Two Ex-Morgan Stanley traders start an online dating agency
Maxime Leufroy-Murat and Alexandre Errera escaped the trading floor to set up an innovative online dating agency to hep busy professionals outsource their online dating life.
How I can help Escape the City members
It's never too late to make a change.
1) What are you currently doing with your life?
We are developing our business that we launched last month. We are taking care of all aspects from marketing to management. We have hired Dating Agents in London and we also have writers in the UK and the US. We aim to have a global customer base.
We wake up every day around 8am, a nice three hours more sleep than a few months ago. We start looking at our emails. We search the web for news concerning the online dating indutry. We try to participate actively in forums and on social media tools to create an online presence. We then start contacting journalists interested in online dating around the world to get some press. We work alongside our Dating Agents to take care of the dating lives of our clients. We help them write the profiles and craft the right messages to guarantee dates to our clients.
We go to Canary Wharf or the City to talk about our business to potential clients.
2) What did you do before this?
Maxime: Cash equity trader, focus on TMT. From 02/08 to 06/11.
Alexandre: Distressed Debt analyst. From 06/08 to 06/11.
At the beginnning, it was a great experience, we learnt every day. Then, it started to become just a job like any other.
3) What was your moment of truth?
The moment when our respective bosses asked us "Are you really quitting to start a dating agency?" We knew there was no step back.
4) How did you plan for it?
We self-funded the business. We tried to start it while still at work before the summer but we realised that if we wanted to accomplish anything, we would have to resign and focus all our time on it.
5) What have been the best and worst things about making this happen?
Worst: Our web designers were incompetent and we had to terminate the relationship before our website was completed to find a new designer through Odesk. Obvioulsy, this happened exactly when we were supposed to launch.
Best: Our first client. Press responded very positively to our business. Many magazines and newspapers were interested and decided to write about it.
6) What was the best advice you have received
If you don't do it now, you won't do it tomorrow, you will always regret it.
7) What resources or information have you found really helpful?
Only your instincts.
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