Part 8

The French Pound the Final Nail into our Coffin

In September of 1996, Josh and I both returned from overseas and started our full-time jobs. We'd originally thought we could try to develop the business in our spare time, but as the months passed, it became clear that it just wasn't going to happen. I was kept very busy doing the initial groundwork for an exciting new research project in telemedicine, and Josh was one of the first 6 employees at a promising medical electronics startup. The two of us just didn't have enough spare time to develop the business. And, for better or for worse, we weren't willing to give up our regular salaries and take a gamble on developing our business full-time.

As the 1996-1997 school year was winding to a close, we still hadn't done a whole lot of work on trying to get Scholastic Matchmakers back on its feet. We started asking ourselves: should we give up the business entirely, or make a big push to have our retooled operations ready for Fall of 1997? At the time, the business was completely dormant, except for the $30 per month that WebCom was slowly draining out of our bank account for running our web page at "www.amour.com". The page was getting a dozen or so hits a week from random visitors who liked our name.

Then, one day, I got the following mail:

Josh and I spent quite a while debating whether or not we should actually sell our domain name. It did mean selling a brand name of sorts, but it also felt much more important than that. We felt like a decision to sell our domain would also be a final decision to give up Scholastic Matchmakers forever.

The debate ended when Marc offered us 5 figures. It's not a lot of money on the scale of stock options from a successful Internet startup, or even on the scale of current domain name sales, but it was enough that we couldn't turn it down. In November of 1997, we went through a somewhat complex procedure to transfer the domain to him, and the Scholastic Matchmakers incarnation of amour.com officially ceased to exist.

As of May 1999, the new amour.com doesn't have any content on it yet, other than a placeholder that says (in French) "In this place will be the number one French dating service," or something. But, don't worry, I'm sure it'll be turned into a pornography site someday. (I'm just waiting for a lawsuit from a high school kid's mom whose child was looking for our company and stumbled across "XXX FRENCH MAID SLUT BIMBOS" instead.)

After Marc's money came, Josh and I liquidated the bank account and split it down the middle. We canceled our WebCom service, took our web page off the net, and disconnected our 1-800 numbers.

And, thus, the Scholastic Matchmakers saga drew to a close.

Next: Epilogue

Back to the Scholastic Matchmakers Page
Back to my Writings Page
Back to my Home Page