But the brilliance of Plenty of Fish is not its strength as a matching engine; it is the site’s low overhead. Not only has Frind managed to run his company with almost no staff, but he has also been able to run a massive database with almost no computer hardware. To get a sense of how efficient the operation is, consider that the social news site Digg generates about 250 million page views each month, or roughly one-sixth of Plenty of Fish’s monthly traffic, and employs 80 people. Frind has just eight. He is not eager to explain how he manages this, but he says that it mostly comes from writing efficient code, a necessity when you are the only code writer and are extremely averse to spending money on additional hardware and features. “At other sites, when one thing goes slightly wrong, the reaction is to buy more servers or hire a PhD,” he says. “It’s almost unbelievable — it’s like people are trying to justify their jobs by spending money. This isn’t rocket science.”
O ften, at the end of a long workday, which is to say around noon, Frind plays war games. His aplicaciГіn de citas internacional apartment is outfitted with five computers for group play of Age of Empires and Command & Conquer — and he has a substantial collection of board games. He is good, too: When I joined him for a game of Risk in e before clearing the board in a single, virtuosic turn. He was still gloating the next morning. Frind approaches business in much the same way. “It’s a strategy game,” he says. “You’re trying to take over the world, one country at a time.”
Frind’s account of his own exploits, published on his blog in 2006 under the title “How I Started a Dating Empire,” says a lot about his worldview: “I spent every waking minute when I wasn’t at my day job reading, studying, and learning
I picked out ‘enemies’ and did everything I could to defeat them, which meant being bigger than them.Continue reading