Hey, that's well thought!
To tell about my own story... I've been in the industry since 2005... and in 2010, I was really angry at the industry as a whole.
So I quit the industry, went mainstream several years, raised funds to make startups... I was dreaming that mainstream people were smarter, nicer, and that the real thing was happening there.
I've done mainstream from 2010 to 2019... AAAND these mainstream years have been, even though educational, very painfull and disappointing.
I realised that my fantasy of meeting awesome people was in most cases a fantasy. I did meet awesome people, but very little of them.
I realised that in mainstream business, it's very hard to access to decision makers. You need to go through several layers of hierarchy, and several months of waiting, before making any deal. You need to have deep network in knowing the right people in the right corporations, it's a lot of politics and games of power. A lot of hyprocrisy and shallowness.
Ultimately a lot of bullshit.
So after being disappointed with the adult industry, I realised that actually I wanted to be part of that industry again. Because people are really open, there's less hypocrisy, little politics, and access to decision makers is way faster so you can do more business and less bureaucracy.
That's how early 2015 I laid out the basis of what would be our comeback with the game hentaiheroes... I remember pitching this game with a powerpoint in WMA Amsterdam 2015 and I received so much positive feedback that i came back home super energized and convinced that being back in the industry was the right move. For comparison, I had been pitching my startups in pro events for several years and I got used to people being negative, close minded, nasty, making me feel openly that they don't have time for nobodies, etc... so yes, that was refreshing.
From 2015 to 2019 I've done both mainstream and adult... because even after successfully lauching our operations with hh and gamingadult, I still had duties over the startup that we partially sold to a big consulting group... so for 3 years I had this schizophrenic experience of having 2 jobs, one in each world.
It's been a year that we finally sold all our shares in mainstream businesses... and life has been so, so much better since then
.
Bottom line, with the little experience I have, I can say
that most of the best people I know are in adult industry and I'm proud of being part of this community <3