Lessons From a Bad Exit | Inc.com

"A few years after its founding Match.com was sold for just a small fraction of its actual worth. What did one member of the original start-up team learn from the misadventure?

Match.com may be one of the best-known names in the world of online dating today, but back when it was founded in 1994, it was just an unloved proof-of-concept for investors hoping to sell electronic classifieds to newspapers to help them get online.

"There was never really big support for only Match.com. It was more to prove this classified advertising thing that would be bigger than any online dating," Fran Maier, who was one of the first half dozen employees to join the fledgling company, and who took the role of general manager, told Inc.

Maier explains: "They were looking for enterprise-level solutions with the newspaper industry. What happened is we sold it to Cendant, a company in Texas.

How much did young Match.com cost Cendant? Seven million. And what price did Cendant get for Match when it turned around and sold it to Ticketmaster Citysearch Services for $50 million just a year and a half later? $50 million. "Talk about mispricing," Match.com's founder Gary Kremen said recently."

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