That's kind of the charm of it though, right?

The guy's loaded, has all this time and opportunity...and he's just idling along with his very cute girlfriend and her (extremely attractive if we are to believe the video) friends.

I know there are a lot of people on here who'd use his time and opportunities to go wipe out malaria, write an epic novel and start a seed funding program for startups that adhere to his approach.

But being the way he is got him to where he's at. Maybe if he was the type who had grand visions left and right, he'd have screwed up plenty of fish long ago.

"Frind estimates, based on exit surveys, that the site creates 800,000 successful relationships a year."

Personally, I find impact on human lives of that scale rather interesting.

Not everyone can do something as interesting as selling tickets :)

Seriously though, what would you do after you finish your hard slog?

The story of my life would go something like, "For the first 24 years, Tom did nothing of particular note. Then he moved to Boston and co-founded a web start-up. We're still not sure if this is noteworthy either." Care to imagine why there haven't been dozens of articles written on me? ;)

What would I do? Travel a lot. Keep learning new things every day. Work on many Open Source projects. Maybe slow down long enough to go on a date for the first time in a couple years. Whatever it is, the story probably won't be worth a 5 page article in Inc. Sort of like this one.

That's not fair. I completely see his point. As I was reading this, I also realized that this guy's kind of an empty void. And that bugged me at first. But those same qualities probably helped him out a good bit.

A lot of people say they want to change the world, then do something that won't. I often hear excuses how a bug tracking application or a twitter app will change the world - come on, be realistic. Your simple webapp just won't change the world in any real way.

Very few things actually help or change the world - and those that really want to change the world are doing it already. If you want to change the world, go do it - you don't need money to make a difference. What are you wasting your time for?

Full props to the pof guy, he is obviously doing what pushes his buttons.

Who cares? That's your agenda, not his. To each his own.

I'm not judging his life; he's free to do whatever he wants. It has absolutely no affect on me whatsoever. I'm arguing the newsworthiness of the article chronicling his success with Plenty of Fish. To me, the story reads as "lazy guy who knows nothing about dating sites gets lucky and creates a dating site that makes gobs of money; proceeds to do nothing notable with life."

And hey, whatever, that's great. If the guy is happy with his life, there's not much more than that. My point was, "I'm not impressed." Given how many articles have been written on the PoF "success story", it seems like a lot of people think I should be.

If you don't see what's interesting about a single guy, on his own, terrorizing an entire industry, I guess no amount of explaining will change your mind.

I personally find PoF to be very interesting. It shows what kind of success can be had without reaching for super intelligent, insanely great, SUPER INNOVATIVE, whatever blah blah blah products.

Determine what people want. Give it to them. Is this not an excellent case study?

I think a lot more people on HN would have the financial success they want if they'd focus less on "pushing the envelope" and more on "shipping something people will actually give a shit about."

Which, to wit, does not involve social bookmarking, or yet another online calendar.