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Tooke's Take: Love
at the speed of light By Wes Tooke '98 (email: cwtooke@princeton.edu) A friend of mine recently passed along the business plan for his new Internet venture, and as a public service I'm including his material in my column. Anyone interested in investing in his company should send checks to the PAW, care of Wes Tooke. I'll make sure he gets them. IvyLove.com Confidential Business Plan INTRODUCTION Is there anything worse than discovering in the middle of a date that the person across the table from you went to a public college? Or, worse yet, majored in Math Without Numbers at Brown? We don't think so. Other services, such as The Right Stuff, try to match the graduates of America's elite collages. But IvyLove.com goes a step further and utilizes the power of the Internet to save it's customers the most valuable resource of all: TIME! Because love shouldn't have to wait until after your second IPO. THE MARKET OPPORTUNITY IvyLove.com will be the first mover in the expanding market of elite dating services. Our members don't have time to go to movies, play mini golf, or wade through bars. And they don't have the patience to deal with people who think a p/e ratio is a way of ranking shortstops. Picture yourself, for example, back at Princeton in the Ivy Club. You knew that everyone who made it past security would be 1) wearing black pants, and 2) have the sort of genes and education you require in a potential partner. Now picture yourself in the typical bar. Nobody has prescreened anyone for you--in fact, you actually have to go out and talk to these people yourself. How much would you pay to avoid those awkward and tedious conversations? THE IVYLOVE.COM SOLUTION IvyLove.com will be the market leader in helping individuals avoid those regrettable dating mistakes. We match qualified graduates from Ivy League universities (no, that does not include Penn.) Furthermore, we take into account the kind of essential criteria that our competitors often neglect. For example, a female graduate from the Cottage Club would only be matched with someone of the appropriate social pedigree--perhaps a Harvard lacrosse player and analyst at Goldman Sachs. But IvyLove.com will go beyond those typical matchmaking services and offer a wide variety of options to the social and financial elite. Our packages include: The CEO Package Life (Male) Our candidate fills out a form. Based on his personal information, we provide him with a wife (pretty and smart, but not quite as smart as him), a house on Cape Cod, two perfectly formed children, and a $250,000 shopping spree at L.L. Bean. The Woman-On-The-Go For highly successful women without a moment to spare--but plenty of guilt. We provide a handsome and intelligent doctor who spends his spare time in Africa providing free medical care to children. We take care of all the details from the bridesmaid dresses to the honeymoon. Husband comes with a guaranteed shoulder to cry on--good for 1,000,000 miles or three midlife crises. The Trust Funder The full package. A person who is willing to be there when you snort the coke, have the breakdown, marry in Vegas, start the garage band, and become a fugitive from the long arm of the Cancun Police Force. He/she has also been trained on finding the worst possible moment to run away with half your remaining dough. Beach house and crappy novel not included. GROWTH PLAN We see high growth so long as Ivy League schools continue to pump out focused and successful individuals and Alan Greenspan remains at the Fed. The Company projects sales of $60 million and net income of approximately $35 million by 2002. After all, dating people from different backgrounds is an outdated model--97 percent of Williams College graduates marry other Williams College graduates. Or cows. The 21st century requires a more logical system, and IvyLove.com will be the market leader. Please don't leave the most important decision of your nonprofessional life to chance. Don't fall in love--fall in IvyLove. Wes Tooke '98 hails from Boston and is a regular contributor to PAW's Web site. |
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