OkCupid - is an online dating service popular in the Europe

You can also decide if the situation is important to you, or if it doesn't matter at all. Retrieved 23 February 2016. Next, it calculates compatibility based on your answers to match questions.

Feloni: And how do you personally define success? But of course, that's the best kind of hate mail to get, is we need more product.

OkCupid - is an online dating service popular in the Europe - Those are the common threads.

Sam Yagan is the cofounder of SparkNotes and OKCupid, and served as the CEO of the Match Group. He's been the CEO of ShopRunner since 2016. Together, they built a study guide website called SparkNotes. Then, they built an online dating empire. They started the site OKCupid while Yagan was getting his MBA at Stanford. The idea came from one of those college roommates, and it grew into a business with tens of millions of users. Yagan is now the CEO of ShopRunner — a company that brings Amazon Prime-like benefits to customers for use on a network of shopping sites — but he's best known for his seven-year tenure as the head of the Match Group, which includes OkCupid, Match. He tells us that it was his Syrian immigrant parents who developed his drive to be an entrepreneur. Richard Feloni: Your parents were immigrants from Syria, and I saw that you said that their experience gave you. What did you mean by that? Sam Yagan: I often get asked how I got into entrepreneurship. Did you have a lemonade stand? Did you have a job early in your life? And the more I think about it, the more I think that immigration is the ultimate entrepreneurship, in many ways. I mean, if you think about what an entrepreneur is typically signing up for, they're typically giving up something of certainty, right? A job, or income, or a career, or money, for some very speculative long-term outcome that they think it's going to be good, but have no idea what that journey's going to look like. And that idea of being super, super comfortable with uncertainty, being super comfortable with the unknown, this idea that, just never give up, this relentlessness, were all attributes that I realize my parents have been imbuing in me, had been teaching me or demonstrating not to be an entrepreneur, but just because that's how they lived. Feloni: What were you like as a kid? Yagan: Oh, I was super nerdy. I mean, super, super nerdy. My parents made a very conscious priority to Americanize me, and I think that's one of the great things about our cultures. For most immigrant families, this idea of becoming American is a really important part of that transition to the first generation of American-born kids. I think I was a pretty normal kid in that I loved the Chicago Cubs and I loved to go outside and play basketball. Yagan: Growing up in Illinois, yeah. Michael Jordan was drafted when I was 6, so it was, like, I thought all teams had the best player ever. But I was a super math nerd, and up until my high-school years, I started growing up as the smartest kid in the class. And that was my rap, for better or for worse. Feloni: Did any of your family remain in Syria? I mean, up until , about six years ago, virtually all my family remained in Syria. Feloni: So with the war they all just fled? Yagan: Yeah, I mean it's super sad, obviously. I think people basically made one of two decisions. I'm super old, and if this is my lot in life, this is my lot in life. Go pick up and start over? I just think people weren't up for that. Do you think that you see it differently than they did? All my cousins were born in Syria; I was born here. Not dumb luck, but, luck. Feloni: When do you think you got to that point, when you became aware of it? Yagan: I don't know if it was because the war started, but I think seeing so many of my family members be displaced as part of the war. How do we build this product? Feloni: So only fairly recently you rethought your life. Yagan: Yeah, I think so. Becoming an entrepreneur with his college buddies Feloni: And you're saying that as your parents instilled in you this willingness to just take big risks even if you weren't aware of it at the time. When you were in college as an undergrad, at Harvard, you started SparkNotes. Feloni: When did you decide you wanted to create something? And it was actually Chris who first had the idea for creating a website. And the original website was called TheSpark. It was a humor site. We should really do this. What are you talking about? And so that was it. So it was in the spring of my senior year, when Chris, Max, and I decided we were going to make a go out of this company called, at the time The Spark, and then weeks later we launched SparkNotes. Feloni: Were you creating those study guides yourself? You're going to pay me to write a paper? And we got all this hate mail. And people were pissed. Yagan: Because we didn't have the SparkNote they needed! But of course, that's the best kind of hate mail to get, is we need more product. And so we spent that summer, we hired a couple of editors, and their foil was to get a hundred SparkNotes up by the fall, and the rest is history. Feloni: How'd you make a business out of it if you were offering it all free at first? Yagan: See, you have to put yourself back in time. Any time you talk about the internet, you have to time-adjust. So this is 1999, and so pre-bubble, and at the time, eyeballs — right? No one had even come up with anything other than advertising, for the most part. And so that was the idea. And if you think about SparkNotes, you can argue business models eight ways from Sunday. But I think a SparkNote is the perfect thing to be ad-supported, because it's write once and publish a zillion times, right? So whatever we paid — we paid 400 bucks for a SparkNote in 1999 — you probably have the same SparkNote up today. Maybe you update it once a decade or something. But the upfront cost is so low and the use is so high that you can make your notes profitable on an ad model. I think over time there's a huge opportunity to turn in a lot more revenue based off the study guide, but that hasn't been a priority. Or did you think you were going to be a founder? I knew I was never going to go to a typical career. I think once you've had a modestly successful CEO experience, it's super hard to not have that again. Feloni: So that was with SparkNotes. Yagan: Yeah, that was with SparkNotes. We sold SparkNotes twice — the second time we sold it to Barnes and Noble. And I stayed at Barnes and Noble for a year, and I remember at Barnes and Noble — because they have a publishing business; they have a retail business — at the time, especially, it was a really big, successful company. And I remember realizing how much I didn't know about business, right? It was, like, ad revenue and payroll — that was it. I didn't have to know anything about accounting, I didn't have to know anything about marketing, I didn't have to know anything about HR. We were an 18-person company. And then you get there and you show up at an accounting meeting, and you can't get through the third minute before you're super confused. I didn't even know any of these terms. Most people go to business school for the strategy classes, and I went to business school for the core. I'll do the strategy classes, but I want to understand how accounting works. And I want understand how HR works. Feloni: You had already built a business, but you found yourself in over your head, essentially. If your first job is a CEO, like, normally you'd train for this job and you'd become a domain expert, or you manage people. There are whole creative-element plans to prepare you to be ultimately a CEO, and I had none of that. And so I showed up, made a ton of mistakes, obviously, but, more than that, I just never had the foundation on which to build my professional success. Feloni: So you had eDonkey, right? And that was kind of like a Napster for video. Yagan: Yeah, I mean after — Feloni: Or a BitTorrent client. Yagan: Yeah, so after Napster had its legal demise, a whole set of decentralized file-sharing networks joined. So this is Kazaa, LimeWire, and BearShare that would have been the peer companies at the time, and we were one of the decentralized networks. Because our technology, my partner, Jed McCaleb — who's one of the best technologists ever, now super active in crypto — he had this vision for the technology, and because it was so fast, naturally people used it for video because video files are so much bigger that audio files. So we became the de facto file-sharing network for video because the technology was so perfect for that. Feloni: Well, what is your experience with eDonkey? What did that teach you? Yagan: You know, I think I learned a bunch of things. One is the difference between market success and economic success. I still consider eDonkey a success. We reached millions and millions of people. We ultimately ran into the regulatory and legal headwinds. But I think I understand that a lot better now. I really value the importance of clarity in laws. People talk about chilling effects, and ambiguity, and you're going to stifle innovation. And I think some of that is real. And what entrepreneurs need, and especially investors, but entrepreneurs is, like, what are the rules of the road for this business? And we will play within the rules if it's clear what they are. Unexpectedly turning into the 'king of online dating' Yagan, third from left, poses with Match Group CFO Gary Swidler, Match Group chairman Greg Blatt, and Nasdaq president Nelson Griggs on the day of Match Group's IPO in Nov. Yagan: Yeah, my cofounder from SparkNotes. And the faces of online dating were Dr. Phil, who had a deal with Match, and Dr. Neil Clark Warren, who's still on the eHarmony commercials. And the four founders of OKCupid were all math majors. That really became what, I think, to this day is still the gold standard for matching. Feloni: Maybe you see it differently, but when I'm looking at these three businesses that you founded, it was hard for me to see what was driving you. Why one to the next? What did you see? How do you approach entering a business? What are you passionate about? Yagan: In all of them they're about building great product — really thinking first about the customer and building products that customers are going to love. Preferably using either a technology transformation or business-model transformation to empower them or to enable them. So if you think about SparkNotes, the innovation there was the internet. Those are the common threads. How did that change how you sell what you wanted to accomplish here? Yagan: The smartphone dynamic in dating — and people will write business-school case studies about this eventually — it had a couple of interesting effects. I think the first is, for the first time, you could use location beyond the ZIP code. Number two, the way dating used to work was it was something people would do when they got home at night. So, in fact, we had seen our logs, like 7 p. It's because you didn't do it at work because you're on your computer. Now it's something that you're checking throughout the day, and it's something where, as you move around the town, or as you move around your day, who you're matching with can change. And then the third and most important is, because it wasn't something you were doing at home in your basement, it became something you could do with your friends. We incubated Tinder while I was the CEO of Match, and I think Tinder was successful for a whole bunch of reasons. But one of them was, you could just sit there at a bar, or at your friend's, and just start swiping. Feloni: And so with the mainstream success of this, millions of people starting to use online dating, it's not like a weird thing anymore. It also made it easier also for, I guess, the way to say it is, like, creepy guys harassing women. Like in 2014, this Redditor had a viral post , and he felt like he was immediately assaulted by all these strange guys. How did you see that as the head of this company? Yagan: Obviously the quality of the community is maybe the most important thing. And whenever somebody asks me a question about online dating, the first thing I think about is offline dating. So think about your favorite bar, right? The majority of experiences you have at a bar, where it's like a nice bar, are positive. Every once in a while, is there a fight at the bar? Or has some creepy guy hit on you? But it's up to: How does the community or the owners or the bartender police that? And so, you're always going to have the corner case, you're always going to have the one thing where someone had a terrible experience. But at OKCupid, we spend a lot of time on the algorithms to manage the amount of volume. Feloni: It's an impossible hypothetical, but do you think that maybe you would have done things differently if there was a woman cofounder? Yagan: That's an interesting question. I haven't been asked that one before. I think any time you change the mix of leadership, you're going to get a different set of opinions. I think, one, we always thought about it... I think most dating products are created from the woman's point of view, because that is the most valuable part of the network, is to make sure that the women are there. I'm sure we would have made different decisions. But not necessarily because it was a woman — just because it would be a different set of people. But we spent a lot of time looking at the data, and we spent a lot of time talking to single people, of both genders. Feloni: And when you became the CEO of Match Group, which is a collection of dating sites, didn't you marry your high-school sweetheart? I've also never used a SparkNote. Feloni: Do you think that there are advantages, then, if you see it differently? Yagan: You know, I think there's a mix. And, so you could say that, yeah, that brought a fresh perspective. Focusing on the goal of 'mattering' Feloni: Why did you decide to go to , in 2016? Yagan: I had been in the online-dating business for 13 years. I had cofounded OKCupid, I had been the CEO of Match, and I was part of the team that incubated Tinder. And I would argue that those were the three most important dating businesses ever. We're in the third decade of online dating. And decade one was Match; it was the best company. And I would argue that in decade two OKCupid was the best company. And in decade three, it's Tinder. And another big part of it was that I lived in Chicago, and Match is based in Dallas, and OKCupid's in New York, and Tinder's in LA. And so a big part of it was just, like, it was the right time for me to think about, what is the next chapter in my life? But I really wanted to be able to use data to make delightful customer experiences. Feloni: So the incumbent here would be Amazon. And I don't think it was just competing with Amazon so much. I think they're obviously an amazing company. But I do think about this idea of Prime, which is maybe one of the best products ever made. What does Prime look like in a multi-retailer environment? That's interesting to me. And how can we use the data that we see across our retailers to maybe even make a product that has advantages over Prime? And look, our view is that we are super compatible with Prime. The vast majority of our members have a Prime subscription. In my ideal world, everyone in America has Prime and everybody in America has ShopRunner and everybody gets a great experience when they shop anywhere. Feloni: Earlier you mentioned that there were three moments in your life that you considered to be the turning points, the luckiest things. We talked about the first one. What were the other two? Yagan: So the first one was being born in America. The second one was, I grew up in a town called Bourbonnais, Illinois, which is about an hour south of Chicago, in a cornfield, or across the street from a cornfield. And I went to a really great public school, as far as I was concerned. But it's probably now, with context, it was an average public school, in an average cornfield. And, again, like I said earlier, I was the smartest kid in the class. And fortunately the state of Illinois, in the '80s, created this thing called the Illinois Math and Science Academy, in another cornfield about 90 minutes away. It was a state magnet school, a public school for students talented in math and science. They found me, they sent me a letter, they asked me to apply, I applied, and I got in. And I think going to MSA was that second super-lucky thing that you couldn't have planned for. And really, what I got out of it — a world-class education. But more than that, I learned, when I was 14, that I was not the smartest kid in the class. And I think the earlier in life you realize you're not the smartest kid in the class, the better. Because there's only one smartest kid. Somewhere in the world there's the smartest person in the world. But the rest of us aren't. And I think the earlier in life you realize that, one, it's a huge burden, because I don't have to be valedictorian. I'm just not going to be, and that's OK. Because I thought communicating, explaining, and leading could be my superpower rather than being the best at differential equations and programming and whatever else I was doing with my applied-math degree. So that was No. And the third was the freshman dean's office at Harvard put me with Max and Chris. And I think that relationship, to this day, that's what got me into being an entrepreneur, and I learned so much from them, and that partnership, was just a huge part of my professional success. Feloni: And how do you personally define success? Yagan: Oh, that's so hard. And that has a lot of lenses. But when I die, whether it's individuals or whether it's consumers, I want people to say, people's lives are better because I was on this earth. And so it could be people who work for ShopRunner. I want to build this great culture where people develop and people get to be themselves and get to be happy and I want to help these retailers succeed and grow. I was at a dinner last night, and somebody said she'd met her husband on OKCupid and gave me a hug and took a selfie. I always talk about permanence in the companies I've built. The fact that SparkNotes still exists today, 19 years after we built it, I have so much pride in that. OKCupid is still something that millions of people use every day. I have so much pride in that. And my kids are just now getting old enough to start using SparkNotes, then, ultimately, probably OKCupid or whatever. And the fact that I've had that impact and I can actually see that happen, I think that's success. Yagan: That's good question. I think, because I was fortunate to have some amount of success early in life, I realized it wasn't about chasing personal accomplishment. I think early in life you're just in an environment where, it's your personal accomplishment that is success. That didn't seem fulfilling. Feloni: In an interview I saw that — Yagan: Uh-oh! Feloni: You said — no, it's a good one — in most jobs, So, you're 41 now, right? So are you in your power years now? Yagan: I think that, the way I see it is, I've checked all the boxes I wanted. I have no more boxes to check. So I think, I look at it, not so much as the power years, but I think now I can be really intentional about everything I do. I didn't have to take the ShopRunner job, right? That wasn't, like, I need a job ASAP. And I looked at a lot of opportunities, and I thought about starting my own new companies, I thought about taking big public-company jobs. Feloni: So this is when you're really focusing, and you're very cognizant of mattering, as you put it? I remember when they offered me the CEO job at Match, which was a job I was not super qualified for, right? I was running tiny little OKCupid, 30 people, and the next day I'm running a billion-dollar business with 1,200 people, right? And I was super unqualified. I have to take the job. It is transformative for my career to go from being startup guy, startup guy, startup guy, to being big-company guy. So that is to me more of a power move. That's the big promotion. Feloni: Like a hierarchy thing. But I'm not on that box-checking power years part of my career. Feloni: What would you say to someone who wants to have a career like yours? What should I do? And I think that is not an obvious thing to do. I think a lot of times people don't feel comfortable with that, but I have found that when I have done that, one, I've challenged myself to be my best and to keep up. And I talk about luck and failure all the time. That is, I think, the story of my career, but the thing about luck is, you can't just sit around waiting to get lucky, because that doesn't work. You've got to show up for the game, you've got to put yourself in positions to get lucky, then you've got to get lucky, then you've got to execute like hell, then you've got to actually deliver. And so I've gotten super lucky and I've failed a bunch of times. But all those things have snowballed into a situation where I've now got this set of experiences, successes and failures, and a network of a whole bunch of people smarter than me, who have really positioned me to be able to do a lot of things. Feloni: Thank you so much, Sam. Yagan: Thanks for having me.

It actually takes further navigation to determine that. Cons Okcupid com is an online glad where evaluation is done on the basis of the data that is provided by the user. SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of okcupid deutschland registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other okcupid deutschland on their Match Test types. We use math to get you jesus. The chances of one of these accidentally bumping into you are practically zero, that's even if one of them lives in your district. Every member also has a journal, which basically functions just like a blog, explaining different things about oneself or their experiences. Jesus Once you feel that you cannot take it anymore alone and need a partner you can obviously get into the okcupid login page and create your own personal account that is absolutely free and safe. And there are presumably other similar from the US?.