Perfect 10 was founded by former computer science professor, championship poker player, and hedge fund manager Norm Zadeh (now Zada) in 1997 when a friend was rejected from "Playboy" because her proportions didn't fit the magazine's ideal. Before starting Perfect 10, he obtained a doctorate in operations research at the University of California, Berkeley and worked at IBM. To get noticed in an already saturated adult magazine market, Zada gave prominent display to his "$435,000 Perfect 10 Model Search" in which the model from the first year deemed most beautiful by a panel of celebrity judges would receive a $200,000 prize. $100,000 went to second place, and $50,000 to the third place models. The remaining $85,000 was split between the remaining seventeen finalists.