THE GLOBE AND MAIL - July 14 - Last week Markus Frind cemented his status as one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs, selling POF to Match for $575M. Match has been trying to buy it for a decade, but he never considered selling out until after his daughter Ava was born. "I think he will invest and help a lot of businesses," said Arash Fasihi, founder of Cymax Stores, an online furniture retailer that recently took an $18M investment from Mr. Frind. Frind launched POF in 2003. He grew the business on his own, teaching himself about marketing, business development and product. In 2009, he hired his first developer. By then, he had 10M users. At the core of Plentyoffish was an algorithm that Mr. Frind constantly tweaked that used "behavioural match-making" to predict successful relationships. "Markus is a machine," said fellow entrepreneur Andrew Reid, founder of Vision Critical. "A lot of his success can be attributed to his drive and focus on data and predictive analytics."
by Sean Silcoff
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