Key facts
- Who: Joanna Angel (born Joanna Mostov, 1980), American adult film performer, director and writer, founder of BurningAngel.com (Wikipedia)
- Origins: Born in Brooklyn, raised in River Edge, New Jersey, in an observant Jewish family; believed to be the first person in the industry raised in Orthodox Judaism (Wikipedia; JTA)
- Education: BA in English literature, minor in film studies, Rutgers University (Wikipedia)
- The business: Founded BurningAngel.com in April 2002 with roommate Mitch Fontaine; by 2013, about 60,000 active members and 10 people in day-to-day operations (Business Insider)
- Later: Sold ownership to AdultTime but kept directing (AdultDVDTalk)
When people talk about women who “made it” in adult film, they usually mean performers. Big names, big contracts, big search numbers. What they almost never talk about are the founders — the people who built the companies, wrote the business plans, hired the crews and made payroll every month. In my world, those people are rarer than stars, and much more important.
I’ve been in this industry for 14 years. I’m one of the most-searched male performers in the world, and I’ve worked with most of the top actresses of my generation. I’ve also worked for a lot of companies, good and bad. So when I say Joanna Angel is one of the best founders this industry has ever produced, I’m saying it as someone who has seen the inside of a lot of businesses.
She didn’t just perform. She invented a niche, built a brand around it, ran it for well over a decade, and then sold it. And she started it in her college apartment. Here’s her story, with the facts, and then my honest take.
A punk kid from an observant Jewish home
Joanna Angel was born Joanna Mostov in Brooklyn, New York, to an Israeli mother and an American father, and raised in River Edge, New Jersey. She graduated from River Dell Regional High School in 1998 (Wikipedia).
Her family was religiously observant. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, she grew up attending Jewish day schools and summer camps, and she is believed to be the first Orthodox-raised Jew to enter the porn industry. She told Vice that while she is no longer Orthodox, she still fasts on Yom Kippur and avoids bread during Passover (JTA).
In a 2019 interview she described her teenage self perfectly: she would escape to New York City on the bus, sit around in the East Village “in ripped fishnet stockings and an assortment of spikes clothing”, go to punk shows, and come home on the last bus “and then act very defiant to my very supportive and loving parents who were just trying to figure out why I listened to such angry music” (AdultDVDTalk).
She also worked — a kosher fast-food restaurant in Teaneck during high school, then an Applebee’s and a place called Happy’s Health Grille during college (Wikipedia).
I love this background because it breaks every stereotype people have about who ends up in my business. A religious household. Loving parents. A good public school. Waitressing jobs. An English degree. People imagine a performer’s backstory has to be dark. Sometimes it is. Often it’s just a smart, restless kid who wanted to do something different.
Rutgers, English literature, and a “very small experiment”
She went to Rutgers University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature, with a minor in film studies (Wikipedia).
In her senior year, in April 2002, she and her roommate Mitch Fontaine launched BurningAngel.com (Wikipedia; AdultDVDTalk).
She told Business Insider she never planned for it to become her life: “Initially I thought of being a journalist, possibly a sex advice column type person kind of like a Carrie Bradshaw. I also had this odd dream to teach English classes to people in prison. Burning Angel was a very small experiment at first. I never imagined it would become my career.” The name, she said, came from “a good girl/bad girl thing” (Business Insider).
And here’s the detail I find most revealing. She didn’t plan to appear on the site at all. She told Complex in 2011: “We thought of starting a website and I didn’t even have the idea for myself to be on the website until months later. We were having trouble finding talent to do it. So I was like, ‘Why don’t I just do it? That might make it easier,’ because I felt weird asking girls to do something that I wouldn’t do myself” (Complex).
Read that last sentence again, because it’s the whole philosophy of a good boss in this industry. I felt weird asking girls to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. I’ve worked for producers who have never once stood in front of a camera and have no idea what they’re asking of people. And I’ve worked for producers who have done the job and understand it in their bodies. The second kind make better sets. Every time.
Inventing alt porn
Burning Angel was built as an answer to sites like SuicideGirls, where Angel had modeled. It featured alternative, punk, tattooed performers, band interviews and stories alongside the adult content. She has credited a live performance by Nina Hartley as the inspiration for moving into making hardcore films for the site (Wikipedia).
The Encyclopedia of the Zombie, of all places, called her “a major influence in the mainstreaming of alt porn” and credited her with making the genre financially viable, partly through a run of zombie-themed horror parodies. In a 2006 interview she said: “I think [alt porn is] a movement. I think I’ve started something” (Wikipedia).
She herself was always a bit skeptical of the label. “It’s kind of a silly name,” she told Complex. “It’s just supposed to mean porn that is different… I think what makes alt porn is the community and the culture behind it in addition to the content.” She described the site as “a reflection of ourselves”: “There’s band interviews on the website, the style of girl that we use is not your average typical porn star… All the members interact with each other, all of the girls have blogs and profiles, and people become friends with each other. It’s more of a community and a reflection of a subculture” (Complex).
As a professional, this is the part I want to underline. In 2002 she understood something that the rest of the industry took another fifteen years to learn: people don’t just pay for content. They pay to belong. Forums, blogs, performer profiles, live events, music — she was building a community, not a catalogue. Today every creator platform runs on that idea. She was doing it in a college apartment before Facebook existed.
Running it like a startup
By 2013, Business Insider called her “porn’s most successful entrepreneur” and described Burning Angel as running “much like a startup”, with 10 people involved in day-to-day operations, around 30,000 unique visits a day and 60,000 active members. Subscriptions were the main revenue, with DVDs, events, appearances, branded clothing and even a line of toys on top (Business Insider).
She described the early grind honestly: “When we started, I had a part-time job as a waitress. I wanted to quit so that I’d have as much time as possible to work on the company. I didn’t want to work for myself during the day and for someone else at night.” And on how she ran things later: “I oversee everything, especially on the creative side. Nothing creative gets shown to anyone unless it goes through me first” (Business Insider).
She told Complex something that I think every founder in our business feels and never says: “We put so much of our heart into this and people don’t really think of that when they think of two people that own a porn company. They think of two scumbags trying to make some quick money. It was never like that” (Complex).
That quote hit me. Because that’s exactly the stigma. People assume that anyone who owns an adult company is a sleazebag. Some are. Many aren’t. The good ones are small-business owners with payroll, servers, accountants, legal compliance, customer service and the same 3 a.m. panic as any other entrepreneur — plus a banking system that doesn’t want them and a public that despises them.
CNBC named her one of the 12 most popular stars in porn in 2011, 2012 and 2013, noting that she owned her own studio. She was under an exclusive contract with VCA Pictures until 2007, wrote a sex-advice column for Spin, appeared in the 2010 Free Speech Coalition anti-piracy PSA alongside performers like Lisa Ann, and had mainstream roles in independent films and on Adult Swim’s Childrens Hospital (Wikipedia).
Her parents
One of my favorite parts of her story is her family.
In 2015 she told the Daily Mail, as reported by JTA, that her Orthodox Jewish parents had accepted her career and even offered business advice. “There were a few distant aunts, uncles and cousins who got angry at my mom and dad for not disowning me, but all it did was make us closer,” she said. Her parents’ answer to those relatives: “Don’t tell us how to raise our daughter!” (JTA). She even wrote an essay titled “Porn Made Me Like My Parents” for the 2015 anthology Coming Out Like a Porn Star (Wikipedia).
I’ve seen the opposite story so many times. Performers cut off by their families, hiding their work for years, terrified of a cousin finding a video. Compare that with Belle Knox’s story at Duke or Bree Olson’s stigma. Joanna’s parents chose their daughter over the opinion of the relatives. That’s rare, and it shows. People who have a family behind them make braver decisions, because they’re not acting out of desperation.
The hard chapter
It would be dishonest to write about her and skip the darkest part of her public story.
In 2015, after Stoya publicly accused their mutual ex-boyfriend, performer James Deen, of assault, Angel said on the Jason Ellis show on Sirius XM that she had feared for her safety during their six-year relationship and called him a “scary person”. Deen denounced the claims against him on Twitter (JTA). These are her allegations, and his denial; I’m not going to add to them.
What I want to highlight is what she said next: “I do not want people to blame porn. I think he is a bad egg. Please don’t blame the industry” (JTA). She also publicly supported Stoya at the time.
That takes a particular kind of strength: to speak about something painful in your own life, and still refuse to let it be turned into a weapon against everyone else who works in your business. I agree with her. Abuse is abuse in any industry, and it should be called out by name. But the answer is to name the person, not to condemn every performer.
In 2016 she married performer Aaron Thompson, known in the industry as Small Hands (Wikipedia).
Selling the company
In 2019 she told an interviewer that she had sold Burning Angel the previous year to AdultTime, while continuing to direct its content. She described it as one of the hardest decisions of her life: “It was a very hard emotional decision. My heart was saying no and my brain was saying yes. My heart is still pretty angry at me, but my brain is very satisfied” (AdultDVDTalk).
That is, word for word, what founders in every industry say after an exit. Sixteen years of building something, then letting someone else own it. Most people in my business never get to that moment, because most adult brands die with their founder’s interest. She built something durable enough that someone else wanted to buy it. In this industry, that’s the equivalent of an IPO.
What every performer should learn from Joanna Angel
- Build a community, not just a catalogue. Members who talk to each other come back. Viewers who don’t, don’t.
- Never ask anyone to do what you wouldn’t do. It’s the best management rule on any set.
- Own the company if you can. She wasn’t just a face; she was the person who signed off on everything creative.
- Keep your family close if they’ll let you. Support makes you braver and smarter.
- Name abusers, don’t blame everyone. Accountability is specific.
If you’re interested in other educated founders and writers in this business, read my columns on Stoya, another performer who built her own company, and Abella Danger.
My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)
Joanna Angel is proof that the smartest person in an adult company can also be the person in front of the camera. She took a college side project, gave it a subculture and a community, ran it like a real startup for sixteen years, survived piracy, stigma and a painful public chapter in her personal life, and sold it on her own terms. And she did it while keeping her parents — Orthodox parents — in her corner.
After 14 years in this business, I’ve worked for a lot of bosses. The best ones all have something in common with her: they understand the work because they’ve done it, and they treat the people on their sets like collaborators, not inventory. If our industry had more Joanna Angels running companies, there would be far fewer horror stories to write about.
I share more about how I choose who I work with, and what a good set looks like, at maximogarciaworld.com.
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FAQ
When did Joanna Angel start Burning Angel?
She founded BurningAngel.com in April 2002 with her roommate Mitch Fontaine, in her senior year at Rutgers University (Wikipedia; AdultDVDTalk).
What did Joanna Angel study in college?
She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature with a minor in film studies from Rutgers University (Wikipedia).
Does Joanna Angel still own Burning Angel?
No. In a 2019 interview she said she had sold ownership to AdultTime the previous year but still directs the content (AdultDVDTalk).
What is alt porn?
A genre built around punk, tattooed and alternative performers and a community culture; Joanna Angel is widely credited with making it financially viable (Wikipedia; Complex).
How we fact-checked this
Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below. Quotes appear as the sources reported them; allegations about a third party are attributed and his denial is included, and anything we could not confirm was left out. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Joanna Angel — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Angel
- Business Insider: “This Brooklyn-Born Woman Is Porn’s Most Successful Entrepreneur” (Sept 22, 2013) — https://www.businessinsider.com/joanna-angel-burning-angel-2013-9
- Complex: “Interview: Joanna Angel Talks Alt Porn, Piracy, And Her Blow-Up Doll” (July 29, 2011) — https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tara-aquino/interview-joanna-angel-talks-alt-porn-piracy-and-her-blow-up-doll
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Porn star Joanna Angel says Orthodox parents accept her” (Nov 6, 2015) — https://www.jta.org/2015/11/06/united-states/porn-star-joanna-angel-says-orthodox-parents-accept-her
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Jewish porn star Joanna Angel says James Deen made her fear for her safety” (Dec 3, 2015) — https://www.jta.org/2015/12/03/united-states/jewish-porn-star-joanna-angel-says-james-deen-made-her-fear-for-her-safety
- AdultDVDTalk: Joanna Angel interview (2019) — https://interviews.adultdvdtalk.com/joanna-angel-2019/
