Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The $6.5M OnlyFans AI Empire For Sale

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

In this episode, the hosts break down a jaw-dropping $6.5M AI-driven OnlyFans agency for sale—raising questions about revenue math, adult industry risks, and whether it's genius or just gross.Business Listing – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EXFqF7L2x2LeM5ncFNfDEqRk6iRhDHiT/view?usp=sharingWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Verivend — the platform built for independent sponsors and private market investors to move faster and cut out friction. From raising to returning capital, Verivend streamlines investment management with instant, secure payments and automatic reconciliation. It’s like Venmo for capital calls, deployments, and distributions — all with no transaction limits. Learn more at https://www.verivend.com.Capital Pad – Buying a small business and need funding? Or looking to invest in others' deals? Capital Pad is the go-to marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs and investors. It handles all the legal and governance headaches so you can focus on deals. Backed by entrepreneur Travis Jamison. Check out https://capitalpad.com and tell them Acquisitions Anonymous sent you!What happens when an AI-enabled "talent agency" for OnlyFans creators hits the market at a $6.5M price tag? The AcqAnon crew dives headfirst into this uniquely controversial listing based in Australia, uncovering a 2023 startup with $4.5M in revenue and 30%+ EBITDA margins—on paper, anyway.Key Highlights:- Asking Price: $6.5M on $1.46M EBITDA (4.4x multiple)- Revenue: $4.5M AUD, 80% one-time licensing, 20% backend profit share- Location: Australia, with global customer base- Risks: Adult industry compliance issues, high churn, no bank/SBA financing- Unique Angle: First-mover AI tooling for digital “OnlyFans managers”Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's deal was a bit crazy. We had our guest, Mike Botkin here, who you may know from Twitter fame and overall internet badassery. And he was great as we dug into an Australian company that just seemed really hard to understand and also crazy at how profitable it was. So dig into this one with us and let us know what you think of it in the comments below.

Talk to you later. We'll start acquisitions anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. Hey, everyone. I just want to tell you that this episode is brought to you by Varevend, which is the only platform purpose built for independent sponsors and private market investors who want to move faster

and eliminate friction. Veravend is cool because it combines investment management and secure instant payments into one platform. So that means capital calls, deployments, and distributions. They all work like Venmo. One-click real-time transfers with no transaction limits and automatic reconciliation. So from raising capital to returning it, Verovan handles it all. Deal marketing, data rooms, KYC and accreditation for your investors, signatures, capital flow, dashboards for your investors, and even fund administration, accounting, and taxes.

So whether you're raising a single deal or managing a full fund, VARAVAN gives you the speed and confidence to execute all in one single platform. So you can check it out and learn more at VARAVN. Barryvand.com, V-E-R-I-V-E-N-D.com. How's everybody doing? Mike, welcome. Thanks for having me, guys. I was hoping I would get an invite when I said I'd make fun of Mills on here.

So I'm glad I, I'm glad that was the trigger. That's the cost of entry. That's all you needed to say. Well, we are not doing a ton of guests these days, so we're so excited to have you. Do you want to give a 30-second intro of yourself so people could know what they should expect from you? Yeah, sure. So before ETA got super popular, in 2019, 2020, late 2020, I bought a small residential landscaping business doing under a million bucks of sales. And we got pretty lucky and grew that thing.

And we did six acquisitions post that. And I ended up selling it to private equity slash strategic in late 2023. and since then I've been working on a new roll-up in the water services space. And where is that? It's in Austin or it's in Dallas? The current business is in Dallas. Super cool. And what aspect of water services?

Yeah. So think of plumbing. So plumbing works on the wall of your house inside. We work on the wall of your house outside. So it is primarily water wells and the treatment and service and replacing and repair the pumps and the water treatment and filtration that go from wells inside your house. Amazing.

Okay. Sounds really good. It's very niche. Very niche. Well, that's where there's riches in that I heard. Okay. So background for you, Mike, we have a group chat with the co-hosts. And Heather and I got emailed this deal.

And Heather, what was your first reaction when you got this deal? I said, this is crazy. And I meant it. So we're going to talk about it today, right? And this is Mike's first time seeing it. I wouldn't preview it for him. It was just like, you're going to respond live on air. Got it.

I'm very excited. I'll pull this up and I'll pitch you guys on this deal. I only read the first two pages. And you just stopped and said, this is it? We're doing this? Well, I sent out a text to the group in all caps that said, emergency pod. Like, we got to get on right now and start talking about this.

So that was, that's how we ended up talking about this company called Banks Management. So it is, it says here, it is listed as an AI-enabled only fans talent management agency. They are doing four. You're going to stop Chucklow when you see these numbers, Mills. Yeah. I've already signed the NDA. You laugh at now, but you're about to see some. Some money being made.

So revenue is 4.5 million. They're selling it and they're asking $6.5 million for it. EBDA is $1.46 million. And the multiple is 4.4 times. And Heather, this is kind of a unique thing. It looks like somebody did this on Microsoft Paint. I'm not sure what that is,

but it's like a kind of an infographic kind of cartoon style. But at least it gives us the numbers we need to know up front. I like the fact that they've got the multiple there. It's nice. I don't have to ask Bill to do the math today. No, we don't need him. All right. So this is a 15-page teaser, which is great.

So it's located in Australia. It's founded in 2023. And they basically do, man, this doesn't really say what the business does that well. I think there's some more info because I did scroll here before. Yeah, I found it. It's like, I thought I saw in here somewhere about it being an A, a only fans agent for non-human AI. They're trying to pivot the business.

That's right. But their current core business is they are a management company for only fans. I think you would say creators. Okay. I found that what it is. Okay. Banks Management is a leading digital talent management in the e-learning agency specializing in highly profitable, scalable, and innovative only-fans.

management solutions. Originally founded in early 2023 as a traditional only fans management agency working with human creators, it quickly scaled to $100,000 Australian per month in revenue. In Q2, 2023, Banks Management transitioned to an e-learning and licensing model to help others launch and scale their own agencies by early 2025 and involved further to focus on building and licensing advanced AI-generated model systems for only fans. Banks management intentionally targets the premium end of the market, with an average order value exceeding $23,000 per client and significant potential for lifetime value expansion over multi-year relationships.

By combining proprietary AI content generation systems with proven licensing frameworks, banks delivers advanced automation and scaleability that no direct competitors currently offer. The strategy enables the agency to attract the most ambitious high-value clients while maintaining industry-leading EBITA margins. In the first half of 2025 alone, banks achieved over $5 million in Australian dollars trading income, showcasing its ability to scale profitably with robust efficiency. Banks management serves entrepreneurial digital professionals in the USA, Australia, and the

UK, who are seeking automated income opportunities through only fans management. The agency's business model is intentionally structured for front-end profitability, typically achieving a two-to-one return on new client acquisition costs while supporting clients to five-to-10-time value over a five-ten five-year relationship. They advertise via meta with direct support from meta representatives ensuring outperformance. The process from ad to sales calls streamlined and battle tested over more than two years of consistent profitable growth. So I'll pause there. So Mills, you think you have figured out what these guys do?

So I think that they, I think that they spend a ton of money on customer acquisition. and then they have, I think there's something in here that is on page, let's see, it's page 8. They have 376, yeah, active customers, but the revenue per customer is $61,000. So you're an only fan's creator, and it's very time intensive and labor intensive to, like, respond to all the messages that you get. And so you hire that out. You delegate it because if you're just responding to a text message from somebody, even a spicy text, they don't know if it's you or not. And what's crazy to me about this is the creator is paying them on average $61,000 a year.

So the creator's got to be making, I mean, many multiples of that. The, like, the tam of this. I've never subscribed to Onlyfans, but it's incomprehensible how big this is. Mills, you knew the flow of how everything worked very well. I was going to wait. For those of you keeping score at home, Mills made it three minutes before making sure everybody knew. He knew this is all theoretical knowledge. You can check my credit card receipts.

I'm in the clear here. But this is staggering, isn't it? Do you think that they're just doing the social media type management of just like messages and stuff? Or are they promoting the channel in some other ways? Let's see if it says anything about that. Yeah. I think I feel like I'm a little confused there and I'm also confused on are they a platform for other, like, you know, other companies to use to manage only fans creators? So like they're a platform for others and they are managing their own creators as well.

I feel like they said that at some point or they said something that made me think that. And I'm just not 100% sure what we're looking at here. So they say that what sets them apart from competitors is they benefit, clients benefit from structured proven systems that enable fast setup and scaling, reducing time to market and maximizing profitability. So it's automated. To me, it's a platform to automate it. Because they say e-learning.

So they're saying, look, like, plug into our system and we'll teach you how to get our automations working. So, you know, I feel like that's part of it. It's not that they're necessarily humans doing this, but they're using AI. And they're attracting only fans, creators, teaching them how to use it and plugging them into their platform. That's what I'm guessing. Yes, except that I think they're trying to. transition to the AI-centric model away from, I mean, and this company's only been around since 2023, but they talk about having more of like a human-centric model right now, but they're

trying to move to the AI model. I see. Mike, that makes sense. Yeah, just a few thoughts. Like, one, if they, if they started in a normal traditional agency model and they're shifting already, either it's because the agency model isn't working or they're trying to be first movers on the AI stuff, which I would assume would be like, I don't know the email platform you guys use, but I use superhuman and it will suggest replies to me via AI tools. So I'd be curious if that's what this is,

like Mills hypothetically, messages, you know, an only fans model, and the AI suggest a reply, and is seamless for the client to reply to that. And then I was also surprised that the average revenue of $61,000 per customer seems actually fairly pretty high. And how are they chart, just the economics of that? So I went back to slide number five in this deck. And I think they started as an agency that was a traditional only fans management agency, which means like you're the manager and your talent is online, right? And you're managing

there and you're doing all the replies and stuff like that. And then I think what they did in Q2, 2023 is they transitioned to this model where they started to help other people launch and scale their own agency. So that was their agency. You're right. Yeah. And I think what they see is that AI is coming for OnlyFans. I don't know if you guys saw, but OnlyFans has been quite, shopping itself to try to sell, despite being enormously profitable. But I think they see that coming, and they transition to, okay, you own a talent management agency, we are going to sell you the AI model stuff so you can be AI ready to create AI generated adult content for OnlyFans.

That's what I think is going on here? That now makes sense. Now, that does tie it all the weird things that I was reading together. I think you got it. So this is like version three. of this business since 2023, which is not that surprising. I mean, it's a very fast-changing space. And it's still, I don't know when Only fans started, but I would think that these service

providers popped up pretty quickly and then they had to figure out how to iterate. And there's like no book written on this. And if you buy it, how many times are you going to have to pivot and change in the next three years? Are they selling the entire management? So the original, like, version one of them, version two and now version three? Does that make up their revenue mix? Not clear. So they made 2023, they licensed, they started their licensing program that people wanted a to license their toolkit and their e-learning to run their own agencies.

And then they did that and now they're pivoting to AI models. Does it say what, what the back end is like? And no, no pun intended. Sorry. Canceled. Canceled. Do you mean like the technology stack or do you mean like how the revenue model works? Well, I think, yeah, I think AI is such an overused phrase, especially in a scenario like this, where they're basically, they are, from what I'm understanding as well, licensing the licensing it, well, what is it? Is it just a plug-in? Is it do they have anything proprietary to it? If you're going to spend $4.5 million to do this, what are you actually getting?

You're getting the opportunity to spend 63% of your revenue on meta ads. Do you see this? I'm sorry, I just scroll past it. Let's try to look for the answer to your question. Their expense breakdown is 63% meta ads. And this is like a franchisor? Almost. Yeah, I think that's how I would think about it.

It's for they are selling a service to people who want to start their own only fans talent management agency. Does it say what their cut is? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That was up here on slide number. 20%. Was it 20%? So they is 8020. So they do 80% front-end licensing fees.

And that is just a license of their package. So set up automation tools and support. And they have VAs that help with that. And so they charge people these front-end licensing fees. And then there's a back-end MR-profit share. This is genius. Did you see those three pricing tiers, Michael? 15,000, 50,000 in 100,000?

100,000. Wow. And that's USDA. But those are agencies. So their customers are really, the 376 customers are not really only fans, creators. They are agencies, right? Is that what we think now? That makes sense.

Aspiring agencies. So this really is a franchisor thing. Yeah. I'd say that's the closest to it. Yeah. And this is a wacky, crazy business. But to your point, Mike, like, what are we buying here? You're buying technology that can be replicated, I think, is kind of what Mike was saying, right?

Because you probably can't, all technology is, I think, kind of in that category these days, is someone else can come along and build what you built slightly different or better as, as AI continues to advance and progress. So you really don't have a moat there probably, or the moat is very tiny. And then you're buying the customers, the 376 agencies and your ability to keep them and keep attracting more, I guess. How many agencies are there? I would love to know the Tam. I'm actually like kind of blown away that there are all these only fans agencies. I'm like trying to get right my head around that.

About like being adjacent to a really, really expensive transaction, like doing home state. when you're selling like million dollar plus houses, right? And it's easy to kind of piggyback that expensive transaction. In this case, the Tam, I had to Google this, but the Tam for OnlyFans or their revenue was $6.6 billion. So there's this whole like ecosystem around it, right, of people who are like, how do I get a bite of that? And they say on Slide 8 that that their client base is within the OnlyFans management niche. So, I mean, yes, to your point, Heather, I don't know. Are there 100 only fans management companies or are they 10,000?

I don't know. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs that is people who want, to buy a business and need capital to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business,

CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing too from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good.

I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that is appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out, capitalpad.com and tell them that acquisitions anonymous sent you. I just chat GPT data and it said there are estimates of 5,000 active only fans, agencies says of 2025.

Okay. So out of 5,000, they've got 376. And so I would really want to know what the other 4,700 or 4,600 agencies out there are using. Is it proprietary? could they easily just build their own little systems to manage? Or is there another competitor to this where there's a platform out there that they can use? That would sort of be my next thought is who is the competition for something like this?

Because there's a lot of agencies that they don't have. Does there EBITDA margin? Michael, you are in software. Does there EBITL margins seem low to you? For an agency? Correct. Given what they're spending on advertising and marketing, Mike, I think that seems. pretty much where I'd expect it.

I'm actually kind of surprised it's as high as it is. Okay, so with the, then, in the SaaS world, which I'm not sure this is how that would be described, but especially in the franchise or world, something that's, I think it's 30% EBITDA margin, trading for four times. In such a large tam, as Mills pointed out, does that seem low to you?

My guess is that they are getting ahead of the AI concerns around, Only fans. I think that's as they've talked to people, people have been scared off by it's just a matter of time before Only fans gets disrupted by people auto generating adult content.

And I bet these guys are pricing it as best they can given that's the main concern in the market. And that's why this I think the reason I could tell they get it is this whole thing is just like, oh, we're ready for the AI challenge. We're going to help people do that. Something that I always ask,

you know, companies that are on the kind of up into the right and they're selling for a lower multiple that just doesn't pass the sniff test is they, what they mean when they price themselves this way is that they cannot make that much money over the next

four and a half, I think it's priced at 4.4. So over the next four and a half years, they cannot make in cash flow 1.4 EBITDA each year or the risk or effort to actually execute that is higher than what a buyer would be led to believe.

Because if this is a really high margin business and everything's up into the right and, oh, it's about to come and the cash is just going to rain from the ceiling, then you would not put this out of four and a half multiple. So what you're saying is if you're getting ahead of this, yeah, we actually don't think we're going to be able to make $6.5 million a free cash flow over the next, even six years. And that's just kind of an offshoot philosophy

or thinking I always have with where things are marked at is it's really a signal, especially when it's lower. Like, now, if this was $65 million price range, like, that's totally, like, that's generational changing money to, you know, six and a half it is too. I don't want to be disrespectful. But in a business like this, a software business, agency business with 25 to 35% EBITDA margins, you can't make $6 million bucks over the next six years. And what, Mills, what was a market cap of Onlyfans?

Well, the revenue. And this was 2023. Sorry. Yeah. Their 2023 revenue was 6.6 billion. And they give to their creators like, what, 95%? Yeah. I think it said on average, it's like 80%.

Okay. So if agencies are taking 15 to 25% of content creators, say 50% of that revenue goes to content creators that have agencies, and agencies take 25% of that. So it's a billion dollar tam for agencies. That was very napkin math off the cost math, by the way. Well, I mean, one of the other things I just found on here is the founders started the business. They have a GM who's running the day to day, and they're mostly hands off with the thing. So this is not, it doesn't appear to be an owner-operated thing.

That could affect some of why they're pricing it the way they are. They're just ready to de-risk it. The price reflects the amount of uncertainty, right? I mean, if this were incredibly stable in this, like, sleepy corner of the kind of agency, you know, services subsector that wasn't only fans and wasn't, you know, right for disruption and change, yeah, it would probably be really underpriced. But because the business has already changed three times in two years, maybe three years at the very most, they're pricing all that risk in. Have you guys ever seen a company from this merge? Their website is Go Merge. I've never seen it before, but.

Are they a U.S. brokerage? Yeah, I think they are, they are U.S. based, and their whole, like, tagline is basically, you know, agencies specializing in agency, consultancy, and digital first deals under $50 million. Yeah. I think if I was ever going to subject myself to being a business broker, I would niche down hard. That seems like a much better life. I like what they're doing. It looks like they vet kind of your, if you're, if you want to be a business broker, I would niche down hard, I would,

a buyer and get on their list, they vet it somewhat. And then they also offer, which I don't really love, like a tiered service. Like, you can just browse their listings, but you can also consult with them for M&A advisory work and like capital sourcing. So I did chat GBT how the business model works for the agencies themselves. And they typically take 30 to 50% of the creator's revenue. So you have the talent. She, he is out there, mostly she's. And then the agency is doing all the back end work for them. they're doing account management. They're doing chatting with clients. This is another reason why OnlyFans is kind of sketchy.

You're really chatting with some dude in the foreign country with Harry Knuckles. That's what's going on. They do marketing, promotion, content strategy, analytics reporting, and content production in some cases, film editing and shoots and stuff like that. And they take 30 to 50% of the revenue from the creator. I wonder how much of their revenue comes from their new version. of pricing because they have the up-front pricing which is not cheap like whether it's $15,000 or $100,000 that is not cheap.

That is very expensive. And then if they're then taking just say 25% of the content creators, you know, monthly revenue or however Onlyfans does it, their total revenue is only $4.5 million bucks. So I've,

you know, it's harder to do math without knowing that split, but I'd just be curious. So I think the scenario in their pitch is Mike, you're an only fans manager and you have 20 clients right now and you know, you have an army of people mostly like a remote workforce who's helping respond to all these client needs. Your clients are the creators. And in order for you to scale, it's going to be very labor intensive. You're going to keep having to add headcount. We as banks can help you with client acquisition because we have this proven strategy.

You pay us $15,000 up front and we'll start to plug you into our our system and we can reduce your labor costs and we can help you scale. And that's right. That's the proposition here. You get support from a small virtual assistant team. That's what it says. That's the tagline on there. But you're automating stuff. I think their platform would automate the stuff that you might have otherwise had to hire people to do, I think. Which, like, let's just say best case scenario, that is a very fragile balance. Like, if you're in 3PL, right, and things go wrong, and you lose packages, like people scream and yell at you, if you're an OnlyFans creator and you're hiring a management company,

and then the management company has delegated to some AI model that all of a sudden, instead of responding in the right way, responding in the wrong way, like this whole house of cards could come down really fast. Well, plus the revenue model is totally 80% upfront one-time licenses. And then you get a 20%, you know, then they're making 20% as part of their profit share. It's too young to know about customer churn too, but I think what we're saying here is churn would be high, most likely. And that's why they're spending so much on ads.

Yeah. By the way, they list what are their modes as? We spend more on meta ads than anybody else. It's not a very competition. But to your point, Mike, I think this one-time nature of the licensing fees is why it's tough to equate this to a software business or occurring revenue. business because this is mostly just a one-time agency business where they're selling basically you know they use the word e-learning and stuff like that like I recall seeing like one of these like start your own only fans agency ads on Facebook at one point by the way it's

been totally replaced by Alex Formosie and Cody Sanchez ads for me like by the way Alex has a new book case you're interested I've seen it 45,000 times on Facebook ads but um the but I think that's precisely this. It's like, I'll start your own only fans agency, give us $15,000. We won't give you the toolkit to do it. The one thing I could see that's maybe helpful about this is that there could be high switching cost for the

only fans managers. If they've adopted this system and even if there's high upfront cost and low kind of recurring and they get two years down the road and they decide, hey, you know what, somebody better than banks is around,

there's probably going to be high switching costs associated with that. Not to mention there's maybe hopefully some kind of like installed base, you know, of all that like machine learning and all of that data that maybe would make it difficult for the managers to switch. Yeah. Well, we have not commented on the fact that nowhere on this listing does it say SBA prequalified. Heather, what do you think? It is not, no, we cannot get any kind of traditional financing. I won't say what I'm thinking about, you know, these agencies, what they kind of are akin to in real life.

Why don't you go ahead and do that because we need to each rate the deal now? Well, I mean, you're serving professionalized only fans pimps. Yeah. Right? So, Heather, like on the, like, sick codes of things that are the SIC codes. I should have said it that way, but, or the NAICS goes too. So there's blacklisted categories, vice businesses being part of them. Like, you can't use SBA debt for like a payday lending business or a casino or something.

Adult content is included, is included on that list of no-goes. Yep. But would this be considered that? Because you're not, your client isn't actually the adult content. It's a management company. It would get there. I mean, you know, as soon as the. they describe, you know, who your customer bases.

They go, nope, I don't think so. We're not doing this. Also, banks are very, very careful about reputational risk. So even things that the SBA doesn't say you can't do, they'll look at it and go, is this going to make us look bad? If yes, pass, and they would. Definitely pass. Well, and it's an Aussie business, too.

That's another thing that makes us tough. You'd have to figure out how to get that underwritten. So, look, Heather, I think, will take the word pimp to understand. where you're at on this one. Yeah, totally cool. I am intellectually like super fascinated by this business. I've seen lots of businesses like this

and it's fascinating how big they can get. It is so scummy. I am not interested. I would rather run a Starbucks than own this business. And I don't like Starbucks because it smells bad. That's just my store all on site page.

So that's where I'm at. Mills. I'm also a thumbs down, but I'm really glad you guys brought this because it's fascinating to realize how much money is made in like obscure corners of the internet. It's crazy. Mike?

Yeah, I'd be a hard pass as well. See, we're good. All right, guys, great episode. Hopefully it was at least entertaining.

It's fascinating. Cool. So if you enjoyed this episode, dear listener, please tell your friends about the podcast. It would help us grow. And that's the best way. Word of mouth is it.

And this is great if people want to dig in and try to understand how all corners of of business work in this big world of ours. So tell a friend, we'd appreciate it. See you next time.