Plenty of Fish is one of the worst offenders of what the OP is calling business porn. They've been pushing the "overnight success with zero effort" story for a long time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?pagew...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html?pagew...
At no time did I conclude that his project was either "overnight success" or "zero effort".
But I can understand the point of just one guy: A founder really should understand his business. So, that takes him into all the relevant topics in computing and outside. That's a lot of topics.
My main points about Plenty of Fish were just as I explained, and I never claimed either "overnight success" or "zero effort".
A few choice quotes from the first few paragraphs:
He developed software for his online dating site, Plenty of Fish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, leaving Mr. Frind plenty of free time. On average, he puts in about a 10-hour workweek.
Mr. Frind built the Plenty of Fish Web site in 2003 as nothing more than an exercise to help teach himself a new programming language, ASP.NET.
No mention of long hours promoting, begging users to sign up, tracking down weird bugs, or all the actual work that goes into building a business. Just a quick rundown of how easy it is to whip up a shitty website and become a millionaire overnight.
Now that you mention the claim of a 10 hour work week, I believe I did read that, but I didn't remember it or pay much attention to it because it sounded to me like just media fluff to 'tell a good story'.
Media fluff aside, there's no doubt that PoF is a good example of what was for a long time just one guy, two old Dell servers, and some nice revenue. So, such a thing, not the 10 hour claim, is possible. That's all I wanted from the PoF example.