Internet 'Cupid' is in the right place at the right time

It's also Cupid, his quiver of arrows and his devastating, knee-buckling, heartbeat-skipping aim.

Pleasant as he is, however, there's no chance of mistaking Bill Dobbie for Cupid.

For a start he's wearing typical businessman's work gear of shirt and smart trousers. He's behind his large, polished wood desk in a spacious office in Manor Place where on a shelf sits one book entitled Making it Big in Software and another Directors' Dilemmas.

He's friendly and he's likeable, but he certainly doesn't tote a bow or an arrow.

So how could he be Cupid?

A fairly ordinary 51-year-old, Bill is a Hearts supporter who's fiercely proud that his late uncle was striker George Dobbie, who passed away earlier this year aged 76, and Dave Mackay was his dad's best man.

He's a father-of-four, a St Andrews pure maths graduate who got a job with Burroughs in Cumbernauld in the 1970s making "business machines" - today they're known as computers - when the nerds who worked with them were a rare species indeed.

Yet today he's spreading the love the world over, in a manner that might well make him something of a modern day god of romance.

At his desk, in an office overshadowed by the Gothic spire of St Mary's Cathedral - where many nuptials have taken place - he is orchestrating the romantic encounters of lonely hearts around the world.

Of course, he'd cringe at the notion that as chief executive of the UK's first internet dating firm to hit the stock market - his firm EasyDate scored nearly 9 million when it opened its books to shareholders earlier this month - he's the new Cilla Black.

But there's no escaping that Bill and his worldwide web of internet dating sites that stretch from the New Town to Australia, Ukraine to Spain and onwards to a total of 11 countries around the world, is altering the way people meet their partners for good.

Alongside Ukrainian Max Polyakov, he sits at the helm of a five-year-old global internet dating firm with an 11.5m turnover.

Named last year as one of Deloitte Technology's Fast 50 - a list of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK - EasyDate attracts about 200,000 new fee-paying members a month, all of them seeking eternal happiness, love and, yes, quite often just a quick saucy fling through its myriad of websites.

Never mind Cupid with his arrow of romance, Bill's sights are set on matching EasyDate with a healthy chunk of a global internet dating market worth an estimated 1 billion.

"We wouldn't be maximising the company's capability if we didn't take it worldwide," he explains, "and we've had an international outlook from the beginning."

Boosted by the stock market cash injection, EasyDate is now preparing to do just that.

First up is the acquisition of an American firm that will increase the firm's presence there. Australia - where EasyDate already draws some 200,000 a month from customers without anyone from the company even setting foot there - is targeted for expansion, as is Brazil, China and almost everywhere else you might care to mention.

It's love on a worldwide scale.

Yet, on the surface, hitching couples in far-flung lands via websites with names like cupid.com, DatingForParents, LoopyDating, BeNaughty and ClickAndFlirt, sorting through likes, dislikes, the ones with a good sense of humour and the ones with no strings attached, doesn't quite match his ordinary, middle-of-the-road persona.

So who is the person that millions of us - five million people in Britain alone use internet dating sites - are turning to in search of love?

His early years were spent at Carrick Knowe Primary School, his dad William was a bookie and his mum Marilyn was anxious to give her family the best opportunities possible.

"We moved to Edinburgh when I was seven," he recalls. "My mum didn't want him carrying on the bookmaker's business. Glasgow was a new start."

The bookie's businesses on the Southside and at Roseburn were sold to pub tycoon Kenny Waugh.

At school in Glasgow, the young Bill stuck out not only for his east coast accent, but as the only Hearts supporter in the playground.

He must have inherited his dad's head for figures, going on to study maths at St Andrews University and then forging a career in the burgeoning computer industry at a time when a home PC would have involved building an extension the size of a football pitch just to house the main frame.

Sadly, he lost both his parents in quick succession to cancer about ten years ago, just as his career as one of Scotland's leading internet pioneers was taking off.

As he speaks, the sudden realisation that they never lived to see the successful business niche he's now carved wrongfoots him. His sharp business edge gives way to the raw emotion of grief.

What they missed was seeing him capture a portion of the newborn internet market, building up Teledata, a telephone information services company that he sold to Scottish Telecom, and Iomart, an internet web hosting firm he helped create with his brother-in-law Angus MacSween.

He left six years ago, but maintains interests there, and launched web-based DVD rental firm, dvds365.com. When that was sold to LoveFilm.com, it was time to seek out a new venture.

Ukrainian Max was already working in online dating and keen to head up his own firm.

It was - just like the businesses that they run today - a match made in internet heaven.

EasyDate's first site was launched in 2004 and today their business is behind some of the UK's top dating websites, with plans for many more.

Ask Bill, who lives with wife Leonie in the Capital's Saxe Coburg Place and is father to Emma, 18, William, 16, Euan, five and Kate, three, if he can now comfortably call himself a millionaire and his response is a guarded smile that speaks volumes.

As for the artwork on his office wall, it clearly reflects his ambition to carry on growing: there is a scene from Nice in the south of France, ancient maps of China, a charcoal image of Sydney, a Spanish bullring scene . . . countries which all figure in EasyDate's future.

"There's no physical business reason why we can't go anywhere in the world," adds Bill, "and it can all be done from Edinburgh."

If his plans come off, there's the potential for EasyDate to play cupid across the globe, evolving further into niche sites that will target specific social groups.

In fact, EasyDate's decision to move away from the one-size-fits-all approach of some websites that pitch pensioners alongside 25-year-olds and target specific social groups has been its unique selling point.

Eventually, he hopes EasyDate sites can take the couples they match through weddings, the challenges of children and beyond.

It sounds like a perfect happy ending, even if Bill agrees that embarking on it all was a bit like agreeing to a blind date a complete stranger.

"Originally there was this stigma towards internet dating. People thought it was for lonely people who didn't go out much," he says.

"That's completely gone now.

"If I was a young bloke today I'd be internet dating. I'd be going down the pub trying to meet girls and I'd be on the internet too, playing the field.

"It makes sense," he adds with a grin.