PHOENIX, AZ—Steve Lightspeed, the energetic, opinionated and creative founder of Lightspeed Media and LightspeedCash has decided to call it quits for the company he founded in 1999 as a hobby. In a Facebook comment posted early Saturday afternoon, the leader in the teen solo-girl niche let it be known that Lightspeed Media is for sale.
"The time is finally here," he wrote shortly after 1:30pm. "After 13 years, with my security company, other interests, and new projects dominating my time, I'm ready to sell Lightspeed Media. Domains, content, trademarks, copyrights, traffic, completely automated custom cms/member/affiliate/traffic management software, and much much more. Seriously interested buyers only... contact me here on FB."
AVN contacted Steve to make sure the news was real. A serious businessman, he has also been known to play the occasional practical joke. But Steve confirmed that the sale is genuine, and added simply, "It's been a fun ride."
In an AVN article published in 2009 on the 10th anniversary of Lightspeed Media, Steve, who launched the company as a side business before walking away from a 13-year job as a $200,000 a year computer systems designer, was quoted as saying, "I started this just for fun. I thought it would be great if we could do a thousand dollars a month. Then I realized I could quit the full-time job and be able to work from home and make more money than a 'regular career.' I never expected it to be where it is now."
He also spoke about the evolution of the industry in the years after he first got in, a period of unprecedented opportunity during which Lightspeed developed a number of popular models, including the insanely popular Tawnee Stone and Jordan Capri.
"Back when I started, there were only a few established companies — the second generation hadn't come in yet," he recalled. "Everybody wasn't niche or newbie-friendly. I'd be at seminars and people would say, ‘Why would anyone want to start a paysite?'
"But I wasn't really doing it for the money anyway — I really didn't care," he said. "I just wanted to make enough money to keep going. I kept showing up to all these industry things and it really wasn't until summer 2001 that it all really took off."
In the intervening years, Lightspeed Media, along with other programs, not only "took off" but saw exceptional growth as the industry and the economy boomed. By 2009, of course, the great recession was already wreaking havoc, but despite that and other factors affecting the industry, Steve Lightspeed remained "positive about the future of his companies Lightspeed Media and affiliate program LightspeedCash, as well as the entire adult industry in general."
"We'll keep going with what we do," he told AVN. "I think our approach keeps us afloat when a lot of other people won't be around. I've always said honesty is the key to this business and I still stick to that."
Three years later, with new projects taking up his time, and despite ongoing litigation in federal court, Steve Lightspeed is ready to move on. But hopefully, when the sale of his company is complete, the man who has never shied away from speaking his mind will weigh in with more intimate details about his experiences running one of adult online's more visible success stories, as well as his feelings about the industry as a whole.
If his parting comment this afternoon was any indication, it shouldn't take much effort getting him to sing. "I should start working on a new Broadway musical, The Steve Lightspeed Story," he quipped. Not a bad idea at all.
Photo: Lightspeed Media founder Steve Lightspeed
