Read this excellent post by James Hong, co-founder of the nearly seven year-old startup HotorNot. He talks about the history of the startup, and touches on where it might be going in the future.

A lot of this I wrote about last month after interviewing Hong, but there’s lot of additional information that people will find fascinating. The company never raised venture capital, and was throwing off a significiant amount of cash early on. As free dating competitors emerged, however, the popularity of the site declined. They responded by going free as well (killing a $500,000/month revenue stream), and traffic has doubled to around 20 million daily page views.

HotorNot is now looking more like a traditional startup – they’ve converted to a C corporation and are giving stock options to employees. That suggests a sale or venture financing might be coming up in the near future. Of course, the amount of fun that Hong and cofounder Jim Young are having.

My favorite stat about HotorNot: Up to ten marriages per day can be tracked to couples who originally met at the site.