I am sure you would have guessed who the single fish is, even before I proceed to give details about Marcus Frind  who runs the free online dating website called plentyoffish.com .  The once small fish born in 2003 morphed into a giant blue whale in less than a year.

This again is  success story of a single person who did the right hot thing at the right time. While online dating websites already existed when he started plentyoffish they were mostly paid membership. Marcus saw the need for a site offering the service for free. As per his proclamation , this site also let him develop his asp.net programming skills. Boy , what a way to learn and earn ?

So from the humble birth this giant now claims a billion page views per month. We all know more pageviews means good ranking and great money if you know how to monetize your site. While we can’t be jealous of other peoples growth but when Marcus’s girlfriends holds a CAD $901,733 cheque from google, I can hardly stop turning green. This was way back in Feb 2006. I wonder how many folds it has increased now.

Perfection is desirable but not mandatory to succeed 

The interesting fact is, when Marcus Frind started the website it was neither attractive nor perfect, it was not the kind of user interface that people would fall for. Take a look at these archives for the early site design.  He improvised it gradually and did not strive things to be 100% perfect. He was satisfied if the functionality was good and just carried on to bring more features than perfection.  The website was still running off his home computer  for the initial 8 months before moving to a hosting company.

Tidbits

Do remember it is still a company owned by a millionaire aged less than 30. While his website has plenty of fish ,I don’t think he is hunting for one because he has already found one and is happy with his girlfriend.

Courtesy: Marcus Frind Blog

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