Lad, 22, sells company for £52 million he started at kitchen table

A man who set up a rival to OnlyFans in his kitchen, back in 2020, is in the money after selling the site for an eight figure sum.

Multi-millionaire, Harry Gestetner, set up website Fanfix after the success of OnlyFans, which had exploded in popularity that year.

While both sites were subscription-based platforms where people pay money on the regular to look at someone's content, Fanfix wasn't going to have nudity.

That might sound a bit like it's not going to measure up to OnlyFans in terms of popularity, but Gestetner thought there was a gap in the market for a website like it - without the associations with explicit content.

Indeed, there are some content creators on OnlyFans who do some decidedly 'unsexy' things and still make a big pile of cash from their subscribers.

Fanfix

There have been people who've made money off videos of them brushing their teeth, doing chores around the house and some more bizarre but not explicit things like walking on slices of bread.

The guy's idea was that if there are going to be people who will subscribe to a person doing something, then perhaps a platform which doesn't have the racy reputation of OnlyFans would be a useful thing to have.

Gestetner became a millionaire last year by selling his site to SuperOrdinary, and told Insider he'd seen a 'massive gap' in the market.

He and co-founder, Simon Pompan, had the idea after Gestetner's cousin posted a TikTok that went viral and he wondered why they couldn't make money from the millions of views.

Together they raised $1.3 million for Fanfix and launched it with the help of Vine star, Cameron Dallas, who boosted the site's profile in the early days.

He told Insider he didn't actually see Fanfix as a competitor to OnlyFans, as they were going after different audiences who wanted different things.

Fanfix

Gestetner also claimed that the 'creator economy', driven by sites like his and OnlyFans, 'shouldn't have existed in the first place' as he thought the social media giants really missed a trick by not monetising content.

Now it's got about 10 million registered users and about 3,000 content creators, with people aiming to make money off the site having to prove that they've got at least 10,000 social media followers first.

Fanfix also takes a 20 percent commission from the earnings on their site, the same portion that OnlyFans charges.

According to TechCrunch, the average Fanfix content creator makes about $70,000 a year.

That's not as high as some of the biggest stars on OnlyFans can reach, but the Fanfix founders reckon the more positive 'brand association' for influencers compared to the explicit OnlyFans could lead to them getting other opportunities.

One of the main selling points of Fanfix is the lack of explicit content, so that meant no sex, no genitals and no bare bums. However, Insider found that the site did have some potentially NSFW content that Gestetner said was 'similar to the most lewd stuff on TikTok or Instagram'.

Topics: Technology, Business, Money, News, OnlyFans

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker