(Online Dating Industry Journal) The Toronto Star has published an in-depth article detailing the history and founders of Lavalife. The article gives a background history of the popular Canadian online dating company, including its buy out by Vertrue Inc. of Stamford, Connecticut, for $175 million, along with the background history of Lavalife founders Bruce Croxon, Ed Lum, Nick Paine, Dave Shamandy, and Rasool Verjee.
The group came from a diverse background in advertising, telemarketing, business, law and interactive voice response technologies and were able to take a dating voice mail service and turn it into a popular online dating service that, according to the article, facilitates the exchange of 1.3 million messages a day.
Lavalife was originally the online dating company webpersonals. From the article:
In 1996, the four partners bought a small online company, webpersonals, for about $300,000 spread over two years. The service offered personal ads for dating purposes, and it was free.
Did people call them crazy? "One of our greatest strengths was that we kept quiet about what we were doing," Croxon says. "We didn't do PR. The industry was under the radar, people didn't recognize the potential of the Web, and that was fine with us. We had an inexpensive entry point and felt we could take the chance. We believed this (online dating) would be the next wave of people getting in touch with each other."
Read the full article about for some insight into the background of Lavalife and its members. For a detailed industry history on the Lavalife service, visit Online Dating Magazine's History of Lavalife report.
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