Before Building an AI Media Empire, Justin Brown was Building a Startup with Ghislaine Maxwell

Justin Brown, one of three brothers behind media company Brown Brothers Media, attended events hosted by Ghislaine Maxwell and promoted her environmental charity in social media posts, according to an investigation by Futurism.

Brown Brothers Media has acquired struggling online publications and used artificial intelligence to produce large volumes of content, according to Futurism, which reported that the company’s network of sites attracts tens of millions of visits a month.

Futurism said it found multiple connections between Ideapod, a startup founded by Justin Brown that was later folded into Brown Brothers Media, and people in Maxwell’s social circle.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year U.S. prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and other offenses related to her association with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

In response to questions from Futurism, Brown denied having any relationship with Epstein.

“I had no relationship, contact or dealings whatsoever with Jeffrey Epstein,” he wrote via email. “I never met or communicated with Epstein, had any business, financial, social or other dealings with him, received funding from him, or visited his island. Ideapod never received funding or investment from Epstein.”

Regarding Maxwell, Brown said he did not want to reconstruct events from more than a decade ago.

“I am not prepared to speculate from memory or provide a question-by-question reconstruction of thirteen-year-old business and social history,” he wrote. “Any statement or implication that I or Ideapod had a relationship with Epstein, received funding from him, or knew about or participated in the crimes of Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell would be false.”

LINKS TO MAXWELL

According to Futurism, Brown attended a September 2013 cocktail reception hosted by Maxwell at her Manhattan townhouse to celebrate the launch of Ideapod, a social media startup he had founded.

Getty Images photographs from the event show Brown with Maxwell and his Ideapod co-founder Mark Bakacs, Futurism reported.

The event was held at a townhouse that Epstein had purchased for Maxwell, according to Futurism.

Maxwell had been publicly associated with Epstein for years by that point, and Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was required to register as a sex offender.

Futurism reported that Brown subsequently promoted Maxwell and her TerraMar Project on social media.

In December 2013, Brown shared a video of Maxwell’s TED Talk and tagged TerraMar. In February 2014, he wrote on Twitter that he had taken the “I Love the Ocean pledge” associated with the TerraMar Project.

Days later, he shared an Ideapod page about Maxwell and continued posting about TerraMar, including a photograph of Maxwell at the United Nations.

“Ghislaine Maxwell of [the TerraMar Project] being graciously introduced by [Amir Dossal],” Brown wrote. “Two wonderful activists. cc [Ideapod.]”

Dossal, a former United Nations official who served on TerraMar’s board, was also an adviser to Ideapod, according to archived versions of the company’s website reviewed by Futurism.

Dossal did not respond to Futurism’s request for comment, according to the publication.

Futurism also reported that Brown and Maxwell appeared together at other Ideapod-related gatherings in 2014, including at the company’s New York office and at the United Nations.

In April that year, Ideapod’s Instagram account published a selfie of Brown and Maxwell.

IDEAPOD’S EVOLUTION

Ideapod initially presented itself as a social media platform focused on ideas and later experimented with several business models, including a search engine, an online academy and paid courses.

The company launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo in 2014, seeking funds for what it described as “Medium meets Twitter meets TED.” It ultimately raised $53,613, according to Futurism.

Brown later said the company had struggled financially before shifting its business model toward digital publishing.

“18 months ago, Ideapod was in serious trouble,” Brown wrote in a January 2018 Facebook post. “We had a lot going for us. Richard Branson was a supporter, thousands of people were passionate users and we had high profile investors backing the company. But our temporary successes blinded us from the reality that our debt levels were increasing, we didn’t have any viable revenue lines and the core product hadn’t improved in months.”

“We were rapidly headed for complete and utter failure,” he wrote, adding that “in the midst of massive turmoil, we successfully completed a ‘pivot’ of the business, became cash flow positive, created a distribution network resulting in Ideapod becoming one of the world’s most trafficked media networks and created a platform to launch multiple revenue lines around the core mission of Ideapod: provide ecosystems of thought where ideas are surfaced, discussed and critically analyzed through dialogue.”

Brown attributed some of the company’s turnaround to guidance from Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê, who had also sold courses through Ideapod.

“Rudá isn’t a false guru,” he wrote. “His framework is incredibly powerful. Over the last few years I’ve seen Rudá help so many people wake up to themselves and turn their lives around.”

BROWN BROTHERS MEDIA

Brown’s brothers later became involved in Ideapod and other digital media businesses.

By 2017, Lachlan Brown was working at Ideapod and was later listed as its editor-in-chief, according to archived versions of the company’s website.

Brendan Brown ran The Expert Editor and Global English Editing, while Lachlan founded Hack Spirit, a publisher focused on psychology and spirituality content.

The businesses were consolidated in 2020 into Brown Brothers Media, according to Futurism.

“Justin co-founded the digital media platform Ideapod and spent a decade at the intersection of ideas and audience,” Brown Brothers Media says on its current website. “When we pooled that experience under one roof, the model was clear: acquire publications with long histories of expertise and authority, and invest in them.”

Futurism reported that Brown Brothers Media’s websites have published large volumes of AI-generated material and have used fabricated author identities.

It said Ideapod was among sites that removed fake authors and associated content after Futurism began asking questions about the company’s practices.

As recently as February, according to an archived version of Ideapod’s website, the publication said it had evolved from its original 2013 mission.

“The internet got louder, attention became currency, and most media optimized for engagement over substance,” the page said. “We went the other direction.”

The site listed an editor-in-chief called “Theo Arden,” whose biography said he had a background in cognitive psychology. Futurism reported that Arden was a fabricated persona and that his profile image appeared to have been generated by AI.

FUNDING QUESTIONS

PitchBook data reviewed by Futurism indicated that Ideapod raised about $3 million during its years in operation.

Futurism questioned whether any of that funding came from people connected to Maxwell or Epstein, but provided no evidence that Epstein financed the company.

Brown denied any connection to Epstein or Maxwell’s financing of Ideapod.

“Your questions appear to use associations with third parties, and even the geographic proximity of two islands, to imply a relationship with Epstein,” he wrote. “None existed.”

“Ideapod never received money or investment from Maxwell,” he added. “I am not going to speculate about other people’s connections to her.”

Brown declined to comment on when he last had contact with Maxwell, according to Futurism.

Bakacs, Brown’s former Ideapod co-founder, also denied having a relationship with Epstein and said his interactions with Maxwell were limited.

Bakacs said Brown met Maxwell “at the UN, and she subsequently offered to host a single cocktail reception for Ideapod at her Manhattan townhouse. I met with her once beforehand to plan the event, and attended the reception itself. Neither Jeffrey Epstein nor Maxwell were on our radar at the time, and we were completely unaware of any past convictions or connections.”

“To my recollection, my only in-person interactions with her were that single planning meeting and the reception itself,” he added. “Given that we were both active around the UN and related events at the time, it’s possible we were in attendance at some of the same UN related gatherings, but I had no other meetings or relationship with her.”

Futurism said Bakacs did not respond when asked about a later photograph showing him with Maxwell.

Richard Branson was another prominent figure who had contact with Ideapod, according to Futurism. Brown and Bakacs traveled to Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands while seeking financing for the startup.

“We were low on cash and had difficulty even making it to the island,” Justin recalled in Forbes. “Conventional wisdom dictated that we conserve what we had left and continue with business as usual in New York. Instead, we furiously raised more funds, because we were convinced that Ideapod would receive a warm reception. And it did. We met four new investors and Branson wrote this blog post about us, making the trip a huge success.”

Branson did not invest in Ideapod, according to his spokesperson, who said he met the founders at an event for entrepreneurs.

The spokesperson also said Branson’s contacts with Epstein had occurred more than 12 years ago and were limited to group or business settings.

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