How Lucy Banks Built a Million-Dollar Brand Without Stripe or Ads | Ep 68

Lucy Banks went from corporate banking to becoming a top 1% OnlyFans creator—and now runs a PR & marketing agency for adult creators In this episode, she exposes the harsh truths about building in the creator economy, why most OnlyFans accounts fail, and what it really takes to scale in the adult space. We go deep into: - The business behind OnlyFans - Why creators need more than "just looks" - Payment platform struggles in sex tech - How Lucy made $1M+ on OnlyFans without going full-time - Building tech & startups in taboo markets ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 Connect with Lucy Banks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imlucybanks Agency: https://www.instagram.com/millionbillionmedia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucybanksmbm/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About the Host I'm Abhinav Sinha, host of Funds & Founders—a podcast for Austin entrepreneurs navigating early-stage startups. I explore the highs, lows, and breakthrough moments of local founders through candid conversations, and sit down with VCs to uncover how they evaluate early-stage companies. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavbsinha/ Newsletter: https://newsletter.fundsandfounder.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 – Intro: Lucy Banks on Funds & Founders 01:00 – What people get wrong about OnlyFans in 2025 03:30 – The myth: "Being hot = success" 06:12 – Why 99% of creators make less than $300/month 08:40 – OnlyFans approval process and creator struggles 11:20 – Meet Million Billion Media—helping adult creators 14:45 – Censorship, shadowbans & banned bank accounts 18:40 – Why Stripe and Mailchimp block this industry 21:00 – Is sex tech the next billion-dollar wave? 25:12 – How to build a Stripe alternative for adult creators 29:00 – Go-to-market in a censored industry (no ads allowed) 34:35 – How to get creators to trust your startup 38:10 – Rev share models, affiliate structures, creator feedback 42:00 – Lucy's story: From banking to OnlyFans 46:00 – Making $1M+ on OnlyFans (without going all in) 49:20 – What OnlyFans doesn't do for creators 52:05 – Breakdown of revenue streams: subs, tips, chats 55:50 – Why OnlyFans still wins despite lacking features 58:30 – Top 5 growth tactics for new creators 01:07:30 – Closing thoughts & where to find Lucy ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #CreatorEconomy #OnlyFans #SexTech #Fintech #Entrepreneurship #AdultIndustry #Startup #PaymentProcessing #FundsAndFounders #AustinStartups.