Highlights
- Romantic companionship and intimacy are a large part of our lives and a basic human need. Stigma and a cumbersome/unsafe booking process are preventing many people from accessing paid companionship and/or intimacy as a wellness service.
- CHOICE is a simple to use and safe booking platform for any service on the paid companionship spectrum, including intimacy (where it’s legally permitted)
- Paid intimacy is already an estimated global USD 100bn market, companionship (as CHOICE intends to offer) could add another USD 100bn to the existing paid intimacy market
- Second time founder in Arik, CHOICE’s CEO. Arik previously bootstrapped a SaaS business to $18m ARR and exited to a US private equity fund.
- CHOICE also has a strong group of supporters, including influential union representatives in the UK and is working closely with unions to understand and influence regulation in this space.
Problem & Market
As a society we are more self-aware and open-minded than ever before. Self-care has extended to many areas of our lives and it has become normal to hire experts to help us with many aspects of our health, from mental health, to fitness and wellness. Yet when it comes to companionship and intimacy we still overwhelmingly rely on peer-to-peer dynamics (i.e. dating apps/communities). There are many situations where people are looking for companionship or intimacy, but are constrained in the traditional peer-to-peer dynamics e.g. time constraints when travelling for business, vulnerability constraints after a breakup or where people are looking to spend casual, romantic or intimate time with someone focusing exclusively on their own needs. For some people, when faced with these constraints, rather than forgo their needs, they look (or could look) to utilise a service provider.
The market for these customers is sizeable, with Switzerland alone (which allows legal paid intimacy (incl. sex work)) estimated at $3.5bn , at a 10% fee (as charged by CHOICE) this country alone represents potential for $350m (SAM). Globally, there are 6 other countries which have de-criminalised/legalised paid intimacy, with each of these markets presenting strong revenue opportunities (at a 10% fee), as can be seen in the table below.
In today’s age of convenience, where you can order almost anything for delivery 24/7 or schedule appointments in only a few clicks, the companionship and intimacy sector is yet to catch up with a significant amount of back and forth required, as well as time spent waiting for responses to messages/calls. For those looking to book companionship or intimacy, the way the process works at present is; customers look up providers online and contact them 1-by-1. There’s a back and forth between the customer and provider on services offered and availability before a booking is made.
For customers there are a number of problems with this process;
- The lack of ability to easily filter for the services a customer is looking for means that customers may need to contact multiple providers, which can be time consuming
- As there’s no view of provider availability, so they may need to contact multiple providers in order to align with their own availability
- Further as there’s little to no verification of providers (anyone can create a website or ad), there can be a lack of trust and issues with provider fraud.
From the provider’s perspective there are also a number of issues with the current process:
- Known violent customers can’t be excluded from the market (they only have to change phone number/email to get around blocking mechanisms right now)
- To try to solve this, companionship/intimacy providers in some jurisdictions (e.g. USA) now force customers to send drivers licences and passports via WhatsApp, where there is no data security.
- Transaction fees can be extremely high, as providers are often discriminated against by payment providers (who charge 20% or more in some cases), which leads to providers carrying a lot of cash which can be safety and administrative problem.
- There’s no easy way to show available timeslots and promote for bookings well in advance. In Switzerland, 86% of providers are temporary workers, they go to Switzerland for a period of time and need to pay for advertising while they are there, which takes time. For providers such as these, they want the ability to advertise and lock in bookings well in advance so they can determine if it’s worthwhile to make the trip.
It can be difficult for providers to effectively set rules and boundaries for customers that can be enforced. For example if someone were to offer non-sexual intimacy or only specific intimate services i.e. massage vs. sexual intimacy, since the customer can still enquire about it over the phone or via messaging and there is no clear booking record showing which service was requested.
“If you look at it from a global perspective and also regional perspective, this is an excellent time. We’re getting a lonelier society. There’s certainly a number of single people, obviously population growth etc. But that kind of divide between those who are partnered and those who aren’t and also the exploration around wellness and sexual acceptance is pretty vast and growing.”
Rob Godwin – Founder & MD @Future Ecom, previously Australasian Director & Head of Commercial Operations @LoveHoney Group
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If you deny someone the ability to be very clear in their communication about what they want, you leave things open to interpretation, and this is when things start to go wrong.
Harper Thornhill – Dominatrix and member of the SWU (Sex Workers Union) in the UK
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This is a huge f*cking opportunity and by the way, that’s got nothing to do with timing. This has always been a huge f*cking opportunity, it will always be a huge f*cking opportunity.
Cindy Gallop – CEO & Founder, MakeLoveNotPorn, formerly founder & Chair at US arm of Bartle Bogle Hegarty
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Product
The CHOICE product allows for a more convenient, seamless experience for both customers and service providers, reducing booking time for consumers (on average) from 60 mins to 3 mins and admin time for providers from 3 hrs/day to 30 mins/day.
For providers, CHOICE does this by;
- Set services across the full spectrum of companionship and intimacy
- Set availability and removing available slots once booked
- Charge customers to chat prior to booking to ensure they are legitimate
- Allowing them to quickly reject or confirm bookings
Meanwhile for customers, CHOICE reduces booking time by allowing them to ;
- Utilise filters to search for the specific services they are looking for
- View provider’s available timeslots
- Request to book and pay via the app
For both customers and providers, utilising the CHOICE platform also affords a level of safety not currently facilitated in the market, with all users on the platform needing to provide a government issued ID. This:
- Reduces time for provider to verify customer is legitimate
- Increases trust the provider is real
- Safety around blocking people
Whilst the industry standard for facilitation of bookings is to take 20% or more of the fee from service providers (for advertising and facilitation), however as CHOICE provides verification of providers (including age) and a smooth and safe booking process, the CHOICE fee of 10% is charged to customers instead. To date, this has not been a blocker for customers, with many consumers now used to the idea of paying service fees for the convenience of a marketplace e.g. AirBNB, UberEATS etc.
Over time, the CHOICE product will continue to evolve, with the team seeing a number of opportunities, including online services and paid content, digital clones for providers, which could handle the pre-booking chat and sales process for them. At the moment, CHOICE is working through the financial market authority process for FinTechs in Switzerland, this will enable the company to hold funds for providers and issue debit cards for them. The team see this as a step towards being able to provide service providers on the platform with a range of service offerings, including things like health insurance and pension savings.
“I think Arik’s product is going to be revolutionary in the way that people market themselves online and also their safety.“
Harper Thornhill – Dominatrix and member of the SWU (Sex Workers Union) in the UK
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“You’re out to explode that prejudice and bias by building something that completely sidesteps it and paints a whole different vision.”
Cindy Gallop – CEO & Founder, MakeLoveNotPorn, formerly founder & Chair at US arm of Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Watch Conversation
“We’ve done a bit of work in this area in the past and currently within Europe and Australia, it’s clunky. There isn’t really anything out there to centralise intimacy or a paid service, shall we say. There isn’t a Tinder or Uber or anything like that in there.”
Rob Godwin – Founder & MD @Future Ecom, previously Australasian Director & Head of Commercial Operations @LoveHoney Group
Watch Conversation
Team
Arik Brückner, Co-founder/CEO
- Proven sales leader, generating his first sales at age 5!
- Bootstrapped Pitcher Ltd. to $18 million ARR
- Extensive leadership experience, perfectly suited to guide CHOICE’s growth trajectory.
Elvis
- A serial entrepreneur with 15+ successful internet product launches and millions of users.
- Robust cybersecurity expertise ensures a safe and secure platform for CHOICE users.
- First code written at the age of 13. A testament to his passion for technology and innovation.
Sarunas
- Seasoned engineer with over 10 successful apps under his belt.
- Background in architecture translates to (optics, symbiosis between form and function).
- Over 5,000 UI/UX sessions completed – committed to crafting exceptional user experiences.
Traction
Since September 2023, the CHOICE team have onboarded 1600 users with phone numbers and have approx. 140 users fully KYC’ed with government issued ID and selfies. This user uptake has been with $0 spend on promotion and advertising and has all come organically, with a good portion of growth coming after the company was featured in The Sun in February 2024. The team is looking to use a portion of this upcoming raise on promotional activities to continue to drive user adoption.
CHOICE have also managed to secure agreements with two payment providers, with reasonable transaction fees; 4-8%, (depending on payment method) which will reduce over time as transaction volume increases. Payment providers, have in the past have either steered clear of the intimacy space altogether or charged exorbitant transaction fees.
“(For payments) they have two contracts with different service providers that can underwrite all of the payments for this company, which in and of itself could take it to well beyond 100 mil ARR type business. So, that’s why we’re here exploring this, because we’re really excited about that and we’ve not seen it before.”
Jock Fairweather – Founder CVC
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I think what excites us about this, is once you have got countries which are legal and you have a very safe, secure and low barriers to completing that transaction, then that becomes a norm within society, just as we’ve seen that through the ownership of sexual wellness, dating, et cetera. This is again, it’s about society moving forward and that’s where you get that exponential growth.
Rob Godwin – Founder & MD @Future Ecom, previously Australasian Director & Head of Commercial Operations @LoveHoney Group
Watch Conversation
Competition
When considering the competitive landscape, CHOICE stands out amidst legacy platforms and directories that often lack thorough verification and safety measures, leading to time-consuming booking processes. Similarly, traditional agencies operate as intermediaries, leaving customers uncertain about the working conditions of providers and the percentage taken from customer payments. This opacity extends to the reliability of who will ultimately arrive for the booking, casting doubt on the entire process. CHOICE addresses these shortcomings by prioritising transparency, safety, and efficiency, ensuring a seamless experience for both customers and providers alike.
Competition in the space includes the following businesses, each of which are taking a different approach to the space.
While there have been previous attempts to innovate with technology in the intimacy space, these didn’t quite hit the mark. For example, Rendevu approached the problem with an on-demand model (rather than availability time slots), which meant providers needed to be online and ready now, which had impacts on work-life balance and made planning hard, while Ohlala acted as a pure discovery tool and didn’t allow transactions, which meant there was still a lot of back-and-forth regarding services and availability. In addition to these learnings from previous attempts in the space, the CHOICE team have spent considerable time talking with providers and unions to help them shape the product and guide its trajectory and will continue to do so as the product is rolled out.
Going forward the team aims to continue the approach of building strong relationships with providers and see unions as core to their rollout strategy in other markets. By working closely with unions and ensuring the CHOICE platform allows providers to easily facilitate their desired working conditions, the team sees an opportunity to rapidly onboard thousands of providers (union members) and then have providers act as a draw for customers onto the platform.
After establishing in Switzerland, CHOICE is looking to roll-out in the UK (with limited functionality regarding bookings, only allowing companionship, per legislation), where the incoming Online Safety Act (which requires age verification to protect minors from accessing intimate content and services and conversely protecting minors from being able to offer paid intimacy or intimate content). CHOICE sees this regulation as an opportunity to take over from other platforms (e.g. loyalfans, minstars) who have communicated that they intend to withdraw from the UK market due to this regulation as they do not intend to comply with the age verification. After UK expansion, CHOICE will look to roll out a similarly limited version (i.e. no paid intimacy bookings) in the US, before taking on Australia and New Zealand with the fully fledged CHOICE product (as paid intimacy is legalised in these markets).
If you crack this, you can drive policy change. You can drive regulation change. You can drive legislative change, and and you will change the world for everybody in that context.
Cindy Gallop – CEO & Founder, MakeLoveNotPorn, formerly founder & Chair at US arm of Bartle Bogle Hegarty
Watch Conversation
Fundraising
To date, CHOICE has been bootstrapped by the founding team. They are now looking to raise $500k CHF to reach profitability by the end of 2024 and continue building out a scalable product for international expansion. CHOICE is focusing on content creation for customer promotion, need-state advertising with Uber around conferences (e.g. Art Basel), and specific customer profiles (e.g. business travellers, airport pickups with certain car categories, Uber Eats basket size etc.), CHOICE will also dedicate some of the funds to PR to get additional credibility and drive a discussion around the misconceptions of paid companionship and intimacy and drive customer and provider marketing, another budget area is collaborations with key influencers, ambassadors to promote CHOICE in the respective communities, no hires planned.
FAQs
Given there’s a verification step with IDs, how do you handle data security?
Choice utilises an identity escrow for any personally identifiable data (e.g. Govt ID information). What this means is that the information is not stored by Choice itself and rather is stored by an identity escrow provider in much the same way it is stored for banks. In fact, the provider Choice uses is the same as that utilised by a number of large banks, including BNP Paribas.
The AirBNB fees have hit a lot of pushback in recent times, how are you communicating your booking fee to ensure it’s not a blocker at check-out?
- The fee is currently framed as the Choice safety fee. It may evolve in the future to a Choice convenience fee, however for now the focus is on the safety aspect i.e. safety in as in physical safety, so everybody is verified on the platform, but safety also in terms of assurance that this is a real provider, these are real pictures.
- On Choice today, there are providers that don’t want to show their faces, which is a legitimate request. Every picture that’s on Choice today, regardless of the quality, has been fully verified by the team. If there is a provider that doesn’t want to show their face, they have to submit the picture with the face to Choice as administrators in order to verify the picture, and then it can get cut and put up without the face on the platform.
Are there other revenue streams e.g. affiliate that you can add in the future?
Yes, there are a number of revenue streams the team are exploring, these include;
- Virtual interaction – adding capability for providers to create a virtual clone, that they can utilise to chat for them and generate revenue.
- Membership models – whereby customers pay to be a part of a membership tier, which provides them access to premium providers and vice-versa on the provider side
- Financial services for providers – as mentioned in the product section, the provision of financial services (e.g. holding funds, issuing debit cards) to providers, as well as the bundling of ancillary services such as health insurance.
How do you tackle the trust issue for customers, where providers might not want to show their face?
In such cases as these, the CHOICE team asks that providers submit full photos, alongside their government ID, for manual verification by the team. Once verified, these images are then cropped per the providers request before being added to the platform.
In terms of rollout, can you talk to why you are looking to address the UK & US (markets where paid sexual intimacy is illegal) before markets where paid sexual intimacy is legal?
Addressing the UK & US markets, where paid sexual intimacy is illegal, ahead of other markets stems from several considerations. Firstly, a significant portion of the global population grapples with loneliness, a universal issue exacerbated by factors like dating app fatigue. Thus, there’s a pressing need for accessible companionship solutions worldwide. Moreover, the demand for companionship services extends beyond mere sexual intimacy; activities like holding hands, cuddling, and kissing are sought after across cultures, irrespective of legality.
Furthermore, focusing on markets where paid sexual intimacy is prohibited presents opportunities beyond traditional models. For instance, enabling influencers with substantial followings to offer non-sexual, in-person companionship experiences, such as coffee or dinner meet-ups, can serve as a viable monetisation avenue. Consider an influencer with 50k followers who could offer limited slots for personalised meet-ups, enriching both the influencer-follower relationship and expanding revenue streams.
Safety has been a number one consideration, and it does not come from automating everything. And by the way, absolutely have the, you know, that classic thing about you you’ve gotta do unscalable things to scale.
Cindy Gallop – CEO & Founder, MakeLoveNotPorn, formerly founder & Chair at US arm of Bartle Bogle Hegarty
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