The Bootstrap Story of Markus Frind
Markus Frind created a dating site as a side-project in 2003 and sold it for $575M in 2015. Learn about his success story and how he grew the website to 15M users and was generating $10M revenue in 2008.
Luke Sophinos
Writing about all things Vertical Software | Founder & CEO @CourseKeyEDU (vSaaS for Trade Schools) | Thiel Fellow @ThielFellowship | Advisor @JoinAtomic |
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In 2003, this guy created a dating site as a side-project.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
In 2015, he sold it for $575M.
He kept all the money because he never raised a single cent.
The sickest bootstrap story you've never heard of ๐งต pic.twitter.com/ncq9vwtJPk -
Meet Markus Frind, the founder of Plenty Of Fish, a dating website that gets ~20M visits per month.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
It has over 150 million registered users and adds 65k new users every day. -
He grew the website to 15M users and was generating $10M revenue in 2008 before he hired his first employee.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Until 2008, he was working only an average 10 hours a week.
By 2014, POF was making $100M every year.
How did a simple website become so hugely successful? ๐ pic.twitter.com/38uNONCedq -
In 2003, Markus was working at a Vancouver-based tech firm.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
He feared getting fired from his job, so he decided to bolster his qualifications.
He decided to master ASP. net, Microsoft's new website building tool, by building a difficult website in just a few weeks. -
And he stumbled upon a great idea.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
He was frustrated with the online dating sites available at the time like Match. com and wanted to create a better platform that was simple and user-friendly.
And he was on! -
In the next few weeks, Frind built a basic dating site and named it Plenty of Fish in just a few hours a night.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
It was incredibly simple - just a plain-text list of personals - but it was unique in one key aspect: It was completely free.
No big dating company was free. -
Previously while many free dating startups had struggled to compete with paid competitors like Lavalife, Frind's solution was radical.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Instead of competing with Match .com, he created a low-cost site for users not ready to pay. -
This served an underserved market and gave paid sites a place to advertise with their huge budgets.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
From March to November 2003, POF expanded from 40 members to 10,000.
He used his home computer as a web server and tried to game Google with forum tricks. -
When Google introduced AdSense, he made just $5 in his first month.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
But by year-end, he was making over $3,300 a month by selling ads to paid dating sites interested in his unpaid members.
And...he quit his job in early 2004. -
By 2006, Plenty of Fish was a top-five dating site in the US and the top site in Canada, serving 200 million pages each month.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Frind was raking in $10,000 a day through AdSense.
People were highly skeptical of this. -
To prove that he was indeed making that much money, Frind posted a picture of a Google check to POF worth~ $800k - 2 month revenue.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
This implied his site was making $4.8M/year
Some people called the picture fake, and some said it was a promotional stunt. pic.twitter.com/GDCQo60z8m -
Whatever it was, it worked.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
The buzz drove new users to the site and POF's growth skyrocketed, hitting 1B page views per month by 2007.
5 things that differentiated POF from other dating websites ๐ -
1. Pricing Strategy
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
POF was completely free for users, unlike many other dating websites.
This made POF more accessible to a broader audience and helped to attract more users. pic.twitter.com/tWig7tmAV6 -
2. User feedback
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Frind listened to user feedback and made changes based on their suggestions.
When users requested a "Meet Me" feature, he added it.
This feature let users quickly show their interest in meeting someone in person. -
3. SEO optimization
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Frind knew search engines were crucial for dating sites.
So he optimized POF's content and keywords to rank high in SERPs.
This helped to drive more traffic to the site and attract more users. -
4. Automation
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Frind kept POF lean by automating many aspects of its operation.
He used automated systems to process registrations, send confirmation emails, and handle customer support inquiries.
This kept overhead costs low. pic.twitter.com/eCPCnsJKJt -
Frind set up his company so that he has to spend a maximum of 20 hours even on busiest days.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
"I get everything done in the first hour of the day" he said.
Then he reconsidered and said, "Actually, in the first 10 or 15 minutes." -
On July 14, 2015, Match Group (owner of Match .com, OkCupid, Tinder and Hinge) bought Plenty of Fish for $575M.
— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
Today, Markus runs a winery and a billion-dollar investment company that manages real estate, public market equities, and private equity. pic.twitter.com/QpW3eXrhGP -
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— Luke Sophinos (@lukesophinos) April 8, 2023
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