Scotland’s King of Hearts talks about love and the internet

When Bill Dobbie took to the dating game, his family thought it hilarious. Now it’s a multi-million pound internet sensation. Our reporter asked him about his ideal match

SOCIABLE Maths graduate, 52, WLTM software designer with a GSH to create highly successful Scottish business. The GSH (good sense of humour for those not au fait with the lingo of personal ads) is particularly important – especially for chief executive Bill Dobbie, whose impressive £25.4 million turnover for the first six months of this year is the result of serious boardrooms discussions about companies with names such as “benaughty.com” and on whether niche dating sites for “cougars” – older women looking to meet younger men – are commercially viable.

“My family thinks what I have ended up doing is hilarious,” says Dobbie, who, after leaving the University of St Andrews in 1981, progressed through a career in the rapidly expanding world of computer software, before finding his perfect match and teaming up with Ukrainian business partner Max Polyakov to set up dating website Cupid.com six years ago.

Now the company has become one of the fastest growing Scottish success stories. It receives “meaningful revenue” from 12 countries – but its services are available in a further 39 regions.

Married with four children – two of them are now grown-up and the other two are just four and six years old – Dobbie has never used a dating site himself. “These things just didn’t exist,” he laughs – thinking back to the time when he met his wife, Leonie.

“You met people who were in your local social circle and went out with them.

“That is what is most incredible about this, with it being so easy to travel these days, people can meet people in another town – or even jump on a cheap flight to go and see someone they have met online.”

He pauses. “It must be quite exciting for them.”

The popularity of online dating is rising. This year, for the first time, it was featured in the Office for National Statistics’s list of goods to calculate inflation – putting it in the ranks of products which are deemed to be a vital component of the nation’s shopping basket.

And Cupid.com has demonstrated the power of love by tripling in size – in terms of sales – in the first half of this year. The site has more than 12 million “active users “ – people who have logged in within the past six months – and boasted 460,000 paying subscribers during the month of June, up from 324,000 in December last year.

Dobbie, who was born in Edinburgh, but moved to Glasgow to attend Hyndland Secondary School, now lives back in the east. Having spent a stint in Australia, where he worked for technology firm Unisys, he returned to Scotland in the early 1990s to work on various projects with his brother-in-law, Angus MacSween, with whom he set up web hosting giant Iomart.

But his time at Cupid.com has, arguably, been his most eventful.

The company changed its name from easyDate last year, following a tense legal wrangle with easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The business giant accused Dobbie’s company of taking advantage of the easyDate brand “to obtain an undeserved commercial advantage”. Although the firm fought it for some time, last December it quietly capitulated.

While Dobbie insists he is a businessman, with a focus on the nuts and bolts of the business, rather than the personal side of things, his firm has been fairly targeted in its expansion.Cupid’s network of sites caters for all tastes – from datingforparents.com to maturedating.com and girlsdatefree.com – which, like only the best nightclubs, allows women to join free of charge and rakes in money from the men keen to buy themselves the pick of the female population.

Although some people have, apparently, found true love at benaughty.com, the site caters mainly for a more…transient…customer, claiming to be “unmatched” in its ability to “search for singles, couples or men and women who match your personal tastes”.

“I am finding out that there are people with a wide variation of tastes out there,” says Dobbie, with his tongue firmly in his cheek. “Some really eclectic tastes. I think the most eclectic and cheeky has definitely been seen on benaughty.com.”

At Indiandating.com, the site caters predominantly – but not exclusively – for, as it says on the tin, people of Indian heritage looking for love within the community. Others, such as newly acquired German site Zuckerjungs.com, (translation, “sugar boys”) are aimed at mature women looking for a younger man and vice versa.

Written in German, the website’s tagline reads: “Zuckerjungs, the partner site for women who know what they want!”

“I think this cougar idea is one which we could definitely roll out to other countries,” says Dobbie, enthusiastically. “It is an area which seems to be on the rise: you see it in women’s magazines all the time.”

He suddenly turns coy. “But why do I think that is? Perhaps women finding themselves? I don’t know.”

The idea for the site was born after Dobbie sold his compact disc rental business, DVD 365, to market leader LoveFilm. “I basically was left with an internet business infrastructure, but just without a load of DVDs,” he remembers.

Then Polyakov, with whom he had worked to design the website for his previous business, contacted him with an idea.

“He told me he’d been asked by a lot of people all around the world to create websites for online dating businesses,” says Dobbie.

“It was quite a similar demographic to the DVD business in that it could cater to almost everyone – with a breadth of tastes.”

Dobbie, despite insisting he is a “sociable” kind of businessman, prefers to keep the nitty-gritty of the company at arm’s length.

“I don’t really involve myself personally in what is happening on the site,” he says.

“However, we do have a lot of success stories and our customer service department deal with people all the time – they have some great stories.”

But Dobbie adds: “The problem with success stories is that we never hear from them again – most of them just go off and get on with being successful.”

Although dedicating most of his time to Cupid, Dobbie is also non-executive director of Maxymiser – a provider of online marketing software and services – mobile games firm Tag-Games and group buying website Voucherbag.

“That is more what I used to do – more related to my background,” he explains.

His day job remains a source of ridicule in his family – although he is certain that some day, they will find it useful.

“My children just scoff at it,” he says. But he is certain his eldest son and daughter – currently students aged 18 and 20 – will change their minds. “Now, they think they wouldn’t be involved, but I think once you hit 24 or so, your perspective changes,” he muses. “I think there’s no doubt they’ll see things differently and be using the sites then.