Brian Sloan didn’t set out to create the best blowjob machine of all time. He simply saw a gaping hole in the market and filled it.

The sex toy entrepreneur realized that none of the numerous tech advancements of the past three decades were being applied to a certain primal activity men of all ages enjoy: masturbation. He changed that by creating a toy—or rather, a machine that simulates a blowjob. You plug it into the wall, stick your dick in, and let the machine do all the work, applying pressure while moving up and down your penis.

Sound familiar? You may remember Sloan from 2014, when the second iteration of his Autoblow product—the Autoblow 2 —essentially broke the internet. Within weeks of launching on Indiegogo, Sloan raised nearly $300,000 , breaking the previous record for the most money ever raised by a sex toy in a crowdfunding campaign. When the product became available to purchase on their site, the server crashed.

Even though it wasn’t his initial intent, Sloan revolutionized the sex toy industry. He continues to do so with the third Autoblow, available for purchase sometime in summer 2019.

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So how does one became the foremost engineer of blowjob machines?

After graduating law school in 2005, Sloan knew he didn’t want to become a traditional lawyer. To make some spare cash during law school, he started buying antiques at auctions and reselling them on eBay for profit.

“It was a good time to be doing that because there weren't many other people using eBay this way yet,” Sloan told Men's Health.

Since the antique selling market was surprisingly lucrative, he decided to start his own business selling miscellaneous items on eBay. For two years following law school, he did just that, until a friend of his told him that he should head to the antique markets in Beijing.

After a few very profitable trips there and back, Sloan decided to move there permanently to specifically find niche items he could sell back to consumers in the United States.

"No one yet was using technology to help men masturbate."

“I came across latex fetishwear when I visited China. I learned that very fat and very tall people had specific trouble finding gear,” he said. So upon his arrival to Beijing, he set up a latex and bondage gear site and began selling to everyone across the world. Through his involvement with fetish gear, he saw the lack of effective sex toys for men.

“It was only then when I understood the scale of opportunity to make a device that was really good for men because there weren't any at the time,” he said.

In 2008, there was only one major masturbator on the market: Fleshlight .

“Basically, men were still using these handheld rubber vaginas,” Sloan said. “Even though Fleshlight made it more convenient with their design, it wasn't like a ‘high tech’ thing. No one yet was using technology to help men masturbate.”

But Sloan did, which led to the creation of the first Autoblow over a decade ago.

The sex toy entrepreneur doesn’t like talking about the first generation of the Autoblow. While he undoubtedly accomplished what he had set out to do, which was to make an automatic masturbator that will manually stimulate a man’s most prized possession, he now acknowledges its many flaws, including a weak motor and a distracting loud noise.

“It’s kind of an embarrassing product,” Sloan confesses. “There are a few guys who backed the Autoblow 2 crowdfunding campaign who've told me they bought the first one in 2008, and I just tell them I’m sorry and give them a big discount code for the new one.”

The first iteration of the Autoblow. Brian Sloan

Still, everything needs to be looked at through the lens of the time, and for that reason, it was still a huge success. He sold 30,000 units of the product online through a website called roboticblowjob.com, since Sloan couldn’t afford the domain name Autoblow.com. At $100 a device, Sloan says he averaged a million dollars in sales for the first three years.

“We were selling far more of our product than many competitors were theirs, but those competitors didn't even know our name because we sold online only on a single website and made no efforts to be a part of the sex toy world offline,” Sloan explains.

After the first Autoblow eventually gained notoriety with popular sex blogs , Sloan spent three years developing the famed Autoblow 2.

“I looked at all the nasty emails I ever got, and I worked on addressing the issues,” he said.

The Autoblow 2. Autoblow 2

The most major upgrade involved the motor. Up until the Autoblow 2, “nearly all sex toys used these crappy motors that are not meant to last for a long period of time. It was more like a thing you use sometimes, and once it's finished, you throw it away and get a new one.”

Sloan used a metal motor that was rated for industrial use. It can only be operated if the product is plugged into the wall. (In fact, the Autoblow 2 motor was of the same type that dispensed money from ATMs.) The original Autoblow had plastic gears, so a larger penis could end up grinding the gear's teeth, breaking the product. Due to lack of torque, the first Autoblow would stop on slower speeds too. The Autoblow 2 has the strength to keep going once you put your penis inside of it, no matter the size.

Sloan became the Billy Mays of masturbators.

“Even after the Autoblow 2, no one followed in our footsteps making a wall power masturbator," Sloan said. "They only use batteries, and it's a huge limitation on the power and the quality of the sensation that the product can deliver.”

To make the major improvements necessary for the Autoblow 2, Sloan created an Indiegogo campaign . Within weeks, he raised over $280,000, which was the record for any fundraising sex toy campaign at the time. He used himself as the spokesperson in the promotional video, which is what he believes led to such success. (He also famously launched a search for the world's most beautiful vagina.)

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“It wasn't this device with a nameless spokesperson, and I didn’t higher porn stars to try and sell it. It was just me, and the video is really cringe-y now that I look back on it, but it really worked. It showed how I’m a well-respected entrepreneur in the sex toy industry who’s been in this business for years.”

With these cringe-worthy videos, Sloan became the Billy Mays of masturbators.

Sloan overannuciated with his head slightly cocked while he looked directly into the camera. There is an intensity—arguably an intimacy—in the way he address you straight on. Reddit users noticed he not only looks but acts like Paul’s Scheer’s awkward character from The League , Andre.

When the product went live, the site quickly crashed. They had to upgrade the server. The Autoblow 2 had received a wide range of internal coverage prior and following its release.

“It was like in every country’s main news websites.”

Five years following the release of the Autoblow 2, a new-and-improved third generation Autoblow is set to hit the market sometime in summer 2019.

This time around, Sloan spent even more time on research and development.

A team of six researchers, commissioned by Sloan, analyzed 109 hours of blowjobs half-speed to see the various styles of blowjob technique. One of the lead researchers published the results in the now infamous “blowjob paper,” which can be found here , but as summarized in the academic paper’s abstract:

“We use quantization techniques to discover sixteen distinct motions, and using these motions we design and evaluate a system that procedurally generated realistic movement sequences using deep learning.”

The Autoblow AI will have a total of 10 different “types” of blowjobs with changeable speeds. The final mode utilizes machine learning to never give the same blowjob twice. That's something we haven't yet seen in a sex toy to date.

“If your device only goes up and down the same exact way every time you use it, you're going to grow bored of it sooner rather than later,” Sloan said.

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There’s also an organic way to edge using the Autoblow AI. Through viewing hours of blowjobs, Sloan and his team noticed there was often time where nothing occurred, which Sloan refers to as “no activity.”

“We have three modes and those modes have different levels of no activity during the blow job. It helps to prolong the experience.” If you’re getting too closed to finish, you can also press pause, take a few deep breaths, and then resume the same blowjob you were having prior. It’s another way to have the experience last.

With crowdfunding now closed at $501,000 on Indiegogo , Sloan hope the Autoblow AI will be released in either June or July. This time, he’s prepared for the influx of visitors to his site upon the product’s release.

“My goal in the end—let’s say 20 years down the line—is to create a device that if you closed your eyes, you can’t hear the device and wouldn't know the difference between my device and a real blow job.”

For my sake along with every man’s out there, godspeed, Sloan. Godspeed.

Zachary Zane Zachary Zane is a Brooklyn-based writer, speaker, and activist whose work focuses on lifestyle, sexuality, culture, and entertainment.

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