Well it seems most of the stuff I wanted to hire employees to build has already been built. I’ve got to see a lot of stuff under NDA the last week and All I can say is there is going to be a major major change to the web and the economics of Online Dating are about to dramatically change. So for now I’m just going to overspend on tech and buy my way out of any trouble and maybe hire someone part time to do customer service stuff.
August 13, 2007 at 10:32 pm |
Ah… I’ll bet you were going to impliment that idea of “click here to buy X person flowers”, weren’t you?! So you contextualize affiliate program-type gifts that people could buy each other.
Fascinating. What a great story to watch. Thanks for sharing this, Markus. (There isn’t room for 2 in this market, then? Too much work to do, too far behind?)
August 13, 2007 at 11:34 pm |
“I’ve got to see a lot of stuff under NDA the last week and All I can say is there is going to be a major major change to the web and the economics of Online Dating are about to dramatically change”
I’m curious to why you would sign an NDA with anyone is the same market as you. Wouldn’t that tie your hands on any innovation in the space that may infringe on the ideas even remotely?!?! Hmmm….
August 13, 2007 at 11:35 pm |
“I’ll bet you were going to impliment that idea of “click here to buy X person flowers”, weren’t you?! ”
I did that a year ago, it made about $100/day not worth the effort. None of these companies are in my market.
August 14, 2007 at 12:31 am |
I’m glad you found an out to adding headcount.
I’d love to know what this major change to the web is. Any hints? Please tell me its not social network related! I’ve about had it with all the facebook hoopla.
August 14, 2007 at 3:30 am |
You should hire a very good web design firm to improve the look & feel of your dating site. It looks so 1998 right now. Nevertheless, I’m amazed that you can run this site by yourself. Is it because you’re an IT genius, or your competitors are morons?
August 14, 2007 at 3:43 am |
Is the product going to be sold to the general market eventually, and would you announce on your blog when that happens?
August 14, 2007 at 6:58 am |
is facebook going to buy you and make fishbook.com?
August 14, 2007 at 7:32 am |
Wouldn’t it be fishhook.com ?!
August 14, 2007 at 11:49 am |
I used to be an employer and now I’m an employee.
One thing I’ve vowed is that I never want to personally employ anyone ever again. Think of the burden to your personal life of having a pet to look after. Times this inconvenience by ten; that’s employing staff.
August 14, 2007 at 2:01 pm |
One rule I have (and most of us have in the VC community) is I never sign NDA’s. And I have yet to have a prospective investee company not show me their business plan, etc. because of that.
August 14, 2007 at 3:37 pm |
I won’t say I told you so (my 8/7 comment to your proposed hiring plan and organizational structure), but it stood to reason that a solution to dilemmas like yours would be in the offing.
You could easily outsource your customer service or use a temp or employee leasing agency for it. Keep in mind though that people calling like to hear an accent reasonably close to theirs.
August 14, 2007 at 5:33 pm |
If you could train 1 or 2 techincal people on how to run your site, that would give you more freedom as well.
Thanks for letting me know ’bout the “gifts” idea.
August 15, 2007 at 4:09 pm |
[...] So for now I’m just going to overspend on tech and buy my way out of any trouble and maybe hire someone part time to do customer service stuff. Source: No Employees for a while. [...]
August 16, 2007 at 6:49 am |
Spend on this.
Today, a user, late 40s, of POF was at Kinko’s searching, viewing, “making notes” on some profiles. I stopped by and asked him several questions regarding his likes, dislikes, and serious pain points.
Not to put it all down here, simply the “making notes” was a serious pain and one that can be readily remedied. He told me he would love to be able to write his own “personal” notes on some of the women he reviewed on the website itself so when he has more time he can go over them or even share them (more opportunity here) with his buddies.
I asked, would it be nice if you could be able to search by these “notes” – he said simply – “son, that would be fantastic”.
I asked, would it be nice if you could give your buddies these notes by selecting which buddies and vice a versa – “yeah, they tell me about some girl they see that they think I would like and I have to write it all down…it’s a pain in the ass”
Opportunity, Opportunity…maybe not all done at other places…
just scratching the surface I would say.
PK
August 16, 2007 at 9:12 am |
how would you buy your way out on the tech side? invest more on the servers? is your website still only running on single web server? a load balancing solution would be cheap way to buy you way out if performance is the issue.
August 16, 2007 at 3:48 pm |
PK notes on favorites are already in place.
When I tried sharing them between users I had 5,000 complaints in the first 10 minutes. People got so insanely mad.
August 17, 2007 at 11:57 pm |
@partition is the key
I believe he was attempting to address the changing market (ad revenues).
August 21, 2007 at 6:41 am |
[...] Plentyoffish.com is sticking with no employees for a while with big changes in the online dating market happening it seems. [...]
September 10, 2007 at 2:48 pm |
Hey Markus. Regarding PK’s suggestion and your notes to him. The “issue” users have (heck, I’ve had it) is that there was someone I was interested in thinking about further (or even had IM contact with), but didn’t want to put on a favourites list (cuz they can tell). I think the idea that http://www.hotscripts.com has which allows you to append a personal note to each page (program description in their case) would actually be quite useful. For instance, based on forum contributions under another name (which I could remember cuz they had JUST switched) there were people I wanted to remember to NEVER contact. Being able to add that as a private and personal note to a profile would be really useful. And then you’d just have to have a “summary notes” page to let you list profiles you’ve added notes to. I have, in fact, added such a feature (personal comments for each specific web page) for social networking software I’ve written for my research group and we find it quite useful.
September 17, 2007 at 5:00 pm |
Markus, allow me to show youthe advantage we can offer you by integrating Compatikey into POF. We won’t ask you for a nondisclosure agreement.
October 30, 2007 at 9:14 pm |
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December 18, 2007 at 11:36 pm |
[...] So for now I’m just going to overspend on tech and buy my way out of any trouble and maybe hire someone part time to do customer service stuff. Source: No Employees for a while. [...]
December 19, 2007 at 2:59 pm |
how would you buy your way out on the tech side? invest more on the servers? is your website still only running on single web server? a load balancing solution would be cheap way to buy you way out if performance is the issue.