LOS ANGELES—AVN Media Network is pleased to announce Gregory Clayman, the president and CEO of VS Media, will be the keynote speaker for Internext 2017.
Clayman will discuss his career as a chief executive and the growth of his blue-chip company at an exclusive event at 5 p.m. on Monday, January 16, at Vinyl nightclub inside Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The special address will mark the culmination of four days of networking and educational opportunities at Internext, the adult industry’s original adult digital conference.
As the head of VS Media, a leading provider of live adult video chat and affiliate program Flirt4Free.com, Clayman is responsible for creating and overseeing the overall direction and development of the company’s core business.
An accomplished entrepreneur, Clayman is the only remaining founder of VS Media and served as one of the company’s original sales team members, devising and implementing a distribution network that now services an enormous international client base. A hands-on leader, in 1996 Clayman propagated the notion that video chat was the next great communications tool and devised a content distribution network that today provides revenue-sharing opportunities for thousands of affiliates and e-commerce professionals worldwide.
In June of this year, the Westlake Village, Calif.-based company celebrated its 20th year in business, taking pride in its position as a long-standing, ethical leader in the live adult video chat arena.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to speak to my peers and share some of my experiences over the past 20 years which relate to the industry we all live and breathe,” Clayman said.
“I’m not all that concerned if folks take my ideas and ideologies into account however at least they’ll hear about how I approached different scenarios and situations and they can either choose to learn from our experiences or learn from their own.”
Clayman continued, “My goal is not to preach but to share, teach and discuss how I’ve dealt with everything from sporadic sales cycles, competition, acquisitions, lawsuits, patent trolls, innovation, change, record-keeping requirements, etc.
“If one person walks away with better insight than when they started, I’ll feel like a true success.”
Born in Bangor, Maine, Clayman grew up in Manchester, N.H., spending most of his time after college (1992-98) in a suburb of Boston.
In 1998, Clayman & Co. made the decision to move, along with a portion of his staff, to Southern California. The rest is part of adult entertainment history.
“I’m a type A personality that’s always been fascinated by technology,” Clayman said. “I love technological innovation and I would say that one of my hobbies is reading up on the latest happenings from Fuckbook to Facebook.
“I’ve always been amazed how adult content has traditionally steered the direction of technological innovation and I was confident that someday I would get into the adult internet industry.”
Clayman said his attraction to the adult business was “a natural fit.”
“However I wanted to do it differently and my goal was to build an ethical company similar to any other mainstream company who must answer to someone—i.e. shareholders, board members, etc.,” he explained. “This was one of the opportunities I saw when we first started Video Secrets back in late ’95, early ’96. And once the core group was assembled, we embarked on this shared vision/mission which still holds true today.”
Clayman graduated from Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., in 1992 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Management. The U.S. economy at the time was in a recession and Clayman was recruited out of college to immediately begin working in the financial services industry.
“It was here where I began learning about the hard knocks of the business world as well as the value of networking and socializing with all different types of business owners,” Clayman recalled. “Through networking, I met an out-of-work technical genius and we came up with the idea of starting a video-chat company and saw an opportunity.
“Everyone thought I was crazy to leave the financial business after a successful four-year run, however in 1996 we decided to go for it and I quit my job in the hopes of a greater and brighter future.”
That was now more than two decades ago, when VS Media officially launched.
“We initially used the former audiotext resource guide to reach out to potential prospects in attempt to get them to switch their offering(s) to market Internet-based revenue services such as the ones we were devising,” Clayman explained. “Although hesitant at first, many people saw the light and began shifting from marketing audiotext to eventually marketing videotext and to this day I thank the Audiotext Resource Guide as well as the Who-is data base for giving us our start.”
“Greg is one of the true pioneers of our industry,” said Tony Rios, CEO of AVN Media Network. “He demonstrated remarkable vision with his idea of creating a platform with live video and chat more than 20 years ago. Today this idea is not only still relevant, but it has evolved into one of the most profitable areas of adult entertainment. I’m beyond thrilled that Greg has agreed to share his inspiring success story at Internext.”
Presented by BitterStrawberry, the Internext Expo will take place January 14-17. Click here to register.
