PORN VALLEY—Joanne Mason, who relocated to the U.S. in 2007 after leaving the senior vice-presidency of popular Australian amateur site AbbyWinters.com, is striking out on her own once again.
"I and a number of other colleagues and associates in the industry and other industries are starting another company," Mason told AVN. "We're not ready to announce the new company yet—perhaps in about a month—but I wanted to get the word out that I'm eagerly looking for clients and projects and associates and collaborators and so forth."
While Mason wouldn't go into detail as to what the new company, as yet unnamed, will actually do, she made it clear that it will have both a creative and an investment arm.
"The company is going to try to do something that hasn't been done before," she said. "We will work in both the adult industry and the mainstream entertainment industry as kind of a consultant company unlike others, in that we will take a very active, hands-on role in the companies and people that we work with, develop a long-term relationship, in effect becoming partners with them, to bring together innovative technology, sophisticated marketing, production and design, to really do comprehensive long-term strategic planning and significantly build the businesses that we work with.
“In effect, we will be investing in the companies and people we work with. We're going to be working with start-ups but also with existing companies that want to relaunch or want to or need to develop new directions. We'll be working with individuals, with people in both projects in adult and mainstream. We're got a number of projects already under way, and a number of substantial, very large projects in the discussion stages," Mason said.
Mason said that she couldn't be specific about the existing projects. "We're working with some leading talent in the adult industry and we're working on developing some websites and working with some existing production companies, but I'm not yet at liberty to say which ones. Sometime in about a month we're going to be announcing several of these major projects and at the same time formally launching the company."
Mason said she was leaving LittleMutt, which offers "elite smut" featuring young performers, on amicable terms, but explained that her goals and the company's had come to be at odds.
"I have left LittleMutt, where I started in January, for a variety of reasons, in a sort of mutual agreement with ownership," she recounted. "It was an appropriate time to move on. I think, with all of the problems with the economy and the industry, LittleMutt was continuing to shrink, and ownership made the decision to downsize even further, and it sort of became clear that that was not the opportunity for me to be able to use my talent and experience and background and to really have an impact."
However, Mason is currently looking for associates with experience in technology, public relations and marketing to join her current roster. Anyone interesting in joining this start-up can contact Mason at [email protected].
