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Era 4 · Tubes and consolidation

2004–2025acquired in March 2023 by Canadian PE firm Ethical Capital…

MindGeek

Manwin, Aylo since 2023

MindGeek is a holding company that in 2010–2013 assembled free adult video sites and several paid sites into a single structure, and in 2023 changed owners and its name to Aylo. It grew on advertising, a funnel from free sites into paid ones, and heavy debt; in December 2020 Mastercard stopped and Visa suspended card acceptance on its main site, and the company had to change its upload rules and its owners.

Founders Fabian Thylmann (owner of Manwin in 2010–2013) · Feras Antoon and David Tassillo (management and minority shareholders; left in 2022–2023) · Bernd Bergmair (majority owner until 2023)
Domains —
tube-sitesconsolidationdebtadvertisingcard-networksregulationownership

In brief

MindGeek is a holding company that in 2010–2011 used borrowed money to assemble free video sites (among them Pornhub, launched in 2007 according to management) and paid sites into a single structure, and in 2013 passed under the control of its managers and changed its name from Manwin to MindGeek. It made money from advertising and from a funnel from free sites into paid ones. In December 2020 Mastercard stopped card acceptance on Pornhub, and Visa suspended it the same day. The company had to shut down uploads from unverified users, and in 2023 the former owners exited the business and the holding company became Aylo. It is a business that grew on a free storefront and on debt and ran into the payment networks.

How it started (the founders)

The root of the holding company is the Canadian company Mansef, which by the company's own description has been operating since 2004 estimate. The German entrepreneur Fabian Thylmann came to the industry from software: in 2006, by Spiegel's estimate, he sold his stake in the company that sold the NATS billing and tracking program for a sum in the single-digit millions, and within a year he used that money to buy three companies estimate. In 2010 he bought Mansef and renamed it Manwin. According to Spiegel, this was in March 2010: negotiations went on for three months, he could not pay cash up front, nobody would give him a loan, and he paid part of the price at signing and the rest in 16 monthly payments estimate.

The business was run by two Canadians from Montreal, Feras Antoon and David Tassillo; in the Parliament of Canada in 2021, Antoon said that they were minority shareholders and that the majority shareholder, with a stake of more than 50%, was a European, Bernd Bergmair, whom he described as a passive investor. In October 2013 Thylmann sold his stake to the company's top management, and Manwin became MindGeek.

Year-by-year timeline

Lesser-known but significant facts

  1. The empire started out being bought in installments and without a loan. According to Spiegel, in March 2010 Thylmann bought Mansef, paying part of the price at once and the rest in 16 monthly payments: he could not pay the full amount in cash, and nobody would lend to him estimate.
  2. The 2020 payment ban did not close the advertising channel. Until August 2022, cards were accepted for buying advertising through TrafficJunky; Mastercard explained that it had learned about the advertising revenue, which had been outside its field of view, from new facts in a court ruling a week earlier.
  3. Legally the holding company was European, but it operated out of Montreal. According to Antoon, the headquarters was in Luxembourg, MindGeek Europe had four offices (Luxembourg, the UK, Cyprus, Romania) and 800 people and also owned the rights to the brands, and the Canadian subsidiary had 1,000 people in Montreal, about 400 of them engineers. According to the latest filings, from 2018, there were at least 48 subsidiaries estimate.
  4. According to management, Bergmair owned more than 50%, but in the Luxembourg register the stakes are recorded in the managers' names. Parliament: more than 50%; the complaint: 59% / 31% / 10%; the register of beneficial owners according to Globe: 67.6% and 32.2% held by Antoon and Tassillo in the parent company; according to the Financial Times (as retold by Globe), Bergmair is the largest owner through subsidiaries estimate.
  5. The 2023 sale was a complete exit. According to Globe, ECP together with unnamed investors owns 100% of the shares, and the three sellers, Antoon, Tassillo, and Bergmair, exited entirely.

Legend vs. the record

The first growth lever

The lever was a free advertising storefront with a funnel into paid sites, bought with other people's money. Thylmann describes the mechanics himself: links from free content to paid sites, trial access, and limited free content; Antoon, in January 2011, described the tube sites as the appetizer and one of the paid sites as the main course estimate. The base for this was assembled in two steps: the purchase of Mansef in 2010, according to Spiegel in installments, and the 2011 credit line of ≈$360 million (according to Spiegel, about $140 million). By the end of 2012 there were more than 30 companies and several billion clicks a year. Conversion from free sites to paid ones and revenue figures were not found in open sources unverified; the 50% of revenue from advertising is Antoon's estimate from memory.

The paired story

The pair is FriendFinder Networks (formerly Penthouse Media Group) (history-friendfinder); its years, amounts, and roles have been checked against the pair's dossier and SEC filings.

Parallels today (projects from the catalog)

What a builder can take from this in 2026

  1. A free storefront is a funnel, not a business. Track where the traffic goes: at Thylmann's company, the links led to paid sites.
  2. Card networks can switch off your main product within days. Mastercard and Visa announced it on 2020-12-10; the measure concerned one holding company, and the industry got conditions. Keep a backup payment channel.
  3. Unverified uploads are a risk to your payment infrastructure. AN 5196 requires contracts, age and identity verification, and review before publication. Design this in from the start.
  4. Put the advertising channel on your risk map. Cards for advertising kept working until 2022 and were cut off after new facts came out in court.
  5. Buy assets in installments, not with a loan against collateral. Manwin's start, according to Spiegel, was 16 payments; the price of the borrowed money, according to the complaint, was more than 20% and a pledge of all its intellectual property estimate.
  6. An opaque ownership structure is a risk too. Management in parliament, the complaint, and the Luxembourg register give three different pictures of the stakes, and Tassillo called the structure itself a legacy of the previous owners.

Discrepancies and what we could not verify

Sources (primary first)

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The same thing, about today

The same breakdowns, but of projects launching right now: what the product is, where the first users came from, how they charge. The card is free, the full dossier is $5 (the dossier itself is written in Russian).

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