Andrea Barrica is on a roll. The CEO and founder of the online, stigma-free sex-ed platform, O.school, and former venture partner at 500 Startups recently released her first-ever book, “Sextech Revolution: The Future of Sexual Wellness,” providing a comprehensive look at the past, present and future of sextech and sexual wellness.
Standing at the bleeding edge of both new technology and a changing culture, Barrica’s book explores the reframing of sexual wellness as an integral component of overall health, thus driving it further into the mainstream. That, coupled with increased diversity of founders and decision-makers in the startup and venture capital world, has positioned the sexual wellness market as one of the next “blue oceans,” in the investment space.
The best advice I can give to someone launching a sextech startup is that the path is rarely linear.
Elaborating on themes explored in the book, Barrica shared with XBIZ some of her more choice insights and exactly why she feels that the time is ripe for the sextech market to take off.
XBIZ: One of the lines that strikes a chord was when you wrote, “I am where I am today because another woman dreamed bigger for me than I dreamed for myself,” with regards to how you got your start at inDinero. Is “Sextech Revolution” your way of paying it forward to the next generation of innovators?
Andrea Barrica: Absolutely. I wrote this book for all the innovators and entrepreneurs who didn't grow up with capital or institutional connections. I wanted to provide a roadmap to building a business in this space.
XBIZ: Was there a specific impetus that sparked you to start working on the book when you did?
Barrica: I'd been thinking about it for a long time. I've spent so much time learning things the hard way — this is the book I needed when I first started. I've been so lucky to meet so many smart and amazing people in this journey, but knowledge is mostly passed down by word of mouth, or by chance. This is a way to codify that knowledge, in hopes that we can bring more incredible innovation to market more quickly. I certainly have more I want to write — but for now I'm focusing on my column in Forbes really highlighting the incredible work being done in this space.
XBIZ: One of the key points you identified when it comes to shifting the narrative around sexual wellness was in reframing it as an overall health issue, much like how we now think about mental health, ED and CBD products. Do you have any predictions as to when this shift might be achieved? Without implementing comprehensive sex-ed in schools, can this realistically happen?
Barrica: It's happening as we speak. The dam is cracking. I'm all for comprehensive sex-ed, but we also have to acknowledge its vulnerability. As we speak, towns and cities all over the country are fighting to rollback the sex-ed we [currently] have. We should fight for sex-ed in schools, but we shouldn't depend on that to make it happen — because a lot of the people who need this knowledge are not in school, they're older adults; because even comprehensive sex-ed is wary about discussing pleasure; because there will always be some parents who pull their kids out of classes. We need to make sexual health education multimodal. It can't just be about sex-ed in schools, it has to be a cultural shift. O.school is one part of that, but I wrote the book because we need a revolution of innovators and activists to affect real change.
XBIZ: Can you elaborate on some of the challenges you faced when O.school was still in its startup phase, particularly in terms of stigma?
Barrica: When you talk about the importance of pleasure, everyone assumes you're talking about a porn site. So it wasn't so much that people disliked our content, as much as they didn't understand what we were doing or why we were doing it. Most VCs are white cis straight men that haven't had to think as much about consent or shame or bad education. We really had to prove the market to them. And, as I write about in the book, there were those who thought we needed "hotter" people on the website.
XBIZ: Speaking to the men with the “why would my wife need a vibrator when she has me” mentality, when do you know to cut your losses with someone and move on?
Barrica: As founder, you have limited time and you have to be strategic with who you court. I'm dedicated and persistent, but I don't believe in banging my head against a wall. That said, I think that it's important to understand that everyone has questions about sex. Everyone has insecurities. Some people are just more open to talking about it. So when someone tells me "why would my wife need a vibrator when she has me?" I try to remember that it's a defensive posture — the fear that maybe he's not all his wife needs, or that she might get by without him. But rather than argue the point, I find it more helpful to universalize it — that we all have room to grow, that we all have questions, that we're all working through a culture that doesn't talk enough about sex. And his wife aside, there is a massive market of people whose needs are not being met. That strategy, along with well-researched data, has helped turn a lot of people around.
XBIZ: What is something you wish someone would have told you when you were just starting out with O.school?
Barrica: O.school's mission — to educate the world about sexual health and pleasure — hasn't changed since inception. But at every step, there have been surprises that changed the path we were on dramatically. The best advice I can give to someone launching a sextech startup is that the path is rarely linear. Understand where it is you want to go, but be incredibly open to the path it takes to get there. We started out as a live-streaming platform, really focused on providing a place for people to engage and ask questions. We realized that was more difficult to scale than we wanted, and shifted to more dependable content. Our final iteration may look different still. Understand that a company grows like each of us does — I am at once the same person I've been my entire life, and entirely different than I was 10 years ago.
XBIZ: In terms of grander change in the private finance sector, you mention that there’s a sort of trickle-down effect when it comes to a limited partner's morals, which in turn effects what types of companies and tech get funded. Is it simply a matter of waiting it out for the old guard to turn over, or is there anything companies and consumers can be doing to expedite the change that more diversity in the VC space would inevitably bring?
Barrica: That's part of it, but it's not just the old guard — institutions themselves are conservative. So we have to change the cultural conversation so that it's acceptable for an institutional fund to invest in sexual wellness, and also show the return on investment. I think consumers are already driving both. In just the last 10 years, higher-end products have really helped change the image of sexual wellness. At the same time, thanks to the democratization of media, we have journalists and influencers talking about sex in a more nuanced fashion. The more we talk about sex without shame, the more we move the market forward.
XBIZ: What are some areas that VC’s should be paying more attention to?
Barrica: I think we need to move the conversation away from sex robots. It's just such a small space, but that's everyone's go-to for "sextech," and it's not representative at all. Sextech is not just about gadgets — it's about using technology to improve our sex lives and sexual health. I think we need to look at all the ways in which tech can help communication between partners, about the ways tech can help us understand our bodies.
XBIZ: On a more practical note regarding your advice to “hide in plain sight” when it comes to banking: do you ever worry that banks will eventually shut sextech/sexual wellness companies out, similar to the challenges these types of companies have faced in terms of advertising and social media use?
Barrica: Whether social media or banking, our communities need to have contingency plans. In most cases, it's not "if" but "when." When it comes to legal safeguards, these are private companies — there are limits to what the law can require of them. We have to be stronger than any one platform and stronger than any one bank.
XBIZ: To that effect, do you think we’ll ever get around payment processors and their restrictions on “adult-oriented” companies? Why has no one started a “vice” payment processor that charges reasonable fees?
Barrica: Good question! There are certainly payment processors that deal with adult content, but their fees tend to be higher. That's partly because there isn't the same amount of competition — most businesses can't use mainstream processors — and partly because we're working with residual financial shame. Chargebacks aren't close to what they once were, but it's still built into the pricing. But it's not just payment processors; it's banks, it's regulation, it's advertising bans, [etc.] All of these issues work in tandem and we have to approach it holistically if we're going to affect change.
Ultimately, I think we're going to need to have a unicorn — a sexual wellness business that shows just how valuable the market is. Once we have that, I think a lot of the institutional hesitation will fall. Moral qualms have a way of disappearing during a gold rush. In some ways, we saw something similar with Lora DiCarlo's Osé at CES. One device — and the massive attention paid to it by the press — ended an entire ban. I titled the book “Sextech Revolution” because we need to think like revolutionaries. We need to understand that there are structural issues at work and we have to be creative in getting around them or dismantling them.
XBIZ: Finally, if there’s one takeaway people get from your book, what do you hope it is?
Barrica: That building a business in wellness isn't just possible, it's necessary. There's a huge market that most big players have barely touched. If you have an idea or a problem you think you can solve, do it. It's good for your business and good for humanity. And there's never been a better time.
