SDForum Start-up SIG: HOTorNOT Co-Founder, James Hong January 15, 2007

James Hong is best known as the cofounder of the website HOTorNOT.com, where real people submit their photo for others to rate on a scale of 1 to 10. It's the largest paid dating site focusing on the 25 and under demographic. He also cofounded SaveMyAss.com (a flower delivery service), 10over100.org, an initiative to increase charitable giving, and VOTEorNOT, where he and Jim Young, the other HOTorNOT co-founder, contributed $200K in prize money to encourage people to vote.

HOTorNOT has never raised angel or venture funding, and has been extremely successful. It's currently serving 10-20 million dynamically generated pageviews daily, with only 6 full-time employees. Besides technical achievement, James and Jim are marketing and PR experts, having been named to Entertainment Weekly's 2001 "It List". The company has been mentioned in the New York Times, New Yorker magazine, People magazine, and many other leading media.

James advises or has invested in a number of leading start-ups, including Odeo, Bit Torrent, Slide and SimplyHired. James was also co-founder of RedLadder, Dealspring, and XMethods. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he earned a BS Electrical Engineering degree and an MBA.

More on James:
Personal site: http://jhong.org/
Blog: http://james.hotornot.com
HOTorNOT page: http://www.hotornot.com/r/?emid=OMAYS

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