DateApp Turns Down $1,500,000!

I just turned down $1,500,000!

”Money is never a substitute for a solid plan, vision, and great team” says DateApp.com CEO, John-Micheal!

I just turned down $1,500,000. It’s a hard thing to stick to your guns, when looking for capital to scale a business up to the next level. Yet, rule #1 of raising capital, just as the investor is doing his due diligence in DateApp.com (www.DateApp.com) to investment, we are interviewing him as an investor. You can’t help but feel a little sick, looking someone in the eye and saying no thank you, I don’t want your million+ dollars.

We were propositioned by a NY investment group last week after giving a presentation to empower a dating portal for leading Men’s Magazine. The pitch was flawless. “We are DateApp.com. We provide webmasters with a social networking portal technology that allows them to create their own dating or relationship network, fully populated in minutes. Yes, webmaster’s make a large % on all credit cards for the life of the membership, but that’s not where our webmasters make the REAL money. We patented a new technology to data mine the lifestyles of all of the free members (the 96% of the cheap bastards that don’t pay), and give them a chance to pay using their personal information. Their membership is then sponsored by the advertiser that is looking for that individual. The end result is that 1) the consumer gets a FREE upgrade, 2) the advertiser gets their consumer information, 3) the webmaster gets up to 50% of the advertising fee that can as high as $60, everybody wins!”

Then we showed them www.Spanking-Ads.com a portal run on DateApp’s technology. Within a week without any advertising, the portal has ranked well in the search engines and is making sales. “Wow, a portal for those who want to be spanked?!”, one of the investors responded. “My response was simple, we run over 3,000+ portal, launching about 5-7 new portals daily, from Christian dating, NASCAR Friends, Military Dates, Prison Pen Pals, to Milf Personals, our technology can segment out any specific group from our shared member base. This allows the webmaster to create the perfect date portal and convert members of any specific niche traffic. As far as www.Spanking–Ads.com, I can tell you from experience, adult webmasters have one thing that non-adult webmasters lack, the ability to generate traffic above and beyond the of the non-adult webmaster. This is what will make our data mining efforts successful!

A smile crept across my face as the investor placed a term sheet (an agreement to purchase stock) for $1,500,000 on the table and took out his pen, unscrewed the cap ever so carefully, and placed it on top of the contract. The investor slowly spoke, “I like that you make money. Your team is solid. Your equipment is top of the line. I spoke to several of your webmasters and they love DateApp’s program, but I have an issue with the adult aspect of the business. If you agree to remove the adult content from your program, especially the member videos, we will invest!”

Lesson #2 in raising money, some of the best deals you ever will make are the ones you walk away from! At the end of the day, DateApp will continue to grow. Plus, I got a free meal and a day in New York. My vision for DateApp is to be the most profitable social and advertising network in the world for both us and our webmasters, though the money was tempting, it is never a substitute in knowing that you are on the right track.

For more information on DateApp’s webmaster program or investment opportunities, please visit www.DateApp.com or contact John-Michael at jcataldi@dateapp.com .

John Michael Cataldi, CEO
DateApp Inc.
Office USL 678-318-3696
London / UK: +44(0)7092 377813
ICQ: 175771465

DateApp, Inc. Family of Products:
www.DateApp.com:Content management solution for the personals industry.
www.LeadWurx.com:Lifestyle Advertising Engine.
www.LifePrepaid.com: Alternate payment solution for digital media. (Voted Top 40 Most Innovative Company 2005)

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