I/O
A New Slate of Apps Aims to Disrupt the Lucrative Erotica Market
Can erotica apps stay weird and attract major investments?
For as long as humans have been writing, we’ve written erotica — stories, poems, and novels intended to titillate and arouse each other. And over the course of those millennia, the format of these erotic works has remained largely unchanged.
Now a collection of startup entrepreneurs is betting that erotica is due for an upgrade. Apps like Dipsea, Shades, and the upcoming Do You all give this classic genre a revamp, repackaging erotica into apps that offer immediate access to hot stories and built-in communities. The pitch behind these apps is compelling: You don’t listen to music, watch movies, or enjoy TV shows the way your parents did, so why should your erotica resemble theirs?
Despite a general reluctance among investors to go anywhere near sex-related content, erotica has long commanded a massive literary market, accounting for nearly a third of fiction market sales and 45% of all Kindle sales. That market is finally starting to attract attention from tech investors. This past February, for example, Bedrock and Thrive Capital co-led a $5.5 million seed investment round in Dipsea, which offers users access to a collection of erotic audio stories. But…
