CamLife Magazine Interview’s  Teerpon’s Valérie Artonne”Behind  

Hello Valerie, since 2017 industry partners have met you at different trade shows. You are known to always be wearing stylish and trendy outfits, but behind the fancy façade, we discovered a tough, multifaceted, and wise entrepreneur. It sounds like your imprint on the Tarpon business is way more important than people may think. CamLife Magazine values empowered women, so thank you so much for taking that time to sit down with us here to answer some questions for our readers. 

Thanks, Bender, for the kind words. It is a real pleasure to be here with you, and I am eager to get feedback on info@terpon.com from your many readers, more especially from performers and studios who represent our opening B2B market. You, with your husband JC, are the two co-founders of Terpon Corp. He previously told me that you are the one who decided to start this business. Is that true, and what was the opportunity you foresaw?

In fact, the initial opportunity presented to JC was to design a complex VR camera for an adult content producer. It was obviously not scalable, so not interesting for him until he brought that into our morning discussion and brainstorming routine.

I am passionate about psychology, sociology, or should I say humans in general. Sexuality is, therefore, one of the subjects I care about as it is an essential part of our vital needs. I recommended that JC go deeper under the cusp, especially into the growing live cam vertical where it’s all about succeeding to create interactive relations that result in a financial transaction. Virtual Reality was obviously the next step to go beyond a simple e-frame and to offer a telepresent realistic feeling.

I knew that day that we were probably touching something big and that it will only be the first step toward a global ecosystem for digital sexuality, the one that has been depicted by many science fiction authors. After JC’s market investigation over a few months, we took the decision to co-invest in Terpon.

Consequently, to your question, I will prefer to say that it was a mutual decision based on pure rationales, even if, yes, I was the one to push it hard at its inception.

Wow, so you also personally invested in Terpon. Can you tell us more about your background?

Self-made woman, I went for a job in my youth. My dream was big but unclear… I was for sure always thinking about how to improve people’s lives with many business ideas.

Finally, to satisfy my artistic soul as well as my passion for the complexity and the beauty of humankind, I went back to school in my 20s, investing in a 5-year acting curriculum. The discovery of the “Method Acting” from Stanislavski’s system was a life-revelation and put my focus on everything that seeks to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances. Now, I can really value how much it has been useful in my day-to-day business relations.

As it was quite expensive, after 3 years I decided to challenge myself and become an exotic dancer in the most prestigious club in Montreal. Business minded, I put clear goals for each of my working days, and a clear deadline for this activity: 2years. Indeed, it went quite well and, a few years after I quit, I was capable of using my savings to significantly invest in the Terpon venture. 

This side-path experience helped me to understand and respect the live cam performers who seriously plan to grow and convert their fan-base into a recurrent revenue-stream. It takes time to entertain viewers as often as possible with freshness. Virtual Reality is one of the answers available right now. 2-3 years ago, it was the time to pioneer with simply connected toys when many were thinking it would never take over on such a scale. Now, almost all the rooms are equipped, and I guarantee you that it will be the same with immersive technologies.

Thanks for sharing that. Now, I understand more where you come from and why people who are approaching you love you. But Terpon has not been a long, quiet river…

From my own experience as an entrepreneur every project every company has to overcome certain hurdles, I believe that this experience not only makes for a better project, but it makes you better as a person and as an entrepreneur. What are your thoughts on this? And, what hurdles have you had to overcome as an entrepreneur?

I Am not an expert in R&D, but everybody knows that it always takes time and money, and when innovating whatever your ideas are, it must be continuously updated. Remember all these examples such as the first Apple Mac that took three years of development instead of the previously forecasted one year. Therefore, entrepreneurs must be agile and flexible, as well as it requires enough funding to face all the timeline extensions and the imponderable.

In our case, our engineers have managed the hardware development well. The first 1,000 cameras’ components are ready for assembly. What was underestimated was the velocity of adoption from the cam sites who all were waiting to see who will be the first to go…

I can tell you today, that the first one to be fully operational is XVR.CHAT and it is not a surprise to see a new site decided to go with full VR in order to have strong differentiation. We believe they will be very successful as a few hundred top performers from various leading platforms already have confirmed to us they will split their traffic with XVR as they want to offer more to their clients and attract new ones to their rooms.

Now, several well-known platforms are trying to bridge the gap and are integrating our solution. It was the signal our financial partners were expecting, and it makes me very confident.

To your question about making us better facing difficulties, I will say that it has tested our limits and resilience. I think that it has made both of us, JC and me, humbler, and pragmatic, thanks to our team, the models and all the studios who have supported us from day one. They will recognize themselves.

Talking about the team, how would you say that working with your partner in life helped strengthen your relationship as JC told me, and how do you balance business with your personal life?

it is easy to answer how we currently balance personal and professional life. There is, in fact, no balance, no boundaries, we are literally all-in. It makes us happy as we are both hard-workers and passionate about the Terpon project. Beyond a simple investment consideration, JC and I are sharing the same vision in Terpon and that resonates so well with our values.

If you were a fly on the wall, you would rapidly understand that our debates are quite animated. We are not always agreeing on the way to conduct the business or to choose the best people. I am most probably the one who is the more vocal, LOL. At the same time, we are both very complimentary and have a lot of admiration for each other.

The key point is that we always agree at the end on one point: we really love and care very much for each other!

Also, don’t think I am not active in my duties as a wife and mother. I am also a very dedicated mum and that’s why I was more behind the front line during the first years of our adorable kid’s life. Now, watch out, it is time for me to be in the battle.

Amazing, so what’re your exact duties at Terpon?I understand that you have taken recently the position of Chief Brand Officer.

Terpon in Greek mythology was the devoted servant of Aphrodite and Dionysus. It is an inspiration for us to be sincerely dedicated to our customers’ needs and demands. To start with the live performers and studios who are now using our VR cameras and within the end of this year the general public with new elegant and exclusive connected devices we are crafting.

Also, at Terpon, we feel very responsible on a societal point of view, as we are touching an essential human need, sexuality. Therefore, we put all our future business and product developments under a highly ethical lens. That’s one of the reasons we are currently discussing partnerships with some universities on researchers about the new digital sexuality trends, their economic, psychological and sociological impact.

All of this effort requires special attention, as well as a clear statement for outsiders.

Since Terpon’s inception, I have been the one in charge of our brand positioning, it is just a way to make it official and to reinforce my role as Cerberus or guardian, if you prefer, of the company and brand values. 

Obviously, you are spending a lot of effort and devotion in your developments. So, tell us, how do you think VRand Terpon’soffer will change camming?

It may surprise you a lot, but I really think that VR will not change camming, camming will change VR!Let me explain…Going VR for the camsites will not magically overnight increase their revenues, but for sure, it will continue to onboard new tech-savvy customers in the upcoming years.I am especially thinking about generation X, fully involved in the digital era, and generation Y, the Millennials, who have been raised with the internet. Almost a billion hyper connected people, who are now at or approaching their tip of consumption capabilities, and, for many who are suffering from loneliness. Some serious surveys demonstrate solo-sexuality is becoming the preferred sexual behavior for a fast-growing already two-digit percentage of this population. They are the perfect target for what I like to call the virtual love that is becoming day after day close to a reality in terms of feelings using new VRand haptic technologies.

Not being ready for this new customer and this technological revolution, in a very competitive environment, is for sure missing the train and all its future opportunities. Some top-models and best studios have clearly understood the opportunity and have bought the ticket. Being first to catch this market will give them a tremendous advantage, without spoiling their current customer base, as they will still broadcast traditional 2D streams through our cameras. Moreover, they will continue to offer more and more of what clients always want. At least they need to be given the choice!

Therefore, it will be the performers who will change the camming industry and not the technology itself. One of the reasons it was so important for us to invest so much in brand awareness over the last 2 years. Our ambassadors and the one-to-two thousand beta-testers, we are currently equipping with our 1,000 generations zero Hermes cameras, will split their traffic and will carry-along with them their fan-base to the sites that will be compatible with VR broadcasting, such as the new site XVR.CHAT, or on a platform like Skyprivate.

That said, several important sites are working on the integration, so we expect the models will keep their loyalty when it will be possible. The implementation of our technology is now quite easy, and we are not asking the camsites to pay any royalties or fees for that, nor for the camera usage, nor to the final users. Our business model is simple, we rent the camera at an affordable price to the models and to the studios directly. I can assure you that Terpon wants to serve fairly and equally all the industry. To conclude on this important question, the camming is to our point of view the key to enabling VR in most homes. To be interesting VR content must be interactive and engaging, that’s exactly why media and market survey agencies are betting on video-gaming, and why we are betting on camming. We see this market trend with a major difference: for camming is possible to have a great set up with a cardboard headset for less than $30-or better yet-a less-than-$200 standalone headsets. 

We’ll see how our affiliate program works to distribute headsets. I will tell you more after a test period and we will start very soon with a few of our top ambassadors. If it delivers the promises from our first survey, it will be a significant source of additional revenues for sites and performers.

So, many things are on the burner as I understand…Now we here at Cam Life Magazine pride ourselves on being the pulse of the live webcam community so can you tell us about any other projects that you are working on?

Indeed, many things will be announced over the next months as we have first to see how much investment we will be capable of raising. Being in hardware is never as easy as being in software or services, so the working capital requirement is a lot more demanding.

For sure, I can tell you that sometime around this summer we will have both an improved version of the Hermes that we plan to rent between $30 and $40 per month, and a new concept of input device that will allow clients to enjoy even more the currently available toys on the market. For the camera, we will be able to reach the maximum resolution and quality that it can offer. It will be amazing. And for the input device, we will try to reinforce partnership with innovative manufacturers such as Kiiroo as we believe a global immersive solution will enhance the customer’s pleasure, and therefore retention and revenues that the industry will be able to generate over such complete experiences.

That’s for the company. And as the CBO, my main goal for 2019 and 2020 is to develop a community of enthusiastic users in the Adult Entertainment Industry as well as in the general public, with a special focus on all the Sexual Wellness side of our business which within 2 years will represent most ofTerpon’srevenues. 

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to sit down with us here at Cam Life Magazine we hope to continue to work and grow your you and your team.“VR will not change camming, camming will change VR”