Tim Stokely: "There are more than 300 creators who have made more than $1m, which is a great success story." Photo / Tim Stokely, Instagram
On April 29 last year, Tim Stokely woke up to a barrage of WhatsApp messages asking if he had heard the remix of Megan Thee Stallion's smash hit Savage.
He went downstairs to his computer, opened up Spotify and pressed play. "Hips TikTok when I dance," Beyonce chimed in on the second verse. "On that demon time she might start an OnlyFans". Stokely, the founder of OnlyFans, was ecstatic.
"To have someone as influential as Beyonce mention us is hugely significant," he says. "It was a proud day for us."
Since then, Stokely's unassuming family business from Essex, in England's south-east, has become one of the most well known pornography empires in the world - and one of the most talked about technology companies in Silicon Valley.
The subscription-for-content company is a hit with mostly female creators who began making large monthly incomes by charging customers for suggestive photos and videos, offering online companionship along with lingerie selfies.
And as most executives were figuring out how to keep their businesses afloat, OnlyFans was going from strength to strength.
"The stay-at-home measures accelerated growth because people were looking for ways to connect online," he says.
Rarely among unicorns (the name given to a technology startup worth more than US$1 billion or NZ$1.4b), Stokely says OnlyFans is profitable and on track for almost US$1b in revenue this year after spending climbed 400 per cent during the pandemic. Sales this month were US$400 million, Stokely said, of which it takes a 20 per cent cut.
Speaking from his NZ$4.7m Bishop's Stortford home, the West Ham fan, whose slim frame renders him younger than his years, does not give off the air of a porn kingpin, nor the chief of one of the hottest technology companies in the world.
He says the pandemic has left him grateful for the life he "took for granted" and the importance of simple pleasures like "sitting around a dinner table with family and friends".
A banker's son who studied property and real estate at Anglia Ruskin University, Stokely attempted five businesses before launching OnlyFans in 2016.
His first entrepreneurial endeavour was in school, where he would collect orders for the local fish and chip shop, marking up the cost to deliver. After graduating he made the leap to an online fetish service, a softcore porn website, a handyman platform and Customs4U, where customers could request adult photos and videos directly from amateur models.
Working in online entertainment, he noticed that social media companies like YouTube were geared up to help give money back to a small pool of celebrities.
"The business models worked for the really big influencers but not for the majority," he says.
"Because users had to be over the age of 18 and the content on OnlyFans was securely hidden behind a payment wall, we saw creators really embrace the platform early on."
Something of a family affair, OnlyFans was backed by Stokely's father - and former Barclays investor - Gary and steered with the help of Stokely's brother, Tom.
But it wasn't until 2018, when he received an email from Leo Radvinsky, a Northwestern University graduate who built one of the porn industry's largest adult chat websites, MyFreeCams, that the company took off. Radvinsky provided cash and a wealth of experience in taking a company global in return for 75 per cent of the company.
"Leo has a fantastic background and when we spoke, it was clear that we shared similar ideas and visions for how to take the company forward."
Stokely maintains the day-to-day running of the company with his brother, while Radvinsky remains in Miami.
Creators say they like OnlyFans because they get a fair cut. Bella Thorne, a 22-year-old former Disney star, broke OnlyFans records when she made $1m in one day after promising subscribers she would send a "nude" for $200. Customers were furious to receive an image of the actress in lingerie and turned to OnlyFans for refunds.
It is not just big names making money. Jasmine Rice, 23, began earning US$35,000 a month after signing up in March 2020, and Gracey Kay, a 32-year-old mother from Leeds, made double her annual salary as a hairdresser in just one month.
But the proliferation of adult entertainment has led Stokely to be labelled a "digital pimp". Pictures from his early 20s taken from his Facebook page (which has since been locked down) have surfaced of him clubbing in Ibiza, flanked by busty women.
He doesn't think the moniker is fair, hitting back at the "old narrative" that all adult work is exploitation.
"There are more than 300 creators who have made more than $1m, which is a great success story," he says. "And we are moving beyond just adult entertainment looking at the creative economy.
"We have had a bit of a bashing but I think it comes with the territory."
Stokely says Silicon Valley investors have come knocking - or emailing - in their droves. But the Telegraph understands that several are perplexed by OnlyFan's business model.
Adult content is a lucrative business but its presence on the website means OnlyFans is banned from Google and Apple's app stores. Stokely declines to comment on whether he believes this is fair or not.
If it did decide to cull adult work, analysts wonder exactly how much of OnlyFans' sales would be impacted. Stokely says it is impossible to put a figure on how much of the content is adult, claiming it is hard to define.
In some ways, this might be true. Anthia Mo, who you can pay to watch stretch in tight-fitting leotards, could be placed in the fitness category. Another popular creator, Desiree, could sit among the culinary genre. She shares videos of herself wearing lingerie - while she teaches viewers how to cook chicken.
To diversify, Stokely has added sports stars like former England flanker James Haskell and boxer Tony Bellew to the roster. The sports fan says he will be adding more athletes in the near future.
Failing to blanket-ban sexual content means that huge investments must be made to protect users who are underage or at risk of exploitation if they do not want to fall foul of the law.
Last year Mindgeek, the owner of Pornhub, had to cut off its upload feature after accusations of sexual abuse material appearing on its website, causing payments and critical hosting companies to pull their services. Their blind eye approach is a cautionary tale for anyone dabbling in the adult world.
Stokely says there are "various levels of checks" to ensure creators are verified before they are able to sell to customers, including human and software systems.
Stokely has been talking to the broadcast regulator Ofcom to discuss the upcoming Online Harms Bill, which will surely impact how OnlyFans operates in the UK. They are "in discussions", he says, but adds that the regulator must consider what other markets are doing, adding that "the UK only makes up 10 per cent of our revenue".
"I think it is great that the UK is taking a lead in these issues but as a global social media company we would like to see a global approach from governments to provide something consistent," he says.
Then there's the hangover of unpaid tax litigation to deal with. Stokely was faced with a huge historical tax bill after HMRC pointed out it should have been paying sales tax on the subscriptions customers pay.
It has paid, but OnlyFans disputes the bill and has taken HMRC to the highest courts in Europe to recoup. Australia, Europe and the US have also slapped the company with digital services tax.
But the opportunities could be huge. As musicians like Cardi B, Fat Joe and DJ Khalid join the platform, Stokely doesn't rule out the potential of possible record label acquisitions in the future. "That's not something in our immediate plans but we have seen huge growth in music," he says.
Even with busy times ahead - and a team that has shot up from four to 400 in five years, Stokely has his heart on one thing in the near future: getting down to the pub.
"It's cliche, but all I want is to spend the afternoon in a beer garden with my friends," he says, yearning for Covid-19 restrictions to end.
"I can't wait for a mixture of alcohol and Vitamin D."
Some 88% of 22,821 submissions opposed the bill outright.