WHAT does a billionaire technopreneur do when he doesn't know how to date?

If he's got the guts, he can try Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger.

As the head of the Millionaire's Club matchmaking service, Stanger, 48, has seen a 99 per cent success rate in matching wealthy men with potential trophy wives.

Her agency is the subject of a new show, Millionaire Matchmaker, which premieres on Sony Entertainment Television (SingTel mio Ch 20) at 9pm on Friday.

Over the phone from her office in Los Angeles, Stanger revealed that she started matchmaking as early as in her teens when she successfully helped a shy friend get a date during a community dance.

But the road to making it a business started when Stanger moved to San Francisco and mingled with the Silicon Valley crowd.

'There was a millionaire on every corner, but none of them knew how to date,' she said.

San Francisco, said Stanger, 'is not known for its glamazons', or the kind of beautiful, intelligent women that technopreneurs desire.

But even if they did, she admits that the men still need help getting the girls to date them.

'Wealthy men are very demanding, and they live their lives in a fast and furious way, but they don't realise that that's not how you get the ladies,' said Stanger.

Geek to chic

'It's all about going from geek to chic. Most of them just need to work out a little bit, or whiten their teeth. They've got to make the girl want to date them,' she said.

The more dramatic cases sometimes involve some work under the knife, though Stanger insists that she doesn't do 'extreme makeovers'.

Considering the men are such high-fliers, how does a woman tell them they need to get in shape and look better?

'Oh, I kick their butt,' she said. 'No one ever says no to them in life. So when they meet me, they think I'm an idiot at first.

'Then they go out with three or four women and when they can't get the girl, they come begging.'

She explains her 99 per cent success rate as 'at least successfully getting them to be interested in each other'.

'Maybe they'll date for a few years, but not all of them get married.'

She even believes that many couples may be happier without marriage.

'A lot of people consider love nowadays as 'falling in love'. But what we're trying to help them look for is their soulmate.'

And if anyone's wondering whether Stanger's worked her own matchmaking magic on herself, well, the answer is no.

Someone else did it for her.

Said Stanger: 'An older friend, Diane, set me up with my boyfriend, Randy, five years ago. We've been together ever since.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Feb 11, 2009.