How The Founder Of Match.com Lost Her Business. (And Went On To Found TRUSTe) – with Fran Maier

Fran Maier, TRUSTe, Comeback, Failure, Subscription (Membership) Model, Web 1.0, Women Founders

This is the story of the woman who launched one of the first online dating sites back when most people thought the whole concept of internet dating was weird. Fran Maier co-founded Match.com, helped change the perceptions and built what became one of the most recognized online brands.

Then the company was taken away from her. It was sold by a board of a directors who didn’t believe in the potential of online dating. (As you listen to her tell the story, you’ll hear how 10 years later it still stings and fires her up.)

Today she’s the president of President of TRUSTe. In the second part of this interview we talk about how Fran relaunched that former non-profit as a for-profit business and how she helped grow its sales.

Fran Maier

TRUSTe

Fran Maier is the President and Executive Chair of TRUSTe, the leading internet privacy services provider.

 

Pre-program: Before we get started am going to tell you about three great companies, pick click is the first, it’s a one person startup from my friend Ryan in San Diego, pick click gives you a visual way to search eBay, [etsie] and other sites, Ryan is already doing one million product sales per month on picclick.com, not hits but sales go to P.I.C..C.L.I.C.K dot com to see how he is doing it. 99designs it’s the largest crowd outsource market place for graphic design, when I use them I wrote a description of the design I needed and how much I wanted to pay , I got a bunch of designs back, I gave each design a feedback and I picked the one I liked best and that’s the one I paid for, try them for logo design, if you need a blog design use them, if you need app icons use them, there are so many different reasons why you might want to use them. Check out 99designs.com and you will see why so many past mixergy guests have used 99designs.com. And grasshopper, I have had them now...

Continue reading the transcript...