Richard Martell is a 21 year old from the UK who recently made headlines earlier this year with his website TheFitFinder. We recently managed to grab a quick interview with him to discuss the site, the reaction to it all and the future for the site.

1. First up Rich, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m a 3rd year computer scientist at UCL and probably best well known for creating FitFinder.

2. What is ‘The Fit Finder’?

FitFinder is a location based micro blogging site officially, but it is essentially a website that allows you to post when you see someone attractive in the area that you are in and also let others know about it.

3. How did you come up with the idea for it?

I started FitFinder in my final year at university. It came about when I was revising in the library. My friends and I always text each other around before finding somewhere to sit so we could find where the hot girls were working in the library. One night I was a bit bored of revision so decided to build this website that my friends could post on, thats what FitFinder was meant to be. When it was launched at 9am on a Friday morning I told one person about it. I came back later that day to find 18 out of 20 of the people on computers on the floor I was working in the library were on FitFinder. I checked the statistics later that day and saw over 2000 people had been on the site. Other universities got in touch in the coming weeks that wanted FitFinder and I did my best to get them up.

4. You received a lot of attention from various media outlets around the world – What was your reaction to the huge response to the site?

The media response took me by surprise to be honest. I thought that it might appear in some student magazines but when the Guardian called and said they wanted to do an interview for their website I knew this was getting quite serious. I found myself having to step out of the library whilst ‘revising’ to chat on the phone to journalists, advertisers and potential investors. It then spiralled and peaked when The Times featured it 3 days running and then being invited to talk about it on Sky News one evening.

5. Your university (UCL) threatened to prevent you from graduating because of the site – How did this all come about and what happened in the end?

The dean at UCL called me into her office to discuss the site a week or so after it started. They wanted assurances about the content and I explained the methods I had been using to keep some sort of regulation on the site. They asked me to take the site down and I refused to do so as it was not hosted on UCL servers and they had no jurisdiction over it. When the press started reporting it however, the university started to feel more pressured into doing something as I was linked to UCL and they believed I was bringing the university into disrepute. They then slapped the largest fine they can on a student (£300) and threatened disciplinary action (which could have lead to expulsion). I decided to take the site down as I only had a few more weeks until my exams were done and I didn’t want them to take my degree away at the last hurdle.

6. What’s next for ‘The Fit Finder’? Future goals for the site?

As I have said I am wanting to bring FitFinder back for the new academic year and develop the site properly once I have graduated. We hope to make the new site more accessible and also introduce some new features which all look very cool in the initial stages. I can’t go into too much detail but all will be revealed soon when we launch!

7. What tips would you give to other student entrepreneurs?

I would recommend any budding entrepreneurs out their to find a good mentor. I was fortunate to meet some great people as a result of FitFinder including the creator of Bebo, a Dragon from ‘Dragons Den’ and a Secret Millionaire. The advice you can get from these sort of people is excellent. I would also say that once you have a good idea you should work hard to turn it into a reality. There were several weeks of 3 hours sleep a night when FitFinder kicked off and being an entrepreneur is about having the drive to get something off the ground with pure enthusiasm and often without a large budget.

Thanks to Richard for the interview. Be sure to check out TheFitFinder when it relaunches.