Mail

Built to Scale

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your cover story on Markus Frind, the founder of Plenty of Fish ["And the Money Comes Rolling In," January/February]. After thinking about dozens of ways to apply the insights in this article to my industry, I had a deep appreciation for how extraordinarily difficult it would be to replicate what Frind has done. More than 19 billion page views per year and $10 million in revenue, mostly from Google's AdSense. Anyone who hopes to re-create Frind's success needs to think about how challenging it is to scale this type of advertising-based business.

Rathi Niyogi
CEO
CriticalTool
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Your recent article about Markus Frind was an absolute inspiration. Though it's obvious that he's a brilliant individual, his story is easier to relate to than the stories about the founders of companies like Google or Facebook, all of whom attended elite schools such as Harvard and Stanford. It made me realize that gumption is more important than where you live or where you went to school. Drive and dedication are what really matter. Thanks to your article, I'm working to realize my dream of launching my own site.

Nick LoFaso
President
Lifeyoumentary.com
Doylestown, Pennsylvania

With all the time and money that Markus Frind has on his hands, I found it very interesting that there was no mention of any charitable works he does for his community. Though I'm a widower with the responsibility of raising a child by myself, and though I currently run two companies, I still manage to find time to help out my community.

What, if anything, does Frind do to contribute to society? There's one thing that Frind is correct about, though. I have never met anyone like him.

David M. Gross
President and founder
MrMonarch
Cleveland

Compensation Conundrums

I read Joel Spolsky's article on employee compensation [How Hard Could It Be? January/February] and couldn't help laughing. I work for a large corporation, and our executives make the same mistakes when rewarding employees. Spolsky should have given his intern something more valuable than stock: his time. He could have started by taking his intern to lunch, not as an employee but as a fellow programmer. What separates Spolsky from his industrious intern is not intelligence but experience. If Spolsky had built a relationship with his intern, valued his input, and used him as a resource, he probably would have stayed.

Erik Giles
Chicago

Spolsky gave his former intern the greatest reward he possibly could have given an employee: public praise in a national magazine. I know I'd take that over money anytime.

Chris Galasso
Bellmawr, New Jersey

It's no surprise that an intern who built an advertising program that generated $1 million in revenue in its first two years was lured away by another company. That's why you give employees a long-term vesting equity stake in the business they're helping to build.

The optimal compensation scheme is one that pays just well enough to keep a valued employee from being lured away. Of course, when your company is a lousy place to work, that can get expensive. But if you make your company a nice place to work, compensation becomes more affordable across the board.

Eric Rachner
Seattle

Searching for Growth

Thank you for the prudent advice about outsourcing search-engine optimization [Ask Inc., January/February]. It's a shame that some SEO firms aren't above taking advantage of unknowledgeable customers with inflated fees. Fortunately, I'm beginning to see that more businesses are catching on to this and beginning to trust smaller, proven SEO firms, which often don't have the egos of larger providers.

My advice: Find someone local to help you with SEO. And, just as this article advised, choose a company that comes up first in a Google search of SEO firms in your area. It's what they're paid to do, after all.

Elizabeth Avery Merfeld
President
LizWelsh.com
Madison, Wisconsin

Inc. Comes to Turkey

In December, we joined forces with Maya Media to launch a Turkish edition of Inc. Below are a few translated letters from our Turkish readers.

I am very happy that Inc. is now published in Turkey. Turkey is full of privately owned, fast-growing companies -- the type of companies that have long been Inc.'s focus.

Ziya Boyacigiller
Founding partner
AirTies
Istanbul

Thanks for publishing the Turkish edition of Inc. when it is most needed. It's time for Turkish industry to take a leap. And I strongly believe that the stories covered by Inc. will be very helpful for the Turkish entrepreneur at this important time in our history.

Hasan Demirkiran
General manager
Technoinvent
Istanbul

All Turkish college students should be reading Inc., not just our entrepreneurs. It's a great look into the culture of business and management.

Professor Nilgün Sarp
President
KKTC/Girne Amerikan University
Istanbul

CORRECTIONs

In our March story about Marc Ecko ("It's Going to Be Big"), we misidentified the man pictured with Ecko and Sean Combs. The man on the left is Ron Burkle, Combs's business partner.

In "The Coolest College Start-ups," we misidentified the student who came up with the idea for Lingt Language, an MIT start-up. Co-founder Justin Cannon originally had the idea.

To submit a letter, write to mail@inc.com or Inc. Letters, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195. Letters may be edited for space and style. Submission constitutes permission to use. To alert us to an error, send an e-mail to corrections@inc.com.