How Attractive World founder sold a “hard-to-exit” dating site

Ludovic Huraux, Attractive World, Customer Acquisition, European Founder, International Founders, Marketplace, Sell Your Business

A few weeks ago today’s guest sold his company but one of the fascinating things to me is that it was a dating company.

Andrew Chen wrote an article about why investors don’t fund dating sites. They have built in churn because once you match someone they no longer need the site, dating has a short shelf-life, paid acquisition is expensive, and it’s a hard company to exit.

Dating sites are tough to build, grow and make successful but today’s guest did all that. I want to find out how.

Ludovic Huraux is the founder of Attractive World, a french dating site that was acquired by Affinitas.

Ludovic Huraux

Attractive World

Ludovic Huraux is the founder of Attractive World, a french dating site that was acquired by Affinitas.

Andrew: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, where I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs about how they’ve built their businesses.

And a few weeks ago, today’s guest sold his company. And one of the fascinating things to me about his company is that it was a dating company. I’m actually looking at Andrew Chen’s blog right now where he talks about why investors don’t invest in dating companies. He’s got this long blog post, but I’ll sum up some of the points. He says it’s got built in churn. Dating sites, you match somebody and of course, they’re going to leave because they’re in a relationship.

Dating has a small shelf life. Paid acquisition channels are expensive. City by city expansion, he says, sucks. It really is challenging. It’s hard to exit. Demographics mismatch with investors–there are so many reasons why dating sites are tough to build and to grow...

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