy Gallop
Your video must be legal, consensual and real. Then anything goes. We exist to celebrate the full glorious spectral human sexuality on the Academy. Your content must be educational, fact based and non judgmental. And then, you know, anything goes. And we are then going to make all of this easily searchable by age appropriateness. So if you're a parent freaking out going, oh my God, my six year old asked this, it's they we're going to give you the tools and content to be able to have that conversation with your 6 year old if you're a teacher. For classes for 14 year olds, we're going to feature a ton of amazing, you know, sex education curricula people around the world have designed that people in other countries have no idea exist.
Cindy Gallop
So you can pick and choose, you know, for your classroom if you're an adult, access all areas because adults are equally desperate for all this information. But the important thing, Marcia, is that the Academy will be where children and young people can access sex education without parental teacher gatekeeping. And here's just one example of why this is so critically important. So I have a friend who's a mother and as you have to these days, she monitors her kids browsing history. So this happened a few years ago. Her son was 8 years old at the time and she saw to her horror that on the family computer he had googled sex for children. So she freaked out, but did stay calm, sat him down. You know, darling, I happen to see that you are, you know, talk me through why this anecdote is adorable and horrifying in equal measure.
Cindy Gallop
Because her son wondered about sex. He was a child, he knew he was a child. He wanted to 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. And so the academy will be when 8 year old boy can enter his age on the homepage and we will only serve him age appropriate content. And you know, a lot of this sort will be free to access for that example. But you know, it's very important that educators will be able to Sell, you know, anything they want to books and products.
Cindy Gallop
Because, you know, in the 16 years I've worked at Make Love Not Porn, I've built up a huge network of brilliant sex educator friends all around the world who face all the same challenges I do. Their content gets blocked on Facebook, Instagram, they're suspended, you know, they're banned from advertising. They can't even make a living doing this. They have to take other jobs to survive. I want to change that because this is enormously valuable work. And the key thing, Marcia, is so I've said to my team, our mission with the academy is to help organize the world's sex education information to make it universally accessible and useful. That is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission statement, to organize the world's information to make it universally accessible and useful. Because today they don't.
Cindy Gallop
The algorithm is biased, open, healthy. Sex education is being blocked, censored and de platformed everywhere. You know, and by the way, it's only going to get worse in our new political regime. You know, all sorts of freedoms being rolled back as we speak. And so basically, I want to make sure that people can easily find the education everyone desperately needs. And also, Marcia, I'm out to prove concept. What I mean by that is the years people said to me, I'm Cindy, you should go to schools, you know, make contribute in the curriculum. And I've always said no, I shouldn't because anybody trying to bring sex ed into schools comes up against parent teacher association, moral panic, you know, but here's the people keeping sex ed out of schools don't know what it'd be like if they allowed it in.
Cindy Gallop
They're just gonna be really bad in their heads. They have this abstract concept, Sovereign gomorrah will ensue. So when we take the Academy live as an mvp, which we plan to do later this year, we can hit our funding goal when I can show you therefore what does not exist anyway at the moment, which is the best of the world's sex education content could all in one place. And you can see for yourself at a glance how brilliant, informative, educational, healthy, and importantly non threatening it is. And you can pick and choose according to age appropriateness, cultural sensibility, because we will have Christian sex ed, Jewish sex ed, Muslim sex ed, and importantly, pick and choose by personal comfort level. We just make it accessible. You decide what's right for your family, your classroom, your school. That is.
Cindy Gallop
When I think I can get sex ed into schools, I'm doing this outside the system. To get it into the system.
Marcia Dawood
Interesting. You know, I also worry a lot about, you know, as women are, what are we teaching girls by having them see porn as their only way of understanding what sex is about and that they think it's okay to be, you know, treated badly or, you know, whatever the story is, it's terrifying. So I'm sure having that type of non threatening education would be amazing.
Cindy Gallop
And, and I have to tell you, Marcia, I had a wonderful evening Sunday before last because I was invited by the president of the Greenwich, Connecticut chapter of the National League of Young Men to talk to a group of 50, 14 to 18 year old high school boys about make love, not porn and sex and porn. And I didn't know about the National League of Young Men before I got this invitation. It's a nationwide organization for mothers and their high school age sons. And the aim of the National League of Young Men is to bring those high school boys up as upstanding leaders of their community. And this I was so impressed by the mothers that reached out to me and invited me to do this. And secondly, I was impressed because, you know, so, so they sent a car to take me to one of their homes in Greenwich and they had a big kind of living area with a screen I could do my presentation on and all the boys could be seated and those, those who couldn't attend in person, that they had a zoom going as well. And the mothers said to the boys, okay, you know, we're going to leave you with Cindy. You know, we're going to go and hang out in another room.
Cindy Gallop
We know nothing, okay? We're not hearing anything. You know, you can ask all the questions you want, we know nothing about them. You know, please make the most of this opportunity. And it was a wonderful evening because so first of all, there was obviously a lot of like squirming and wriggling to begin with when I presenting and I deliberately, you know, my presentation was the history of making love, not porn, how it came to be. And I don't, I don't do this usually, but I actually took them through every single one of those original porn world versus real world screenshots in the original website because I wrote the copy for all of those. And I knew 16 years ago that to be credible with young people who I wanted to reach, I had to talk the language of poor and I had to be very graphic. But I also made it entertaining and humorous. And so I wanted to start with that so that they knew that this is going to be a very frank conversation.
Cindy Gallop
And they were free to say and ask whatever they wanted. So talk them through everything and then open up the Q and A. And again, nobody want to ask a question until the first point and the second. All of a sudden, you know, I mean, they just, you know, once he knew they could really ask anything, that they just opened up. And it was wonderful because, you know, it was. The themes were all the usual insecurities around sex and, you know, what do girls like? And, you know, and all anybody ever want is to be good in bed, you know, and they are learning from completely the wrong places, you know, and it was fantastic to have an opportunity to answer all of those questions freely and frankly. And by the way, you know, again, as I mentioned, Marcia, I've been doing this for years because I remember a teenage boy wrote to me again some years after we launched, and he said, I think he was 15, he said, I'm having sex with my girlfriend because guess what? Underage sex happens. He said, please tell me how to make love, not porn.
Cindy Gallop
I really want to know. And I know my parents sure as hell won't tell me. And you know, when I get an email like that, Marcia, I write back, and I write back at, okay. I mean, you know, however stressed I am keeping Mink Love Not Porn going, I absolutely drop everything. And I wrote back at length, in detail, and he wrote back to me and he said, thank you so much. My girlfriend asked me, where'd you learn that?
Marcia Dawood
Oh, that's good.
Cindy Gallop
So I welcome the opportunity. And, you know, and by the way, you know, I'm planning to do a mini masterclass of my own, a series of videos on Make Love Not Porn Academy when we launch, because I want to distill all of the advice that I've been giving, you know, people all these years so that it's there for parents and for young people. So, so importantly, the academy is absolutely about educating about love and intimacy and relationships and telling teenage girls, you know, it's not okay if this happens. And telling teenage boys, this is what will make you good in bed, you know, so, so, yep, our aim is to get as far upstream as possible. So I talk about the academy as it's 0 to 18 and beyond sex education extension. That's because today parents need to be educating about sex as early as possible. And so we are going to provide that there is wonderful content out there that people often can't find that is being blocked, as I said, on social. And so I want to make all of that easily and openly accessible to everybody.
Cindy Gallop
Because boy, oh boy, in the coming years, we are going to seriously need that.
Marcia Dawood
Absolutely. So in the last 16 years, you've been pretty much funding this yourself. You haven't really gone out for a fundraise before this, right?
Cindy Gallop
Actually, no, no, I've been trying to raise funding for 16 years.
Marcia Dawood
Oh, okay. We've been trying to raise funding for 16 years.
Cindy Gallop
Yeah, but you're absolutely right, Marcia, because first of all, took me two years. I pitched the idea of Make Love Not Porn, a social sex platform, from 2009 to 2011, because that is how long it took me to find one angel investor who got it and put $100,000 in seed funding to build the platform. He has been our only primary investor since he's been wonderfully supportive. He's put in a total of like $4 million over the past 16 years. But to your point, I have put in all my savings, you know, I've liquidated my retirement fund. I have destroyed myself financially to keep this business going in a way that, by the way, many female founders do because we have no option. And so, by the way, you know, I absolutely have to make this payback for me because I'm a 65 year old woman with no retirement fund. That is, that is, that's not a good place to be.
Cindy Gallop
But you know what I found, Marcia? And this is, I mean, female founders, as you know, have many challenges raising funding. I represent the triple whammy of unfundability. I'm female, I'm older, and I have a sex tech venture. By the way, I actually represent the quadruple whammy of unfundability because I'm also a woman of color. You know, Color.
Marcia Dawood
Yeah, I was going to say you're also a woman of color.
Cindy Gallop
Right, But I'm white passing. So I don't include that. You know, unfortunately for me, that's sort of barrier. The weight is for other people. But there is one very unique challenge that I face, which is I've realized in 16 years of trying to raise funding that my investors absolutely are out there. And there are a ton of them, and there are a ton of them in every country in the world. But they are impossible to find by conventional means because they all have one thing in common. Your willingness to fund make love, not porn is entirely a function of your personal sexual journey.
Cindy Gallop
It is a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality that's been shaped by your own experience of it. And obviously I have no way to research and target for that.
Marcia Dawood
Right.
Cindy Gallop
Not least because sex is the area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside. The people who look like they would totally get it don't. The people who look like complete prudes do. And so my strategy that I've been forced to is I put what I'm doing out there all the time across all my social channels. I do every media interview. I've also gone every podcast. I have to make synaptic connections happen that will attract those investors. To me, this is a very long, slow, painful and highly inefficient process.
Cindy Gallop
It does work, but sporadically from time to time. Although I will just say, Marcia, the one thing I'm grateful for about a self selecting investor base is that quite frankly, as female founders, none of us need to have any more thoroughly depressing meetings than we absolutely have to female founder friends who have pitched and been rejected by VCs over 300 times. I don't know how they keep going. In a way, it's a blessing. I can't even get across the threshold because honestly, I could not take that. So in a way, when I am having an investor conversation, I know at least they are predisposed towards what I'm doing. Because if you are not. And that's the thing again about sex, you know, if your personal sexual journey has had a negative impact on how you view anything to do with sex, there is no rational argument that is ever going to overcome that.
Cindy Gallop
Yeah.
Marcia Dawood
Wow. Yeah. So recently, quite recently, you were on a session of Creative Mornings, which I love because there's so many interesting.
Cindy Gallop
Oh my God. My friend Tina Roth Eisenberg's organization. It's amazing.
Marcia Dawood
Amazing. Right? So you were talking about the three main reasons and that was, number one. Right. That you just mentioned about why it has been such an uphill battle for you to. You went out raising a million dollars on. On the We Funder campaign a year ago. Right. And now you're up to about.
Marcia Dawood
I just looked a couple minutes ago, it was about 413,000. So since Sunday got up a little bit. All right. We're definitely going to put the link in the show notes so that people can go to the site. But tell us about the other two because they were also fascinating.
Cindy Gallop
Sure. So, yeah. So for our listeners, Tina of Creative Mornings asked several people to do a talk about failure. And so I talked about the fact that, you know, I both tried to do a full fundraise, Make Love Not Porn, and failed at that. And we launched this equity crowdfunding campaign, target interest over a million dollars near A year ago now. And I've spectacularly failed to hit that goal in an era where we hear all the time about how founders are raising tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and where we hear about, you know, crowdfunding goals blowing past their target in, like, the first 24 hours. And so I said that, you know, I had three learnings that I took away from this failure, which, you know, I welcome the opportunity to share with the audience, but because I felt they could be helpful. And the first learning was, as we've just discussed, it's not me, because people are funny about things.
Cindy Gallop
And this learning was reinforced because when I launched the WE Funder, I naively thought that with my network, with my following, my fan base, and we Najamils, you know, hitting a million dollars in 2024, as it was then, should not be that difficult.
Marcia Dawood
Right?
Cindy Gallop
And I especially, I'll be very frank here, thought extremely difficult, because in my network, I have a lot of friends with money, you know, and, you know, I felt that I should be able to draw on them. So when I launched a Sweet Funder, and when it launched at the same time, I did a BCC email blast, and that email went out to 65 people who had two things in common. They were all friends of mine that I knew had a lot of money. And the second thing they had in common was that in some form or other, they owed me. Okay. Over the years, I had championed, promoted, supported, done things to them, helped their children in whatever capacity. These were people that might helped in the past. And.
Cindy Gallop
And, you know, and so the subtext of this was, now's your chance to reciprocate. So I hit send on that email. I want to give a big shout out to my wonderful friend Laurel Toobie. I don't feel no Laurel. She was the founder of Media Bistro back in the day, you know, and got that acquired successfully. Anyway, within 20 minutes of me hitting send on that email, Laurel had invested $5,000 in our WE funder, which was fantastic. But what was even better was that, you know, when I. Because, you know, I publicized what different people were investing at every level, you know, the minimum investment is $100.
Cindy Gallop
So many people invested 100, whom I know, by the way, stretch themselves to afford that. And I'm so grateful for. So I post the amounts that people were funding. And Laurel left a comment on my LinkedIn post. She said, cindy, I was so grateful to finally have the chance to pay you back for everything you've done for me over the years. Then she said in capital letters, everybody, this is a throwdown. If Cindy has ever helped you in any way at all, do not like Cindy's posts. Do not cheer her from the sidelines.
Cindy Gallop
Do not tell her what great work she's doing. Bring cold hard cash. Singly fund. And honestly, I just went, oh, my God, Lauren, I love you to death. Because that was the message. That was the only funding response from that email blast to 65 people.
Marcia Dawood
Wow.
Cindy Gallop
So, as I shared with the audience at Creative Mornings, I mean, and to be perfectly frank, Marcia, there's been a layer of emotional disappointment in what I've seen play out with the we Funder that I've had to kind of get myself over. At the same time, by the way, I've been very moved by. There are people who are even advertising industry friends who really stepped up the plate, whom I would not have expected to, who put in thousands of dollars. But I had the opportunity to have this conversation with a few very old, very dear friends about why they had not funded my refund there. And, and, and these were people I've known for a long time who in this case were good enough friends who were willing to be honest with me. And what they said was. And there were different reasons, you know, one was upbringing, one was religion. You know, they were frank about the fact that they were too uncomfortable to contribute to anything to do with sex, even when it was me and even when it was a business.
Cindy Gallop
Designers make love, more importantly, is to help end raid culture globally. Now, fortunately, I found a way around this, because when I began getting an indication of this, I made it clear to them, and I've said this publicly, what you can do is you can absolutely invest in our refund and say, I only want my funding to go to the Academy, you know, because these friends were okay with the sex education platform. They were not okay with make love Not Porn, the video sharing club. And so, and so fortunately, you know, they did fund. And you can just, in your we fund a message, say, I want us to go to the Academy. And then we make sure that that is absolutely where we're allocating those funds. And in fact, one friend who runs a nonprofit, you know, and I was very grateful for this from her nonprofit, she invested $25,000, which you can actually do, by the way, as a nonprofit or if you have a DAF or whatever, you know, specifically for the academy, you know, just for the.
Marcia Dawood
Right.
Cindy Gallop
But, but, but, yeah, that was, that was quite the revelation. And, and that was why I said to the audience the important Learning there is. It's not me, you know, because, you know, when you fail, you know you're failing may be due to reasons that have nothing to do with you. And it's really important to know that. And then the other two learnings were. So I shared with the audience the fact that I was interviewed last year for a series on leadership. And one of the questions I was asked was, so, Cindy, have you ever let your ego get in the way of the right thing to do? And I just burst out laughing and I said, what ego? Because I am humiliated on a daily basis working on Make Love Not Porn. And what I mean by that is not at all in a general context, because I can promise you that in 16 years, there's been nothing but a favorable response worldwide to what Make Love Not Porn is, Andy, and the solution it presents to the issue it's tackling.
Cindy Gallop
But in the business and financial world, every day I am made to feel like a pariah, scorned and looked down on by the financial and business institutions that I need to partner with, whether it's banking, payments, you know, business infrastructure, you know, services for a video streaming platform because of the nature of my business. So I left my ego behind a very long time ago. And so my second learning was when you have no ego, failure lands very differently to the way it does for many people. You know, it's when you're living with daily humiliation and degradation and abysmal. You know, honestly, failure does not feel when. When you have no ego. And then. And then, you know, the third learning that I shared with them was so, you know, I spoke about the fact that I'd announced very publicly two and a half years ago in the press that I was setting out to raise around a $20 million to scale me on the porn.
Cindy Gallop
You know, I had, you know, announced very publicly we are launching this refund and we're targeting just over a million dollars. And actually what I'd learned was nobody's watching. So nobody is shaming me publicly or privately for not achieving either of those goals. And in fact, I shared with the audience that just a couple of days before I gave this talk at Great of Mornings, I had a lovely LinkedIn message from a man who had invested $1,000 in our We Fund last year and who said. He said he was doing some business deals and if a deal came good, he wanted to invest more, which. Which I really appreciated hearing. And he very kindly messed her on LinkedIn to say, wow, you're doing really well. The last time I looked you were at 300,000 now over 400,000.
Cindy Gallop
That's, you know, and so, and so I said to the audience, I may have failed, but nobody's keeping small. You know, that's right. So absolutely be aware of that. Nobody's watching. Okay. You may think you failed. Nobody's keeping small. And so, and so what all this added up to was, I mean, I don't fear failure.
Cindy Gallop
You know, I'm, I'm, I'm a big fan. You know, I shared this of that wonderful Confucius quote that goes, it does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop. And I went, I'm just going to keep right on failing. I'm going to fail and fail and fail again until I succeed. And then I said to the audience, and by the way, if every one of you goes to WeFund invest 100, we're right, will be $2,000 closer to the person that waken failure.
Marcia Dawood
That's great.
Cindy Gallop
Sure, a few of them did, but unfortunately not all of them. But, but, you know, and actually, I was very moved by the response. The woman who'd been sitting next to me when I returned to my seat said I needed to hear that. I had tears in my eyes listening to that. Thank. Thank you so much. And a whole bunch of audience members came up subsequently and said, you know, I'm so grateful that that's really helped me. So, you know, you know, I think, you know, it's funny because when Tina invited me to other speakers to do that, do this talk, she went, and the thing is, we're going to respect your vulnerability.
Cindy Gallop
So. So there'll be no live streaming. You know, we will record it, but we won't post online. And I went live stream away, post away. You know, who cares about my failures? If I can help anybody by being candid about failing, I want to help all the people I can.
Marcia Dawood
Absolutely. Wow. Well, we will definitely be putting the we Funder link out there, encouraging everybody to be a part of that. Now, you mentioned something very briefly, and it's something that we've talked about on the podcast several times, and I've been a real advocate about making sure people know about, and that is being able to use philanthropic dollars to invest in different companies. And now, so you've got two things going on here, because you've got makelove notporn.com and then you've got the Academy piece. And I'm guessing the academy piece is a 501C3.
Cindy Gallop
No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It's a for profit business.
Marcia Dawood
Oh, they're both for profit businesses.
Cindy Gallop
Again, it's about doing good and making money simultaneously.
Marcia Dawood
Got it.
Cindy Gallop
And especially Marcia, because as I mentioned, my sex educator friends are struggling. So one of the people that we're going to showcase on the Academy and their amazing work is, I don't know if you know of Heather Corinna, who is the OG of online sex education. They started scarleteen.com 25 years ago because they were amongst the earliest kind of erotic content creators online. And they found that teams just started writing them asking for education about sexual. So they started Scala Team, which is a phenomenal sex education resource platform for young people, especially lgbtq. And I've been a huge fan for years. I'm a recurring donor. Searlatine is a bugger.
Cindy Gallop
1C3 and so I reached out to Heather saying we want to showcase Scarlatine and send traffic to you and donors to you. And so we zoomed last year and honestly, it is gut wrenching to hear Heather say that they are struggling to pay their rent. I mean, you know, so that is why we are absolutely a for profit business. And also because ultimately, Marcia, you know, I believe that we can scale the most impact. Somebody sent me a meme that I posted several times since that they said, this reminds me of you. And the meme was, girl, the revolution will not have 501c3 status. That's right, we are. The Academy is a for profit venture as well.
Cindy Gallop
But you can absolutely fund both with dapps. And that's. And that's something that I've been putting out there publicly because not enough people realize A, they can use their finance or capital that way and B, not enough female founders realize that that is also capital that we could be going after with ventures that are designed to do good and make money simultaneously.
Marcia Dawood
Yes. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because I do have several podcast episodes where we've talked about using your DA to fund a for profit company and how that works. And we've had people from Impact Assets. Come on. Patricia Brickman and Leah Brickman came on from Patrice.
Cindy Gallop
Love Patrice. Yep.
Marcia Dawood
Yes. Yes. And so, you know, that's where you can actually directly donate philanthropic capital and it would go directly to a for profit company led by an underrepresented founder only. So I love that. So, yeah, So I think this is something that we need to be talking about because I could see where people would maybe, maybe that would increase their comfort level. I don't know. But I think it's something that we need to keep talking about. And I'll make sure that all these details are in the show notes and that we talk about that even on the social post so that people are familiar.
Marcia Dawood
So fantastic.
Cindy Gallop
That'd be amazing.
Marcia Dawood
Cindy, you are doing some incredible work. I want to be a backer. I want to be a helper. I want to help you get this message out into the world because it is really important, and I think it could really affect the future of our children and the future of the types of relationships that they're going to have. So thank you for the work that you're doing, and thank you for coming onto the Angel Next door podcast.
Cindy Gallop
Marcia, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for this great conversation.