A certain high-ranking official with close ties to the clandestine dating/social-networking industrial complex has forwarded me top secret footage of recently-release video of Eharmony’s CEO speaking with Marketwatch’s Bambi Francisco.
Bambi Francisco :Have subscriber Acquisition Costs (SAC) gone up for eHarmony?
Greg Waldorf: No.
Dave, talking to monitor: Greg, what’s up with the eye roll? Looks like the prompter was up in the ceiling.
BF: Match grew 22% to $80 million last quarter.
GW: eHarmony is growing at about the same rate as Match.
BF: Revenue growth for 2007?
GW: Next year’s revenue growth will be most likely due to subscriber base increase, not price increase. Emphasis mine.
Dave to monitor: Bambi, ask him how much of that $110 million is left in the bank.
BF asking her usual questions. How many subscribers?
GW: We don’t break out our individual subscriber counts. Many hundreds of thousands.
GW: 14 million signups since inception.
BF: What is average lifetime of a subscribe and how to you value your subscribers.
GW: We value them on trying to make them successful.
Dave: Nice dodge!
BW: applying pressure…
GW: Lifetime value of subscriber is well over $100. We don’t break out into months.
BF: What new services are coming next?
GW: Serious R&D. New services for married couples in wellness space.
Dave: Nothing about expansion plans that have been pinging around the blogosphere.
BF: Spark has 26 niche sites. Talks about the network’s demographics, pays homage of sorts.
GW: eHarmony relies on an algorithm.
Dave: Wishes he could have coached Greg on that one. That was a giant softball question he totally threw away.
BF: Average subscription price?
BF: I can tell you that 90 people get married every day on eHarmony.
Dave: !!!!!
What did we learn during this interview?
We don’t know how many subscribers eHarmony has. Could be 300-700k.
We don’t know much about what they are going to do to grow the business.
The CEO refuses to quote how much he charges for his service.
That drove me particularly nuts. How can you not have a price? I hear unsubstantiated reports that they are giving away free and multiple months to people so who really knows except the CFO what’s going on there?
Eharmony spent more than $60 million advertising in 2005. It raised $110 million in 2004. EHarmony projected 100,000 marriages on the site in 2005. Looks like the actual number was about 17,000 people.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
