Their success was why we brought them to our monthly Chillin’ With event on August 15, where we connect about 20 or so people who love starting businesses. The venue was Martell’s The Ultimate Startup Space at Boon Tat Street.

Photo: Jamie Lee and Violet Lim (center) with guests.

The conversation was rather lively, and questions for our special guests flowed as freely as the alcohol that night. The dynamic duo shared about their experiences starting and running the businesses, and their rationale behind the decisions made. We distill some lessons we’ve learnt from them.

1) Being innovative results in more media attention

Copying someone else’s business model, as in the case with most Groupon clones, is a surefire way of earning big bucks as long as you execute it right. But coming up with something original is a good way to maximize your mileage with the media. In Violet and Jamie’s case, they sought to differentiate Lunch Actually by modernizing matchmaking.

So instead of having old foogies sign up, Lunch Actually’s clientele consists of single and successful professionals with money to spend. They branded and priced their company to attract professionals. When they started their business, a package costs in the hundreds, and prices have been marked up three times since.

They also had to deal with negative perceptions towards matchmaking, which was (and to a lesser extent today) commonly viewed as an activity for single, desperate, and unwanted folks. But the extra effort needed to educate the masses also meant one thing: More media attention.

The couple learnt this lesson early when they traveled to New York to attend a weekend matchmaking course, prior to starting Lunch Actually. Singapore tabloid The New Paper got wind of this, and wrote a two page spread documenting their journey. Later on, as they start their various dating services, they have received coverage from publications all around Asia.

2) Hiring a PR firm may be more worth your marketing dollar than buying ad space

When it comes to marketing, the couple tried everything. When they started Lunch Actually, they advertised on the train, on television, and in the newspaper. But according to them, it was their PR agency’s efforts that generated the most buzz.

Entrepreneurs have to constantly think about a media angle that would interest journalists, for instance putting out data they might be able to use. That is where a PR agency comes in, since it’s their job to woo the media for you. While they may not be able to promise a certain amount of coverage, since editors are prone to kill stories when there’s breaking news, a good publicist can secure you a number of interviews.

It’s also important to find a PR agency that believes in what you do. “We went to a meeting once and some of them didn’t take us seriously. We knew there was no point engaging them,” said Violet.

Shariff from TeeJunction asking Violet and Jamie a question

3) Writing a blog is worth the investment in time

Violet writes about dating and relationship advice on her blog, and she finds it well worth the time and effort. Once the company expanded, it’s harder to give the personal touch to their clients. While they used to hold consultations with clients, they now leave it to their staff  while they focus on the big picture.

Having the blog, therefore, is a good way to maintain that personal touch since it can reach out to thousands of readers. She gives plenty of practical advice on things like how to snag a great guy or how to manage one’s emotional baggage in a relationship. If possible, she tries to keep her posts timely. A good example would be her piece on 10 Love Lessons Learnt from General Election 2011.

In essence, she keeps her blog posts personal, sincere, and from the heart. There’s no point hardselling your products and services since readers expect very different things from blogs.

4) Matchmaking is more than just writing algorithms

There are two fundamentally different approach to matchmaking: Old-fashioned human connection versus new-fangled algorithms. While online dating websites tend to be dominated by the latter approach, Jamie and Violet believe in marrying both.

Violet remembers travelling to the US to attend an online dating conference. ”The language they spoke was totally different. All there talked about was ‘conversion’ and the best way to generate ‘conversion’.” At more traditional matchmaking meetups, they always talk about solving a client’s problems.

Their latest website, eSynchrony, demonstrates how both approaches can be harmonized as one. While the website uses a matching algorithm to pair potential partners, their calculations are actually based on the thousands of offline matchmaking they have done at Lunch Actually.

5) Making customers pay works for online dating services

While there are certainly free dating sites out there, Violet and Jamie believe getting customers to pay is actually the better business model. Unlike, say, a tech blog where pageviews are paramount, a dating website is all about customer experience and ensuring that a seeker does not encounter creeps or charlatans. Having a paywall ensures some quality control since it filters out users who are not serious about seeking a life partner.

At Lunch Actually, customers pay a premium for such a filtering process, since the matchmaking is entirely manual. This ensures that the potential partners are serious about relationships, which is something an algorithm can’t always predict.  Both Eteract and eSynchrony also have price points, although they are set at a lower level than Lunch Actually.

Click here to read a past interview with Violet.

Spanning Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Asia’s first and largest lunch dating agency, Lunch Actually has enabled love to blossom for many couples. Next Monday 15th August, we will be chillin’ with the founders of Lunch Actually, Jamie and Violet. This married couple (with two kids to boot) is a picture of matrimonial happiness. What is even more amazing is that they not only co-founded and run Lunch Actually together, but also Eteract, an online speed dating portal [Disclaimer: Eteract is a portfolio company of Bernard and Gwen.].

Come join us for drinks if you want to hear from Jamie and Violet regarding their entrepreneurial journey as well as more on one that they have taken together as a couple.

• Some quick thoughts from the crew who attended the Nokia Christmas event in Singapore and Paypal event in Malaysia respectively tonight, and some thoughts after BL caught a glimpse of the Nokia N900 powered by the Maemo (powered by Linux).
• The Emergence of JooJoo: After the huff and puff from Mike Arrington on the end of CrunchPad, Fusion Garage has fought back with a video press conference and launched JooJoo, the new netbook on the block.
• The iMatch Conference 2009: We discussed some of the companies which made the pitch on the event: 2C2P, TenCube, HomeCamera, AiNET (Lunch Actually and Eteract).
• MOL acquired Friendster: The biggest story of the week – Malaysia’s MOL Global (check out which games they distribute here) will buy US social-networking service provider Friendster Inc. We discuss the implications, the strategic directions of this acquisition and what’s the impact for the consumers for the Southeast Asia online gaming market.

Editor’s Note: Note that BL disclosed that he has invested in Eteract under Thymos Capital.

The co-founders of Lunch Actually needs no introduction as they are well-known in the offline dating space for matchmaking professionals and executives. While expanding Lunch Actually to Malaysia and Hong Kong, the founders of the team have now embarked on a venture that translates the dating business from offline to online and vice versa. Their new dating portal, Eteract allows singles to conveniently and instantly meet new friends by doing interactive and efficient online speed dating activities together to determine if there is chemistry and connection between them. So, we interview Violet about the story behind Eteract.

Hi Violet, thank you for accepting the interview. Tell us the story about Eteract and how it started.

Violet: Having been an offline lunch dating agency for a few years, we have always been on the trying out new concepts and looking out for interesting new ideas. We have also always been fascinated with the online dating model and keeping track of what was happening in the dating industry. We felt that online dating would have many synergies with our offline lunch dating model but for a long time, we were not content to start just another online dating site without a differentiating point from the existing sites out there. One afternoon, we simply had an eureka moment and wondered was it possible to bring the popular speed dating offline event and transform it to become an online platform instead. Hence the idea of Eteract started to take shape.

Eteract is a online dating site for singles. How does it distinguish itself from dating portals we have seen elsewhere?

Violet: Eteract has a blend of features and activities that most online dating sites lack. While most online dating sites focus on just sending out messages and winks, we allow singles to do activities together to increase the amount of interaction they have with one another and meet someone immediately in real time. For example, singles can do online video speed dating and join a group chat. Besides just uploading photos, we allow them to use members to avatars to represent themselves during the speed dating sessions and groups chat and send each other virtual gifts to break the ice between them.

How does Eteract help to translate dating for singles from offline to online?

Violet: We allow them to take part in the above mentioned online activities which allows them to meet new people immediately rather than simply sending out 30 messages and hopefully getting replies in 5 of those. We also structured the site to be more of a social networking based theme in which you add friends, join clubs, get updates on what your friends which makes it an easier premise to meet new people rather than just adding a person to your favorite list of people to communicate with in the hope of starting a relationship which is what most online dating sites do.

What are the three most interesting features of Eteract?

Violet: They are:

• Online Speed Dating –Singles can speed date with each other via video, or via chat using their avatar for 3 minutes. After each “date”, there is a simple yes or no to know if there is mutual interest to explore further. Due to its accessibility and convenience, a person can go for multiple dates every night without needing to leave his house.
• Group Chat – We have revamped the popular old school IRC. In our chat room, singles meet in a place e.g. Raffles Place, Times Square, Magic Forest etc. and they are represented by their avatars. When they ‘speak’, their words appear in speech bubbles. And can also send each other e-gifts, that would appear right next to the recipient’s avatar.
• Clubs – Users can also join clubs which they are interested in e.g. Travelling Club, Dating Club etc. These users managed clubs organize numerous offline events and this is where the users can get to know each other in an offline setting.

One of the main challenges for dating sites is the issue of authenticity, particularly the danger where a user does not know who he or she is talking to. How does Eteract assure that people are not using fake identities to date?

Violet: In Singapore, we are accredited by the government which means we do marital status checks, NRIC verifications to ensure that this person did not lie about his age and is a real person as well.

For all the countries, we will conduct regular checks on the members that create an account so we can remove the people that have set up a dubious profile or photo.

We also allow the our members to report abuse to us which we will then investigate and if necessary send warnings or ban the account. With all these checks, people who have bad intentions will have a harder time on our site due to these screenings and checks.

Looking at other successful dating sites out there such as Match.com and eHarmony, which monetization strategies for these portals you think are particular successful?

Violet: These are currently the 2 most successfully monetized dating sites in the world and they rely on the humble “Pay to communicate” subscription model. There has been a lot of talk on how this subscription model is out-dated and how free dating sites are getting more market share and eventually will take over the world. Being in the dating service for 5 years and running both an online and offline dating service, we know that this is simply not true.

It is true that the free dating sites will definitely get more traffic and even grow faster in their database sizes, however these sites will also inherit a lot of problems as well, especially from many frivolous people who just want to try it out for fun and have nothing to lose. A paid subscription sites sends a signal to the public that its members are willing to invest money to communicate. This gives the perception that these members are more serious and sincerely looking for a relationship which is the subtle end goal of most people who join an online dating service in the first place.

Is it better to have 10 million users who are simply creating profiles for fun, are not active i.e. they do not bother to reply to messages or deal with countless of messages that are spammed out OR is it better to have 1 million members that are serious about finding someone while also having less worry about being spammed from the non-serious members? For a dating service, the latter is better.

At the end of the day for a dating service to be successful, it is not just about having the biggest database and enjoying a lot of traffic but we feel that it is more important to have have the best quality database can be monetized. Match.com with its “shrinking” market share has been growing its revenues year by year and which now stands at US$420 million. Plenty of Fish which is one of the biggest free dating sites, in comparison earns US$10 million from Google Adsense. And ironically most of the adverts on the site link to the very paid dating sites it is purported to be replacing.

What are the future features you like to implement on Eteract?

Violet: We have just moved out of development stage and our key challenge now is to build the critical mass for our database for the concept of online activities to be successful. Our concept requires a lot of people to be online at the same time for them to do activities with each other which is a challenge especially during certain times of the day when most people are at work. Hence we are looking at projects and developments that can address this challenge.

What do you see as the three most important attributes for an entrepreneur?

Violet: These are the three important attributes in our opinion, and we are striving to apply these in our own entrepreneurial journey.

(1) An entrepreneur must have drive and passion to succeed. From this drive arises his/her willingness to put in the necessary hours, find solutions faster and learn from necessary people to ensure his business achieves the kind of success it deserves.

(2) An entrepreneur must be willing to take intelligent risks. Many businesses get stalled in this as they are so against risk taking or incurring new costs so as to maintain that security blanket against failure. While many of them may not fail, many also do not get much tractions and leverage to grow much as well. However taking risks have to tempered with sound judgment to know which risks have a higher chances of success versus which risk is simple fallacy. It is however difficult to differentiate these risks and sometimes you just have to learn from failure and mistakes. It is just part of the journey.

(3) An entrepreneur must be able to nurture talent. No person can afford to be an island and seriously expect to succeed in today’s world. All the top entrepreneur formed powerful teams around them to reach where they are. An entrepreneur must learn how to manage, motivate and inspire their team to do their best.

Given the current financial climate, what advice do you give to budding entrepreneurs out there?

Violet: In the most “interesting” of times lies the opportunities that may be lacking in the “good” times. Many successful startups are actually founded during economic downturns. Get creative, and try to see things from perspective that people do not see. And of course, do not give up. If you first entrepreneurial idea falls flat, keep searching and keep looking. Many successful entrepreneurs succeed not because they are the smartest but because they are the most tenacious.

Profile of Founders from Eteract and Lunch Actually:

Violet Lim is the co-founder of Lunch Actually, a premier modern dating company which organizes discreet, personal and confidential Lunch Dates for busy executives. The company currently operates out of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. She is also the co-founder of Eteract.com, Asia’s first online speed dating portal. Violet is the first Asian to be certified by Matchmaking Institute, New York and is also the Charter President of the Association of Dating Agencies and Matchmakers (Singapore). Violet also keeps a personal blog at www.violetlim.com where she shares her musings on love, dating and matchmaking.

Jamie Lee is the co-founder of Lunch Actually & Eteract.com. He is very passionate about the dating industry and is always on the lookout for new systems and methodologies to improve on the businesses so that he can bring even greater value to the singles out there. His brainchild “Soulseek” has catapulted the operations of Lunch Actually from 30 matches to 300 matches a month. When not busy with his businesses, Jamie loves playing board games and strategy games.

Zam Ong is the co-founder of Eteract.com. He is IT trained and has had many years of experiences working in various MNCs. He is the person we report all our bugs to, and he is constantly working on the site to improve the features as well as enhance our users’ experience. When he’s not on his desk banging away at the keyboard, Zam is passionate about windsurfing, cycling and wakeboarding.

Related Review:
Grey Review, A Walled Garden for Singles-Only Named Eteract.

Editor’s Note: BL and Gwen has invested in Eteract via Thymos Capital LLP.

Photo courtesy of mozzercork.

With the mood of love surrounding Valentine’s Day, here at SGEntrepreneurs, we’ve prepared a special series of articles, reviews and interviews on The Business Of Love in Singapore. We’ll be taking a look at the dating industry landscape in Singapore, dating agencies and companies, and also hear from the entrepreneurs behind those companies whose main business is love.

Bookmark this page to view fresh posts in this series and maybe even find a service you can use to get a date on Valentine’s day. Let’s start making some love.

Kudos to the E27 team, the Unconference Singapore 2008 held in Matrix, Biopolis had been a fantastic and well-organized event. It had an overwhelming turnout, hitting between 200-250 people. From a surprising excellent keynote from Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft) to the enthusiastic pitches from many start-ups in the event, it was a gathering of many enthusiastic minds for a growing and emerging Internet industry.

Of course, the event started with registration till lunch. There was an exhibition area where Microsoft had a booth allowing the audience to try out their latest Xbox craze, Guitar Hero II. Other than that, we have the founders from several start-ups, for example, Homespace, ZopIM, Eteract, Widgeous, Phlook, GoThere, Podfire, Hibernater, Yum.sg, PatSnap and many others featured here. Surely with the good food and drinks, we mingled around the area to watch demos from the entrepreneurs about what they have worked on for the past few months.

Following on, the event started with a keynote by Daniel Ingitaraj, (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft Singapore) entitled ““Innovation: Persevere or Perish”. In the talk, Daniel went from a slow start in defining two important ideas from Ted Levitt’s “Marketing Myopia” article from Harvard Business Review and Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” about disruptive technologies and talked about how technology has evolved from the past to present. He went to discuss the three major trends that is to come: (i) user experience, (ii) collaboration and (iii) cloud computing. The talk ended with some interesting demos (likely we will get a video soon). After that, the keynote was followed by the start-ups pitching about their products and demos.

Once that ends, the event is followed by the six major breakout sessions split between 2 hours: (i) Enterprise 2.0, (ii) What’s so difficult about valuing and investing in Internet Companies? (iii) Mobile Platforms, (iv) Social Media in Asia Pacific, (v) Web2.0/Mobile Startups in Eastern Europe/Africa/East Asia, and (vi) Interoperability for Startups.

The event has drawn a lot of people together, bring back old friends and new ones to the grassroots movement. Sometime back, Preetam (a well-known web evangelist in Asia) and BL (our editor in SG Entrepreneurs) have expressed a worry that they have been meeting the same people over different events in Singapore. Since the eBay.dev.shack till this event, we are heartened to realize that we are now meeting new and enthusiastic people from all walks of life who come and share their ideas and thoughts on the industry. Of course, we do have interesting photos to share with you for this event. :)

Related Links

• 1. Mohd Hisham, e27 Unconference LIVE Update using Plurk and e27 Unconference Summary.
• 2. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008.
• 3. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008 – More Start-Up Pitches.
• 4. Young UpStarts, Singapore Startups at the e27 Unconference Singapore 2008 and Photos from the event as well.
• 5. Claudia, E27 Unconference Singapore.
• 6. The Armchair Theorist, The E27 Unconference was Definitely Unboring.
• 7. BL, The IVF Drip – Realities about Raising Capital for Tech Companies in Singapore on the breakout session he conducted for the Unconference 2008.

Photo 1: Unconference Singapore 2008 Exhibition Area.

Photo 2: Peter Du and Michael Cheng at the Podfire booth.

Photo 3: Ridzuan evangelizing about the Widgeous platform at his booth.

Photo 4: Royston pitching Zopim to interesting enthusiasts.

Photo 5: Talk by Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft).