{"id":170535,"date":"2025-06-09T15:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/170535\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T15:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:10:08","slug":"an-investor-makes-a-case-for-funding-sex-drugs-and-other-socially-taboo-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/170535\/","title":{"rendered":"An investor makes a case for funding sex, drugs and other socially taboo products"},"content":{"rendered":"

Impact investor and advisor Christian Tooley <\/a>posed a simple question to the audience at SXSW London last week: What if investors put aside societal prudence for profit?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tooley was mainly referring to vice clauses, the restrictions that limited partners place on venture firms to guardrail their investments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of these no-no sectors often include products dealing with sex, substances like psychedelics, gambling, and tobacco, and such limitations are usually imposed by large institutional investors, who don\u2019t want to invest in products that are at best controversial and at worst potentially harmful.<\/p>\n

Tooley feels investors are missing out on innovation by keeping away from these so-called vices, especially where sex and substances are concerned. \u201cReturns can be financial, cultural, and systemic,\u201d Tooley told the crowd. \u201cSex is high volume, consumer-facing, with lower upfront capital needs. Substances have moderate-to-long ROI but higher payoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He argued that such clauses are really more about bowing to the social stigma around these topics, even though some startups could be bringing about positive health and social benefits, in addition to being lucrative.<\/p>\n

The sex tech market, for example, is expected to hit nearly $200 billion by 2032, he said. Over the years, the industry has received small<\/a> but steady amounts of venture capital funding, a few hundred million at best. Specialized investors and firms, notably Vice Ventures,<\/a> have sought to back more companies but there hasn\u2019t been an onrush, especially from mainstream investors, to follow its lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even OnlyFans, despite earning billions in revenue, struggled to find investors because of its association with pornographic content. \u201cEntire industries are underfunded not because they lack merit, but because they challenge comfort,\u201d Tooley later told TechCrunch<\/p>\n

As an investor, Tooley has backed products such as Polari Labs,<\/a> a tool that promises to improve anal sex, and linq<\/a>, a company touting to provide a safer way to send nudes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that large institutional investors steer away from such categories, as many of them are endowments and pension funds looking to avoid legal uncertainty and reputational harm. Some investors who passed on OnlyFans were worried about minors possibly being<\/a> on the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regarding substances, cannabis is a good example here, because it is only legal on a state-by-state basis. There are legal, regulatory, and tax uncertainties that could come with backing what is, in most cases, a criminalized product.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With less competition from institutional funds, Tooley says vice investing can be a particularly good opportunity for smaller LPs, family offices, and progressive funds. \u201cIf you only focus on the perceived controversy, you miss the innovation and often, the returns, too,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tooley said it is important to address the stigma around investing in areas that may be beneficial but are currently shunned. Tooley, for example, noted that it was considered controversial to talk openly about matters like menstruation.<\/p>\n

Today, we have venture-backed companies<\/a> like unicorn period tracker Flo<\/a>, femble, and WomanLog. <\/p>\n

Tooley imagines a world where more investors back taboo companies leading to better sexual health tools; psychedelic therapies with more cultural nuance, and biohacking relevant to queer and trans bodies.\u00a0 \u201cWe don\u2019t just need funders comfortable with risk,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need ones deeply uncomfortable with the status quo.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Impact investor and advisor Christian Tooley posed a simple question to the audience at SXSW London last week:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[51,3134,3390,71060,16,15,16221],"class_list":{"0":"post-170535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-fundraising","11":"tag-sxsw2025","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-venture"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114654047366307927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}