Big Winner

Andrew Conru founded a company known as Various Inc which served as an umbrella company for the FriendFinder network of social networking and dating/personals sites. He turned it into one of the most valuable Internet properties in history and recently sold his company to Penthouse Media Group for $500 million, one of the largest web deals ever made.

For this blog, I’ve collected some presentations by Conru and interviews involving him.

First up is a presentation where he discusses what he learned about the adult industry, specifically involving Adult FriendFinder. The following link was posted by Jason Calacanis, himself a successful entrepreneur.
http://web20.weblogsinc.com/2004/10/06/learning-from-porn-andrew-conru-founded-the-friendfinder/
Some notes from this presentation were posted by Jeremy Zawodny here:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002743.html

The following interview with Andrew Conru comes from Webmaster Radio:
http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Entertainment/RainMaker/Andrew-Conru.htm

And here is a transcript from an interview with the Domain Masters radio show:
http://www.moniker.com/domain-masters/ep-2006-01-25/page-1.jsp

Next is an interview with SexHerald, a site that may be NSFW (not safe for work):
http://www.sexherald.com/sex-industry-interviews/master_of_virtual_widgets-_andrew_conru_on_technology,_friendfinder_empire_and_perfecting_fords_assembly_line.html

While some of the other interviews covered starting and running a business, this one is specific to operating a site in the world of online dating or personals:
http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/04/online_personal_1.html

And finally, this is the article from Business 2.0 magazine that first introduced Conru to a mainstream business audience:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403370/index.htm?postversion=2007033011