Secret Crushes Connect on the Internet

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Thanks to the ever-entrepreneurial Internet generation, an efficient, humiliation-free, high-tech approach to finding romance is now available. ECrush.com, which launched on Valentine's Day 1999, lets visitors post notice of their crushes anonymously. Geared toward the sensitive, web-savvy love seeker, the free site then sends an e-mail notice to the object of your affections saying that an unidentified person has a crush. The crushee then visits the site, and if she or he enters your name in return, a "match" is made and you may proceed in your courtship with a modicum of confidence.

ECrush.com had a tremendous start for a new website in a crowded market. Co-founders Clark Benson and Karen DeMars boast 400,000 users and say they have facilitated 80,000 matches. Every day, more than 2,000 new people sign up for the service and 400 people with crushes are electronically notified of potential amour. Advertising revenues are putting the site in the black.

Benson and DeMars are as startled as anyone by the success of their Internet venture. But like any idea that works, ECrush, they say, was born out of a need and a desire. "Clark got shut down a lot," jokes DeMars, who has known her business partner, a 31-year-old blond with all-American looks, since high school in Chicago.

"I'm an entrepreneur," responds Benson, unflustered. "I started three other businesses in the music industry and was looking for something Internet-oriented when I had a particularly gruesome dating experience. Someone I thought was really interested in me turned out to have no interest in me at all. I thought, 'This is so annoying. You never know what the other side is thinking.' And then it just sort of hit me: We could make this work on the Internet." Worked it has. Benson invested $100,000 of his own money, and less than a year later has succeeded in raising half a million in investor capital.

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