Info on LionTree’s Pornography IB group?

Does anyone know much about the Adult Media & Entertainment group (I think that’s what it’s called) at liontree. I know it’s a new group, and the only thing I’ve heard of is that they’ve recruited people from JPM who’ve had experience doing financings for MindGeek (parent company of pornhub, brazzers, RedTube, etc) and other companies in the space. 

 

LionTree Year End Letter - "Even short-form audio adult entertainment companies like Quinn and Dipsea are set to revolutionize an enormous industry, redefining pleasure for the masses (or so my friends have told me)."

 

there is definitely a CIM/simp joke in here with compelling upside potential

 
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Actually a very interesting space right now.

Porn was basically monopolized by Mindgeek and the regulators didn't stop them because well...it's porn (seriously they own pornhub, redtube, digital playground, Mofos, twistys, men.com, reality kings).  They are the standard oil of Porn.

However they completely failed to see the trends of the average porn consumer and are losing market share and revenue at an increasingly precipitous rate.  Consumers either want personalized/intimate experiences (Onlyfans) or extremely high quality 4k glam porn in exquisite locations (Vixen, Blacked.com - Both owned by the same competitor by the way).

Simply put, Onlyfans is to Mindgeek as Tik Tok is to Facebook.

People would rather pay money to simp on onlyfans than watch free porn on pornhub.  That's how out of touch in the market Mindgeek was.  They are trying to catch up with their own version of personalized pay to play content but they are too late in my opinion.

A merger between Onlyfans and Mindgeek would be extremely synergystic and crush nearly all the remaining competition, and again, the regulators will not touch this.  Add in a high profile bolt on acquisition of a VR headset provider and you get vertical market synergies that would be very valuable and cover the whole porn supply chain from content creator to end user.

If I was in the LionTree Porn group I'd be pitching this idea 24/7 to them on the merits of a strategic merger of equals between the two companies.  Onlyfans could probably get a decent deal for them as the Mindgeek CEO is currently dealing with personal issues to include religious groups lighting his 16mm dollar mansion in Toronto on fire (SRS)  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10417683/Pornhub-CEO-breaks-si…; Always negotiate in a position of strength!

 

People would rather pay money to simp on onlyfans than watch free porn on pornhub.  That's how out of touch in the market Mindgeek was.  They are trying to catch up with their own version of personalized pay to play content but they are too late in my opinion.

Basically out of the Steve Jobs playbook when he developed Apple Music when everyone was downloading illegally. 

 

I don't think this is the real trend here. Similar to our analyst friend, I've also been performing a lot of due dilligence on this market. Here is an statistic I got out of my most recent discounted cum-flow model: Girls on onlyfans are on average 50% hotter than girls doing real porn.

Jokes aside, this is true. The women doing porn are usually hot but if you've ever gone outside you would realize that there are some girls in the real world who are way hotter. But those girls, for some reason, just don't get into the mainstream porn industry. The reasons are clear. There are many very specific steps you need to make, and very specific people you need to know, to get into a porn role. Even as a hot girl. But with websites like onlyfans then if you are hot and you know you are hot all you need to do is upload a few pics (not even showing face) to see what the interest is on someone with your body. Then when you get some traction it is also easy to double down showing more and maybe even doing actual porn shoots for your audience. 

So this is the trend. 

Girls that don't do porn at all > Girls that do modelling/other non-porn but sexual in nature acts > Girls that do soft-core porn > Girls that do hardcore porn

Previously the consumer only had access to the right-end of this inequality. Onlyfans unlocked the next category. The third category would be if normal celebrities just started also doing porn (which has happened with some low-tier celebrities). The 4th category would be if every single woman became a pornstar. I think that in the next 10 years we will see someone unlock the third category. The 4th category... it's a bit tricky. 

 

Imagine watching so much porn that you end up mapping out the entire industry and dreaming up potentials mergers and acquisitions between the different websites that you jerk off to, probably purely out of the synergy you get from masturbating on one website just after the other. 

I'm not making fun of you. I'm impressed.

 

I just checked out vixen.com and blacked and i cannot believe people actually watch those over produced over glossy porn. Its just so fucking boring to look at wtf, no one looks like they are having fun and its so robotic and the fact that people actually pay to use them is even more crazy to me. I always preferred free and amateur type stuff. 

While I can kinda understand guys that pay for only fans since its more intimate, those 4k glam porn type of videos are literally so unappealing to me I think people that watch them must be real life NPCs no way they are actually real people. 

 
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Respect the research. Do you have a catalogue or folder of these research materials? My friend is into this space and would like to know.

 

If you go in for your interview and it's on a black leather couch run for the fucking hills

 

but is there an equal representation of females (think women) in the group? Would be disconcerting to see LT single out one of its industry-leading coverage groups ... not quite encouraging to the fairer sex looking to apply.

 

Deep fake technology has actually shown a bunch of positives for the adult entertainment industries. Aside from websites failing to prevent its use and uploads from users, when used appropriately and ethically it can benefit the actors and UX almost equally. Actors don’t have to work as much, worry about target populations, be hassled with public health/safety on a regular basis, or risk doing things they’re not comfortable with for more views/interaction, etc. Furthermore, users could have the opportunity to literally customize whatever video or actor they’d like for whatever weirdo task they’re tryna do. The quality of edits from amateurs in the space is already impressive, so the quality of cinematography that a large corporation’s AI could create is effectively endless.

 

Deepfake is insane. Admittedly I've waxed my paddle to a deep fake of a dummy hot celeb, I genuinely could not tell it was deep-fake even though I knew it was one

I'd actually view this a major Threat of Substitute for the supply base (thots). If it can look exactly the same as a girl that I'm attracted towards, at some point I'm not going to care if it's actually her or a deep-fake that is just as good as her...or even better depending on what you can do with the tech. 

 

Heard the group has by far the most diversity on the street, it puts SEO to shame. Also much higher female representation that most other firms. 

We're not lawyers. We're investment bankers. We didn't go to Harvard. We Went to Wharton!
 

Mindgeek is a really a pretty legit tech company.  The amount of traffic they handle(hd streaming video to billions of users) i believe even surpasses Netflix in terms of bandwidth and packets sent.

A lot of the technological features you enjoy on Netflix and YouTube were actually developed by the porn industry(srs).  Hover previewing thumbnails, heat maps(where it shows where people watch in a video) etc.  Read some interesting thing in the past talking about how much of the modern youtube/Netflix/ hbomax experience is due to porn.

If I was backend engineer, working at Mindgeek would be pretty prestigious.

 

Porn also drove the early development of the internet. Something like 70 of internet traffic is/was porn related.

 

All this talk is getting me hyped to be a pornography coverage banker.  Does Liontree actually cover the industry? How should I make an approach? I feel like messaging the 24 year blonde hr recruiter that "id like to set up a call to discuss my interest in porn banking" wouldn't go over well....

 

***Coffee meeting with 24 year old blonde hr recruiter***

Her: So I think you have a really interesting background, do you have any specific industry you are looking to cover or have experience in?

You: Porn.....(make sure you are staring into her cleavage)

Either she laughs in your face, you get me too'd, or she says she wants to see how much you know by taking her back to your place

This excellent SNL/Netflix Documentary/Porn Scene just wrote itself

 

ofc they do. I think MindGeek (previously mentioned) alone brings in half a billion $ in revenue. However, it's true that profitability % are not that high for these firms, but they could still reach an easy 10% IMO (I assume this company could bring just under $50M in profits). Would be interesting to see their CF statements tbh.

Furthermore, I doubt most people working with these firms care about profitability, as they probably spend a lot unnecessarily and then cover it as business expenses (paying for great holidays as part of a video or something like that)

 

Interesting. That revenue is all weird af ads they run for boner pills and sketchy sites 

I don't understand why legit companies don't put ads on porn sites.  Want someone to see your ad? Put it in pornhub....(HUGE userbase).  So much potential untapped for advertising 

 

Cover letter template for SAs trying to recruit for the group. 

My name is Liontree Applicant X, and I am a rising sophomore at California Upstate Montclair.  I'm writing to express my interest in Liontree's porn roup.  I'm not a complicated man.  I like porn.  In particular, I like to watch people fuck on the internet.  But I don't want to work at a BB and I don't want to exit to Apollo.  I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth.  That's just me.  That's just something that I enjoy.  Call me crazy, call me a pervert.  But there's one little thing that I want to do in this life and that is to make a dollar and a cent in this business. 

I look forward to being in touch to discuss next steps. 

 

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