As a former director at PayPal, Scott Banister knows all about using short-term interest as part of a business model. His latest venture, Zivity LLC, however, relies on prurient interest instead.
In Zivity, Banister, his wife Cyan and chief executive Jeffrey Wescott are launching an adult entertainment site with an innovative business model that combines social networking, interaction with models and photographers, a ranking engine that allows users to vote for a few treasured favorites and (of course) lots of naked people.
A company statement positions Zivity "at the intersection of MySpace, Playboy magazine and 'American Idol' " (what, no YouTube?), and assures that members will be able to enjoy content "without the mixed-age crowd." Banister knows a few things about filtering out the riffraff, too — he co-founded anti-spam startup IronPort Systems Inc., which was sold to Cisco Systems Inc. for $830 million in January.
Zivity claims to be the first adult entertainment site backed by Silicon Valley investors, although the company won't say who provided the $1 million first round. TechCrunch reports that Zivity is already in the process of raising a larger second round. It'll be interesting to see who among the investors owns up to holding a stake, and whether they'll actually say that they like the product or simply discuss the size and growth rate of, um, the market. —Paul Bonanos
See Zivity press release
See Jan. 7 story from TheDeal.com
Tags: vc, venture+capital, web 2.0
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