Just caught something worth paying attention to in the creator economy space. Both FanFix founders have now exited the company, and the timing tells you everything you need to know about what's happening behind the scenes.

Harry Gestetner left back in April 2025 and immediately launched a new company called Orion. Then this week, Simon Pompan announced his departure as CEO after 5 years. Here's the thing though - Simon Pompan didn't just leave and take a vacation. He'd already quietly joined Erebor, a fintech startup, weeks before going public with his announcement. Both founders. Both gone. Both already building something new somewhere else.

When both co-founders exit within months of each other and immediately start new ventures, that's not a normal transition. That's a signal. These are the people who built FanFix from nothing - started it at a kitchen table, grew it to 5 million paying users, $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and paid out over $250 million to creators. They didn't stick around to see what comes next under new leadership. They left.

The platform problems were already stacking up before they departed. The fee structure is brutal - FanFix still takes 20% of creator earnings, the same rate as OnlyFans. But we're in 2026 now. Competitors like Passes charge 10%. For a creator making $8,000 a month, that's $1,600 going to FanFix versus $800 on Passes. Over a year, that's nearly $10,000 difference just in fees.

But fees are only half the story. FanFix's feature set is basically frozen. Meanwhile, Passes keeps shipping - paid DMs, pay-per-minute video calls, a full digital marketplace, CRM tools for fan management, anti-screenshot protection. FanFix still has subscriptions and content posts. That's about it. You're paying double the fees for half the features.

There's also the BBB complaint issue. Multiple reports of users being charged after creators stopped posting or deleted content entirely. When your platform has billing trust problems, that's not something you recover from quickly.

The interesting part is what this means for creators. Simon Pompan and the other founder built something real - they understood the creator economy, understood what creators needed. Now that understanding is gone. Dylan Harari is running the company, but he's running it from inside SuperOrdinary, which is a brand accelerator focused on marketplace operations. Not creator tools. Not the same expertise.

Creators aren't waiting around to find out what happens next. They're already moving. Passes is the obvious beneficiary - lower fees, better tools, no PG-only restrictions. For creators who take their business seriously, the math doesn't work on FanFix anymore.

The pattern repeats every few years in platform markets. A company launches with good momentum, gets acquired, stops innovating aggressively, and gradually loses ground to faster-moving competitors. Vine did it. Musical.ly did it. Tumblr lost its creator community the same way.

FanFix isn't shutting down. It's still operational, still has millions of users. But both founders leaving within months of each other, both immediately starting something new - that's the clearest signal possible that the people who understood this platform best have decided their future is elsewhere. For creators, that's worth taking seriously.