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any Avid Life Media, "a network of targeted niche brands with highly engaged users", for around $20M. According to Markus Frind, CEO of free online dating site PlentyofFish.com, Avid Life Media is a front for ashleymadison.com, "a dating site for married people that want to cheat". Is this whole dating space heating up or what? Just a few monts ago we met with HotOrNot co-founder James Hong at a Churchill Club event where he was telling his amazing story: from humble beginnings to real phenomenon, even inspiring ABC's reality television show, "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People". "We started in October 2000 [...] on borrowed space [...] and quickly realised that it was not going to work out. We almost took the site down because [...] according to our current bandwith consumption this site is going to cost us $100,000 a month and doubling every 5 minutes!", said Hong Inspite being $60,000 in debts, then students Hong and co-founder Jim Young made a barter deal with IT hosting company Rackspace: "publicity" for a server and bandwith. And I guess the rest is history... with a nice happy ending... even though some find the amount offered too low for such a profitable start-up! http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/02/hotornot_from_nothing_to_20m_in_8_years_video.php