Markus's dating app
Bradford holds up Markus Frind, the Plenty of Fish founder, as her role model: he coded the whole product himself, shipped at night, raised no funding, kept a tiny team, owned 100% of the company, and sold for around $800 million.
“he really, you know, he built all the algorithms. He would go and ship code at night, and he was able to basically not have to raise any funding.”
Bradford explains that every dating app that got huge hacked a brand-new acquisition channel before it was understood or expensive: Facebook News Feed, Google Mobile Ads. Plenty of Fish's Markus would stuff a country's channels at launch so any dating search returned only his app.
“all the people that got big all hacked an acquisition channel that was new, and they used Facebook News Feed before it got regulated. They used Google Mobile Ads before they got— anyone knew what they were doing. Marcus knew Facebook Ads inside and out, and when they launched countries, he would just— from what I heard, I tried to read all these people's secrets, but what I heard is they would just basically stuff the channels where you spend so much money no one else can compete.”
Steal thisFind a newly opened, underpriced ad channel and dominate it before competitors notice the arbitrage.