A year ago, Markus Frind had no intention of ever selling his wildly successful Vancouver-based online dating service PlentyOfFish.

Working at anything else would be "like watching grass grow," he said.

But dating service conglomerate The Match Group clearly made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

The New York firm announced Tuesday it will pay Frind US$575 million for the company he launched from his Vancouver apartment in 2003.

That's $732 million in Canadian dollars — a copious quantity of money for anyone, especially someone who grew up in Hudson's Hope in northeastern B.C. on a farm without running water.

"I remember when we boiled snow for a few months because there was no running water," Frind said in an interview after the sale to Match Group was announced. "You get really resourceful when you grow up on a farm because if anything breaks, you have to fix it and make it work. I guess you learn about tenacity and resourcefulness."

Frind, 37, who was born in Germany, moved to Hudson's Hope with his parents when he was five and stayed there until he completed high school. He graduated from BCIT with a diploma in computer systems technology in 1999 before taking a number of tech industry jobs.

Frind created the free PlentyOfFish dating website in 2003 to improve his website-building tool skills and the demand for such an accessible matchmaking site generated growth beyond his wildest dreams.

PlentyOfFish has attracted more than 100 million registered users and gets more than 11 billion page views a month. It employs about 75 people at its downtown Vancouver head office.

"It's the biggest free site out there so you just have tons and tons of people who sign up and actively use it every day because it works," Frind said. "We just got very good at making it work. At the end of the day, that's what drives online dating apps and websites. It's just a very efficient way to meet people."

The sale to Match Group is expected to close early in the fourth quarter this year, subject to federal government approval.

Frind said PlentyOfFish has been a potential takeover target for more than a decade and feels his changing circumstances finally made him say yes to a buyer. He and his wife Annie — who met through work and not online — have a 10-month-old daughter, Ava.

"When you start having kids, you start measuring time in different ways," Frind said. "Before, it would just be about milestones of the company. Now it's 'She crawled this week' or 'She got her first tooth.' "

He noted the market is always changing and feels he's not learning enough new things in his current situation.

"I can't point to any one individual thing and say that's why (I decided to sell)," Frind said. "It was just more of a collective thing that maybe now is the right time."

He said it wasn't an overly difficult decision to sell to The Match Group, which also operates dating websites Match.com, OkCupid, Tinder, Meetic and OurTime.

"Of all the people that we could possibly sell to, they're the ones who understand dating and who have all the expertise," Frind said. "I feel fairly confident that this company will be successful for years and decades to come."

Frind will remain with PlentyOfFish for a certain period of time that he couldn't disclose. He also plans to get involved in other businesses, as he recently bought a major stake in online furniture retailer Cymax for $21 million.

"It's a business that is very easy to understand and it's also very large, with $190 million in revenues (expected) this year," he said. "I'll look at businesses that are later stage and can grow to multiples of where they currently are."

So would Frind ever consider starting up another company from scratch?

"I don't think so," he said. "Been there, done that."

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