LA Startup Club
Real products for real people in the real heart of LA.
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When we read Offbeatr’s team application to LA Startup Club, we knew immediately we wanted them in our group. They were quirky and honest, and seemed to be a far cry from what most people imagine porn guys to be.
They were open from the very beginning that being tech guys in the porn world still meant that they were porn guys, and being porn guys meant that they are facing extremely difficult challenges due mostly to the legal hurdles any legitimate business faces in their industry thanks to the fraud magnets that dominate the XXX internet. We’ve talked through everything from the difficulty getting approved for a merchant account to marketing strategy and how the adapt to the challenges they’ve bumped up against.
Yesterday brought the launch of Offbeatr and they received some great press from TechCrunch and Gigaom. Their goal is to help adult projects, who much like Offbeatr itself live on the fringes of their industry, get the funding they need.
“For Offbeatr it’s about going directly to the fans and supporters and engaging them in the process and giving content creators access to capital they previously never had access to. By getting this capital the industry will start to innovate and take more risks with business models, products they make, and how they reach out to their customers.”
We hope that this is only the beginning of a long line of successes for the team, ultimately leading to the crowdfunding sites that continually pop up, to soon be described as the Offbeatr for boring stuff. Cheers!
