Plenty of Fish .. Plenty of Risk
http://valleywag.com/tech/plentyoffish/how-much-is-a-one+man-dating-site-worth-316950.php
Quote: “”But what would he need VC money for? Being cash-flow positive means never having to say you’re sorry. There’s a simple reason why Plentyoffish hasn’t garnered more attention: Silicon Valley is only interested in stories it can grab a piece of.”"
***FS*** If there’s a downside about the Valley it’s just that … The best companies, domain portfolios, software whatever, doesn’t “need the money” and don’t want to give away a piece of the action, so there is nothing to talk about. As a result many of the second rate shows rise to the top, becoming the first rate shows as people, backers etc are incentivised by the opportunity to enrich themselves. Marcus will get bought eventually because running a site is a lot of work. He will have to find liquidity one day, or leave the site to his kids. The big risk with a one man site like Plenty of Fish is that if Marcus gets hit by a bus, the value (perceived/real) evaporates. Not so much with name portfolios which run on autopilot if managed well.
Risk management is an important aspect every serious business should think of. For Marcus, getting hit by a bus, if managed right, won’t change a thing on his business operation. If he does his homework today (or has done) then there is a plan of “what to do in case of..” in place.
In Recall Media Group we have a person that does jsut that. For domainers, they need to run these scenario as well. Where are the domains? How to point them? who are the key people at specific companies to talk with? Who sends the money, to where? I bet allot of domains which drop are dropped because no one knew what to do in case of.. Don’t be one of them.
You name two things, sites/companies flying below the radar making alot of money compared to many sillicol valley start-ups… and what to when one-person sites stop beeing able to work on their sites.
For a) i would say, who cares. Beeing on e.g. techcrunch is for some startups a goal, because it’s their only way to get ‘funding’ for stupid ideas that never made a penny. Rather make 10k a month now, then own shares in a company that is worth 10 million in shares (and not knowing if it ever will payout in real dollars).
b) is a real issue, and id more or less discussed here:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3488871.htm
There’s a great biz t-shirt slogan buried in the original article: “Positive cashflow means never having to say you’re sorry…”
Funny you should mention getting hit by a bus. At my last place of employment, we actually had do develop ‘Hit by Bus’ books where we listed in detail every process, contact, account and password we had in case someone had to step in immediately.
It was a pain to set up at the time, but it’s a practice I’ve carried with me ever since.
I interviewed Markus for my blog over a year and a half ago when everyone thought he was a liar. Everything he did was very much contrary to what the mainstream was teaching — from how many servers you need to how your web site should look.
The story I saw was of leveraging technology. He built a system that effectively runs itself. His overhead is tiny (no VC, no debt, no employees, super-optimized servers.) Proportional to the capital required, he is receiving an enormous return on his asset.
This is a very similar story to that of domainers.
Does the value really evaporate if he dies? From what I understand, his site very much runs on “autopilot.” How else do you scale to the #1 dating site in Canada and the UK? As a domainer, you do not have to do any more or less work if you have 1,000 visitors a day or 1,000,000.
That future where robots replaced thousands of human workers, well, its here.
And pay close attention to Markus, his story should be a case study on the future of business. It is for me. He also writes a good blog at http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/
***FS*** He has done a terrific job.. but I run one of the lowest overhead (management) investments there are and nothing… nothing runs on autopilot.. There are still fires to put out.. They’re just smaller fires.