“Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.” – Scott Adams

Wow, what happened to 2010? The years are definitely getting shorter since we started Dating Factory. The speed with which time is passing, has led me to step back and review what we’ve achieved since we started working on Dating Factory in January 2009.
Firstly it’s important to keep in mind the statistic that only 10% of new businesses ever make it through their first 12 months and of that 10% only 10% make through the next 12 months and assuming there is no unseen catastrophe in the next 10 days we are going to get there.
I’ve worked for more start ups than I care to mention and I’ve had my fair share of successes and failures and have been through the dotcom boom of the late 90’s as well as the telecommunications boom that lasted about a year or so longer. I’ve spent years restructuring the mess the booms left behind when the bubbles burst. I have however never worked on a venture that has started life this well.

Dating Factory

Dating Factory is special in many ways but most importantly we have got to where we are now without having to raise a single penny of external money, which to be fair has somewhat reduced the value of my experience to the company, but in a good way. Most impressively from my stand point is that we also successfully launched Dating Factory in the eye of the worst economic storm of my lifetime and I’m rapidly approaching 50. This was a time when most of my former colleagues in Venture Capital land were diving for cover having lost the necessary balls to invest other people’s money in new ventures let alone their own.
Dating Factory is run by a very committed but geographically and culturally diverse team, who are a testament of how to run a business effectively from an operational and cost point of view in the connected world we live in and represent. The spirit and work ethic of our development team is something I haven’t witnessed since the late 90’s, before the developers of the Western world turned into comfortable 9 to 5ers.
We work with some fantastic partners in many different countries who all see the value of building a lasting business with us. We are a wholesale business and don’t compete with our partners. We provide them with the best technology in the market and keep our costs as low as possible so we can pay them the best revenue share in the market for the traffic they bring.
Dating Factory is available in 13 languages and we have partners and significant traffic in 46 countries. In January we have another major language and a huge potential market coming on line for our partners, it’s a market I’m very excited about and we will be the first White Label Dating platform in that market. Don’t want to spoil the effect of the press release by saying more now.
So here are just a few of the highlights to date;

  • January 2009 – Development starts on the Dating Factory platform.
  • April 2009 – Caerus AG, Dating Factory’s holding company incorporated in Switzerland.
  • June 2009 – Alpha testing and usability testing commences with a small group of web-masters.
  • August 2009 – Beta test commences with significant traffic in two major markets.
  • October 2009 – Commercial launch at the iDate 2009 European show.
  • March 2010 – Dating Factory becomes cash flow positive.
  • June 2010 – Dating Factory reaches 1,000,000 registered members.
  • October 2010 – Dating Factory has paid out a total of €1,000,000 to partners.
  • Dec 2010 – Caerus enters into a partnership agreement to develop a white label system for a new vertical market (launching summer 2011).

So, to all of you who’ve been involved in the success of Dating Factory up to now, stand up and take a bow. It’s been a great adventure so far and your efforts and input are greatly appreciated. Next year we will continue to push this business on to greater success and new opportunities.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Mark Harrison