Once dubbed “the ruler in the realms of lust,” he effectively ushered in the age of YouTube-style porn websites where anybody could upload and watch pirated copies of porn, or even post their own.
German tech entrepreneur Fabian Thylmann brought the world something it apparently wanted very much: free internet porn.
Like so many other industries disrupted by the internet, it was a period in time that rocked the porn establishment and ultimately transferred untold sums of money from places like Los Angeles’ “Porn Valley” to the pocket of Fabian Thylmann.
“Fabian got so rich that he installed in his house an aquarium that is so big that a diver had to come every week, and dive in and clean the coral reef,” filmmaker Jon Ronson said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “You know you’re doing well when you get your own diver.”
It was the Wild West of internet porn and his tech-savvy approach allowed him to catch an industry off guard and hoover up a number of companies including sites like PornHub, YouPorn and RedTube. Thylmann turned those sites’ parent company, MindGeek, into a global conglomerate.
By 2012, 80 percent of people watching online porn were doing so on one of Thylmann’s sites. In 2013, he sold his stake in the industry, but his legacy remains.
