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Andrew N. Edmond Venture Capital: Edmond leaves online porn far behind
1/12/00 Since 26-year old Andrew N. Edmond of sextracker.com bought YNOTnetwork.com, 17 companies have approached him to buy them. Only in business since the Spring of 1998, he will buy three more companies this month (January, 2000). Edmond will have about 100 employees. "I'm much more of a Steve Case than a Larry Flynt," says Edmond. "I've been to one [porn] photo shoot in my life and I was like, show me the money. I am more interested in the money than anything else." At the IA2000 newsconference (1/10/00) Monday, Edmond said: "I've talked with everyone here [a group of leading adult webmasters] and we've all felt that there is no true organization that represents all the interests of adult webmasters... And we're here to advocate all the issues... "Three major issues. One - webmaster advocacy, [meaning] innovation, networking, marketing and profitability. We want to turn YNOT into a community, like the trade shows facilitating deals. We want to do the same thing every day. Two - we will also do consumer advocacy. We want to set up guidelines for how we are going to treat consumers with regard to billing, credit card processing... Everyone's a little scared about how credit card processing is working right now. As well as looking at legislative advocacy. With the year 2000 election coming up, with the Democrats siding with Tipper Gore and the Republicans siding with the Christian right, we need a proactive voice. I want to turn all 10,000 webmasters who come to YNOT every day into educated advocating individuals for the protection of not just their sites, but the whole business. "So we're going to turn all of YNOT into something that funnels everybody's interests into those three major portions. "The board of directors [Al Fore aka Al4a, Richard Nash, Laura Day, Darren Blatt aka D$, Greg Dumas of Igallery, Rich Botto of Max Cash, Oz, Shawn Boday of SexTracker] is going to represent from the top all the various webmaster interests. The board of directors will meet every three months in San Diego, CA, to talk about the issues... For instance, Greg Dumas will sit down with the board of directors and talk about megasites and content programs and streaming programs...for me and my competitors, YNOT can serve me and my competitors better if YNOT does this. Or Al4A for TGP [Thumbnail Gallery Post] sites. Here's how we can make TGP sites more profitable." Luke: "What's your primary motivation for buying YNOT?" Andy: "It dovetails with our ambitions for the business. Sextracker.com had a lot of ideas to start our own organization on a legislative and consumer group. We felt strongly that everybody in this business would get burned because no one was proactive about [various political attempts to regulate and censor porn on the net]. We've always had this reactive business. We trusted the ACLU to go out and fight our causes. For me, it's protecting my back... "Sextracker just does not count hits or do free hosting. We do a lot of business. We facilitate and catalyze everybody in this business to make more money. And everybody who does business with us is going to get stung unless somebody rises to a position of leadership. I happen to have enough energy and a broad vision of where this business is going... And because nobody else is doing it, I elected myself... "I am interim CEO of YNOT networks. That is not going to be the case in six months. We're doing a talent search for a brand new CEO for YNOT. Likely, someone coming from the mainstream... Someone who will speak in front of Congress and get them to change their minds about us. Someone who can get them to respect us as a business. "My interests were not purely motivated financially. Sure it is a business. We're not a non-profit organization. "We're going to take all the YNOT money and pour it back in so we can get a place in Washington, a lobbying building, meet with VISA, workout guidelines about credit card billing... We want to get everybody on the chess board, get the rules known and make it happen. YNOT is not going to be a vehicle to promote Sextracker..." Luke: "So does this make this the premier organization for representing webmasters?" Andy: "We have to work enough to earn that trust. We want to be the place where webmasters come to learn how to be more profitable. "I'm committed to it. And most people who know me know that when I get committed to something, there is a 99.9% chance that it is going to happen. Yes, it is an uphill battle. This business has too much partisanship, too many cliques..." From www.avn.com's coverage of Sextracker's acquisition of YNOT: Flying Crocodile, parent of SexTracker, says both SexTracker and YNOT will remain autonomous organizations under terms of the deal, with Flying Crocodile founder/CEO Andrew Edmond saying SexTracker plans to devote all available resources to make YNOT "the central voice of unionship, leadership, consensus, and advocacy" involving consumer, Webmaster, and legislative issues affecting the adult Internet industry. "I'm very excited about YNOT," Edmond says. "All we want to do is we want to take all the things that have made SexTracker successful - our professionalism, our planning, our vision - and turn that over to YNOT and help YNOT become better because of it." "SexTracker and YNOT are very similar in that we are team players, we run by the rules adhering to the highest common denominator rather than the lowest, and (we) believe strongly in the future and continued success of those in the adult Webmaster industry," Edmond says. XXX tells Luke: "Andy Edmond, 26, must've impressed you. He's something else. He's a genius. "He started his company Sextracker.com 18 months ago out of his garage in Seattle. He took $15,000 and turned that into a company worth about $25 million, with an estimated projected earnings of $40 million next year. "Sextracker.com is a statistics and counter site. They do many different things for webmasters. They're the counter service you want to use because they're stats are just so much better and clearer to use than Webside Story. Sextracker.com is also one of the biggest hosting companies on the net. They've got a free hosting site, and MoneyTree (Mtree.com) which is one of the best converting sites in the world. More people convert with Mtree.com than any other program. "If you send your traffic to their program, it's like a funnel and they put the traffic into different programs that they know convert. They don't publicize what these programs are...but where you'd normally convert one in 200 visitors, or one in a thousand on a TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post) site like Al4A.com. Moneytree converts about one out of 50 and pays $25 per signup." Edmond now posts regularly on the YNOT board, the most influential webmaster board. He writes 1/20/00: There has been a lot of opportunity for SexTracker (and YNOT!) to start some mainstream businesses as a means of diversifying, and we've chosen not to. Why? We've watched some of our competitors spend millions of dollars forming non adult businesses and the results for their efforts were nothing compared to adult. I know of just one adult industry person that started a non-adult venture and even came close to making the money we all do in adult. Maybe a third of the people I know are barely breaking even, and the rest are either bankrupt or back at their day jobs. Not very good results. The basic facts are that adult market on the internet means a lot of money to a LOT of people - including VISA, especially VISA. They are not going to piss away billions of dollars in processing just because of some rotten apples in our collective barrel. If they tried, they would be challenged legally by every major player in this business. VISA will certainly impose more rules as they are legally allowed to, they will tighten up our business through various changes in the way we can do business over time. Business discrimination is an area of law that many of the major players have done much study on, and the news is we have a lot of rights that VISA can’t and won’t f--- with. However, with the formation of the Global Internet Association (see AVN article posted in YNOT news a few days ago), and the new strategies YNOT is developing to provide a voice of unity for our business, we will be able to defend our rights to sell our goods as the law permits us to. Remember, we are not breaking the law - we are just providing goods and services people are willing to pay for... goods and services found at nearly every newstand in the world! The adult internet is here to stay… we will have some challenges, and some minor bumps in the road. It’s going to get a little harder to make as much money as we are used to, but not by much. And if we can get proactive with issues that face us, collectively, I think we will all be sitting pretty in five years as those that are “going not adult” might not be around to enjoy :) However, if you are done with adult, I’m happy to buy your business :) :) :) 4/28/00 Turmoil at SexTracker.com, YNOT I hear that sales exec Shawn Boday has left SexTracker.com. Andy Edmond owns the majority of SexTracker.com's parent company Flying Crocodile. I talked to Andy and several of his execs Friday afternoon. Porn net sources say that Edmond's ego is out of control and his YNOTnetwork.com is headed for a meltdown. Boday may launch a long and messy lawsuit against Edmond. XXX: "Andy Edmond tries to take all the credit for SexTracker.com, but Boday wrote all the programs, and was SexTracker.com. 21-year old whiz kid. And they're trying to screw him out of ownership of stock options and force him out the door, and he's an officer of Flying Crocodile. He called all his customers.... YNOT is going down in flames." Andy Edmond: "Shawn never wrote any code. He was not an executive with Flying Crocodile. We've parted on friendly terms..." I also hear that Andy Edmond's Flying Crocodile is about to acquire another major hosting company. I hear that Sharky has been fired from Voice Media aka Cybererotica.com aka Sharkylive.com. I talked to Andy Edmond shortly after 2PM Friday. Like most of the big net porners, he's carefully spoken (unlike many of his peers in video porn). I hear second hand that Shawn and his supporters are exclaiming "bulls---" and "motherf---er" and the like while reading the interview below. ANDY: "You caught me at a good time. Normally I don't read email during the day. Also on the line with us is JT, who handles public relations for us. And Scott Byer, president of Flying Crocodile. My title is founder and CEO. "First of all, I concur with XXX that Shawn is extremely smart, motivated and energetic. He's stubborn in all the good ways. He's got a great contingent of fans here at Flying Crocodile. He was let go. It was due to differences with company management. Something that we realized that we had to do as a growing company was to hire a Fortune 500 management team. That is President Scott Byhre and VP of Operations Joy Johnston and VP of Marketing Joy Rogers. These are professionals with 20-30 years of experience running big corporations. "We invented SexTracker and XXX Counter and Sex List as kids. I was younger than 25 as well as everyone else... We decided to salt ourselves with a lot of heavy experience on how to make sure that our customers and vendors and employees had all the success that they needed. Shawn had a problem with that. He liked a more entrepreneurial [slimmer] company and he really loved SexTracker and our relationship... He didn't want to let go. "And I wanted to give him a chance to catch up with us being a big company. And frankly he wasn't happy. And as soon as that started affecting his work, I sat him down and said. 'Shawn, I think you need to start your own company.' And he concurred with that. He said, 'Yeah, that is exactly what I need to do.' "Are there differences of opinion on the way that it was handled? Yes. Are there differences of opinion remaining between me an him? Yes. But overall Shawn and I are good friends. We enjoy each other's company and we respect each other immensely. And I wish him the best... And he can count on our full 100% support. "Shawn did not write any code for SexTracker. Not one line. He was not a company officer. You can look that up with the Secretary of the State of Washington to verify that." Luke: "He was not Director of Business Development?" Andy: "He was not. He was and always was Advertising & Sales. He's been replaced by Eric Rogers." Luke: "He was not a cofounder of Flying Crocodile?" Andy: "He was not. Flying Crocodile was founded a year-and-a-half before Shawn Bode's employment. SexTracker was written a full year before Bode began work at Flying Crocodile. That's all documented... If you ask anybody who's been around the business, well, they really don't care... That is the truth..." Luke: "So you are the sole founder of Flying Crocodile?" Andy: "That is correct. I do have a partner in business. His name is Ralph Perkins." Luke: "Are you trying to screw Shawn Bode out of stock options?" Andy: "No, not at all. We all agreed when we were granted stock in the company... I gave stock away to Ross and Shawn... That when we ended our employment at Flying Crocodile, we would return our stock to Flying Crocodile. I believe in every employee at Flying Crocodile, from me to the janitor, owns stock in Flying Crocodile. Shawn was included in the package. But when you leave, you have to return your stock to the company so that we can give it away to another employee who's working for the benefit of the company. If I died or left the company for any reason, I would have to return my stock too." Luke: "What difference will this make to the industry that Shawn Bodet is no longer with you guys?" Andy: "I don't think it makes any difference... We have the same great product. We have a staff of 100 that do a great job, as good as Shawn ever did.. Shawn was in a position that was a key strategic relationship with a lot of our advertisers... We've told our advertisers about what happened and they are still positive about doing business with us. Shawn doesn't suffer anything. When he forms his new company, he can use the great contacts he formed while working for this company." Luke: "How are things with YNOT?" Andy: "Fantastic. At YNOT, we have so many things going on, so many positive relationships being built, that I don't think the industry has had a chance to catch up with what we have been doing. We've just released the Adult Webmaster Directory. We've built an awesome relationship with APIC run by Steve Easton [an organization for net porn content providers] to help manage licensed content around the internet. We've invested about $100,000 in technology we're lending to them, so they can make more money... "A lot of old allies that haven't been around YNOT are showing up in droves...excited that YNOT is innovative. We have an awesome board of directors that consistently contribute key strategic elements to the industry success. "We have a new community standards feature that will come out in a month and a half which will really allow the whole community to talk about self regulation... It will allow the whole industry to participate in an automated technical consensus vehicle which allows us to decide issues as an industry when it comes to credit card processing, pay site ownership, billing issues, content providers, free hosts... Everything that goes into that. "We have amazing new employees like Bob Rice [KB's ex-best friend] who is blowing away any public relations manager that has ever worked there before. Your friend Kevin Blatt had his record broken for the first time ever when it comes down to advertising sales." Luke: "What is the Adult Webmaster Directory?" Andy: "It is a directory of every adult webmaster on the internet, ranked by what they do, how they do it, their reputation for doing it... And it evolves through community participation. It is like an interactive yellow pages for the adult internet, not just companies but the people that make the adult internet." Luke: "I hear that you are going to buy a major hosting company?" Andy: "A major hosting company? No, you probably misheard that. We're thinking internally about spinning off our hosting company as a separate company." Pause. Andy: "How's KB [Kevin Blatt, former YNOT marketing director] doing these days?" Luke: "It sounds like he's going to a lot of parties." Laughter. Scott: "It sounds like he's got a bit of free time." Andy: "I can't speak highly enough of that guy. He's so motivated, he's got such a dynamic personality. You know he's pretty new to the business but I really think that if we wait and watch him, he's going to do really well." Luke: "He's lucky he didn't get shot in San Francisco last week." Andy: "What?" Luke: "He was with a bunch of webmasters at some black rap party. And it was full of gangbangers. And five minutes after the webmasters left for a Japanese massage parlor, someone at the party got shot and killed." Andy: "Wow. Well, Kevin is always smart. He puts himself in the right place at the right time... That's just a testament to his character." Luke: "Any final words, Andy?" Andy: "I just want everyone to know that we really liked Shawn. I do want to contest what XXX told you. No he did not write any code and he wasn't a company officer or a manager or director. He was an advertising sales person, that's all he was and that's all he... He was never anything different. Our split was mutual and friendly and other than some lawyers hashing over some settlement issues right now, everything is kosher. We're good friends and we look forward to building positive relationships in the future with everybody involved. KB, Shawn, and everybody who is not a part of the family anymore is certainly a part of our extended family." Luke talked to a few Andy Edmond detractors. XXX: "The Jack Gallaghers [owns Babenet] of the world laughed at Andy when he pushed himself into the GIA Conference and tried to grandstand. Who does this guy think he is? Ron Levi? The GIA was the ultimate sponsors panel... It met a few hours prior to the YNOT press conference. The RBs, Jack Gallaghers, Ron Levis, Greg Dumases, all sat down. It was the Illuminati. They decided to put together a panel and outlaw many of the things on the adult web. "Andy says that KB [Kevin Blatt] has not been in the adult business that long. Remind Andy that two-and-a-half years ago, he was calling Kevin and Darren Blatt to find out everything he needed to know about his competitor, the folks who trailblazed the territory he later followed, WebSideStory. "Kevin used to be best friends with Bob Rice, but now they don't talk to each other. Bob didn't shatter any sales records. I know every advertiser on there and there is not one new advertiser." YYY, a former YNOT techie, says he's livid about the bulls--- he just read in the Edmond interview: "Bob Rice f---ed Kevin over... YNOT f---s everybody. Kevin Blatt always puts himself in the right place at the right time? Yeah, like a courtroom. "You know how pissed Kevin is towards Edmond, yet Andy's coming across like they are good friends." I hear that a couple of ex-YNOT employees have received cease-and-desist letters for supposedly trashing YNOT to me. They replied to Flying Crocodile, YNOT's parent company, "F--- you." Several ex-YNOT employees signed agreements before they left to not speak or write about YNOTnetwork.com. YNOT is owned by SexTracker.com, which is owned by 26-year old whizkid Andy Edmond who employs about 150 persons. Andy's former sales exec Shawn Bode left the company last week. Shawn's supposedly told people that he wrote SexTracker's programming code and that he was a co-founder of the company. Edmond says Bode wrote no code, and was not a corporate officer. XXX: "Edmond and co know that there is so much ammunition out there against them and they are just hoping that everybody will keep quiet." Luke: "Are you sure that Bode wrote code for SexTracker?" AntiAndy: "You could call several other porners in the hosting business who Shawn's personally told that he writes all the code for SexTracker. "JT, the Flying Crocodile PR man, is Andy's brother. He was a starving actor in LA so Andy gave him something to do. "Edmond talks about the Fortune 500 companies. What a crock. Scott Byhr used to run a coffee company, called Millstone Coffee. That's who's running Flying Crocodile. "Yeah, these guys came from Fortune 500 companies. Andy's trying to make Flying Crocodile into a corporate shell. It won't work. If it was such a good idea to turn these porn business into corporate companies, then why hasn't Ron Levi and Rich Botto and Joe Elkin started corporate structures? "This came out of your Andy Edmond Bio. "I want to turn all 10,000 webmasters who come to YNOT every day into educated advocating individuals for the protection of not just their sites, but the whole business" Have you ever seen the number 10,000 appear on the webmasters online section of YNOT? This is an all out lie, and anyone reading your article will agree that there are probably collectively 15,000 webmasters in our entire business. "Where is this house: ""We're going to take all the YNOT money and pour it back in so we can get a place in Washington, a lobbying building, meet with VISA, workout guidelines about credit card billing... We want to get everybody on the chess board, get the rules known and make it happen. YNOT is not going to be a vehicle to promote Sextracker..." "We've just released the Adult Webmaster Directory. We've built an awesome relationship with APIC run by Steve Easton [an organization for net porn content providers] to help manage licensed content around the internet. We've invested about $100,000 in technology we're lending to them, so they can make more money... " AntiAndy writes: This is the same guy [Steve Easton] Andy called an asshole publicly on the YNOT board just a week and a half ago." Luke: The website www.ynotsucks.com has been taken down but you can find some insight into Andy Edmond here. The home page for this is http://users.lycaeum.org. It seems to promote drug use. Similar to Andy's free hosting sites, The Lycaeum includes this disclaimer: "The Lycaeum is not responsible for content of hosted sites. These pages are only hosted by us, not maintained by us. To report problems, please contact the owner of the site directly." XXX writes: "BTW that is a drug site [http://users.lycaeum.org] he founded, specializing in hallucinogens and drugs... Maybe this can explain some of his bizarre behavior?" I surfed over to http://www.lycaeum.org/drugs/other/kitchen/ And I read an article on the joy of raising legal entheogens, a fancy word for hallucinogenic substances. On top of the article, is this: "additional formatting by Andrew Edmond..." Then I read this: "I want to preface this with what I see as the advantage of the home cultivation of legal entheogens and the extraction of the aforementioned in the kitchen (or any room of the house, for that matter). First and foremost, there is the peace of mind in not having to buy illegal substances. "Secondly, there is the magical feeling of having at your disposal a means of altering consciousness; when you cultivate these plants, the state has been through a long consecration of sorts while you tended to the plant bearing the particular "spirit." If you keep everything in it's proper place, should you be afraid? Why don't you cultivate yet something different altogether in conjunction with your plants to justify your owning the solvents needed? One could begin painting, wine making, or anything else constructive and healing." Andrew Edmond writes: My only comment is as follows: "Everyone knows XXX is Kevin Blatt. I really hopes that Kevin finds something more productive to do with his time... XXX's continued disparaging, slanted, and totally baseless comments around the industry are causing nobody any harm except Kevin, which is sad because I personally really like the guy, and speak highly of him at every opportunity. Most people that know both of us wish he would do something productive for himself... like moving on with his life. This is business, not high school." Luke: I can't comment on my sources. But I can comment on drugs and porn. They go together like rock and roll. Many porners used drugs. Walter Gernert, who founded VCA, has been a longtime user and advocate of drugs. He remains highly committed to legalizing drugs such as cocaine. I hear that a couple of ex-YNOT employees have received cease-and-desist letters for supposedly trashing YNOT to me. They replied to Flying Crocodile, YNOT's parent company, "F--- you." Several ex-YNOT employees signed agreements before they left to not speak or write about YNOTnetwork.com. Flipper writes: Here, post this photo of Andy Edmond. I am sure he hates to be associated with this heroin chic picture of him. hehehehe. Luke: I went to Yahoo.com and put in "Andrew Edmond," and the results sent me to a lot of drug sites. Including: http://www.freecyb.com/CATALOG/PSYCHE.HTM I found this description of audiotapes about the use hallucinogenic drugs. "ANDREW EDMOND is director of the Lycaeum, "The world’s largest online database for information about entheogens." A new world of communication, information and community is being tentively grasped by the entheogenic culture. find out the history of drug information and entheogenic community on the Internet as well as where we ARE HEADED IN THIS AMAZING and remarkably chaotic medium of communication. Andy also explores the potentials of the digital medium to enhance the freedoms of the entheogenic culture." 5/2/00 A disgruntled ex-YNOT employee recently put up and then, under duress, took down the website www.YNOTsucks.com. The cyberhacker used to work for YNOT and was fired. He made a page talking bad about Andy Edmond and SexTracker president Greg. He included bad pictures of them, including a terrible one of Greg with the cutline "Isn't this little f---er cute?" The fired employee talked about how Andy and Greg had threatened him.
The site included a WINamp of Greg threatening him by phone to take down
YNOTsucks.com. And he included a link to Edmond's drug-promotion site
www.lycaeum.org.
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