MIXERGY – Mar 4 – Sam Yagan, the CEO of Match and CEO/Founder of OKCupid.com interviewed
with Andrew Warner on Mixergy, which helps people 'learn from proven
entrepreneurs.'
Sam thought one of his biggest failures was in
2007 when the OKCupid team spent a year trying to
internationalize OKCupid. They thought it
would be possible to take the OKCupid recipe and extend it but did a bad
job with the technology and business and tried to do it on the cheap
and didn't hire the right talent.
Sam talks about the importance of being straight and critical in the startup environment. Some love
it, some don’t.
The OKCupid blog worked because it really put OKCupid in the center of conversations
happening around the country. "You could
talk about an online dating site at work, and with family." The blog proved that online dating could be cool.
He focused on high risk, high return bets when adding new features
to OKupid. They would try
something new every couple of months. If they had a couple of winners a
year that would be great, and would result in 'step-function growth.'
e.g. OKCupid Journals/blogs. was a fail.
Only a very small portion of users used them, and they tended to be
inhabited by trolls.
Sam states that his personal aim is to have “…learned and experienced a lot.
I’ll probably be an entrepreneur again.”
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