Gadgetory

I'm Alexis Ohanian I started startups invested in them and met amazing people using the internet to change the world our generation has an opportunity unlike any other we can create small empires without anyone's permission back in 2003 online dating was anything but normal for guys with math degrees decided they want to build a platform that was not only going to bring online dating mainstream but also make it totally free so here we are the Nexus of Penn Station Koreatown and Flatiron to meet OkCupid OkCupid is a dating site it's probably at this point one of the two or three biggest in english-speaking world unprovable because dating sites like to lie about themselves like daters we started OkCupid in 2003 I went live and oh four and match.com bought us in January of 2011 so it was like definitely a hockey stick all right it's like a hockey stick on its side laying on the floor so you guys have had quite the interesting trajectory it was it was OkCupid and dating but before that the spark yeah the spark the spark was really the way to get people to know to spark notes which were you know the free study guides so the spark was full of like stupid jokes and tests and all kinds of garbage that we thought people would forward to their friends when they got done with it they would be like well no no I do and they see that they are about to fail Hamlet and hello we have Hamlet here for you to read so it was kind of a long play that also worked out and we sold that to Barnes and Noble in 2001 they wanted sparknotes to put in the stores are we real quick yeah so they wanted to take sparknotes a website yeah it was an alternative to CliffsNotes which was the dead tree books yes and put it in store stores yes and they've more or less neglect at the website half cent that we saw in like 12 years that it's been we all laughed shortly after like to delve into so yeah I wasn't awesomest plan CliffsNotes was a rather I mean that got me through God those little yellow books got me through a ton of my history classes it's none of my English classes rather in high school but it seemed like hey the Internet it's this place full of knowledge people should be a Laxus freely right did you just look at this and say this seems really inefficient and yeah I mean again like I wasn't I wasn't the person who thought of the idea for sure site I don't want to make sure not the claim credit where that's not due but yeah the thinking was for sure like we take something that we see people charging for and do a better version for free um which you know when we are starting on K Cupid was a similar type of mindset with a tiny office and just 18 self-proclaimed dorky dudes running the place OkCupid has somehow catapulted itself from obscurity to near dominance in the online dating world boasting more than 7 million users when you look at the founding team behind OkCupid a lot of math nerds yeah I think all four of us are math majors yeah now how that clearly had a lot to do with its success it definitely yes it did yeah when you're talking about building that algorithm that actually matches people in a way that's smarter than your 24 I'm 24 let's get together yeah what what kind of suffer you think about because was anyone were there any peers to look to for inspiration or motivation not really I mean we kind of just invented it from scratch by asking sort of you know plain English questions ourselves like how do you decide if you like someone and trying to codify that into a formula and that was a process my co-founder Chris Coyne actually did most of the deep thinking there and then if I remember correctly it has been a little while since I've been on OkCupid uh there's a percent of match percent of enemy yeah hi-oh how often do you hear those high percent enemy stories working out successfully very rarely okay is actually working pretty well yeah yeah I mean it the site definitely works I mean I'm not gonna sit here and say me if I figure it out loud but I think that that's sort of like that would be a bold statement it would love for you to know the thing is is that you you know well some sites do say this kind of thing of like we will find you the person that you're gonna get married to or whatever our take from the beginning was always like we just want you to get you to the point where you're having coffee or a drink with somebody we don't care about what happens after that is just up to you there's chemistry there's all those million other things how drunk you are whatever Oh as to what is going to go on with your relationship at that point we just want to get you to that first date and so so kind of like um having a sort of humbler goal helped us be more effective at reaching that lower bar everybody has their own version of the sights so like here's a bluff there we go everybody has a full version of the site with fake user data it all does Abraham Lincoln with a mohawk oh yeah absolutely one thing that's awesome about our team it's different from other sites that are kind of this big as we have no QA we are just so we'll do it live yeah evolution mission code absolutely and then we'll check our errors see Susan oh absolutely yeah over here is kind of our what they almost look like I don't know what they look like meaning sauna sham yeah but basically their individual meeting rooms and phone call rooms and one of them has a V T C in them they all have phones they have very dim lighting but the idea is that with a mood it's important allow for us to have a place of a little bit of privacy a little bit of sound barrier and then with the bigger ones have kind of a meeting space and as you'll see now we play Super Smash Brothers and guitar in it what are these devices called um I've never used one in the office but their phones so let's say you know you know it's years in you have mountains mountains of data and you were then able to look at that and draw some really interesting conclusions it's just a very captivating conclusion yeah on the blog we're we're do the impetus for that all come from well it doesn't take long to run any big website let alone a dating website to realize that people are pretty crazy and a lot of wild stuff is going on in your site on your servers or whatever and and so that was always there in the back of our minds and the question was well what can we do with this stuff like a lot of it you can't use like the fact that you know the least black band ever is Belle and Sebastian or that like women and men have these different words to describe themselves well this is like an actionable or whatever to use a business word but it's interesting and so we were like whoa all right what are we gonna do with this stuff we were free site as a free site you need I mean a reddit knows I'm sure better than anybody you need an ass load of users to make even a small amount of money so it's 2,000 mid-2009 at this point we need more users and like we'll try to use this stuff as PR they were surveyed that the online dating site OkCupid conducted OkCupid OkCupid dot-com OkCupid comm Portland Oregon most promiscuous and we have Seattle Pittsburgh really Portland and Seattle took the top spots with Pittsburgh Pittsburgh a Miami each edging out San Francisco what's been your favorite one of those pieces um I really like I well I like the best questions to ask on a first date because it's like actually practical these are questions that you can just ask casually that we that indicate deeper things that you are much more interested in so like if you want to figure out whether somebody's gonna sleep with you on the first date maybe the thing that correlates most to that that's a casual question is do you like the taste of beer so you kind of bring that up see what they say and then you at least have some sort of prior on how it's gonna go and there's and there's there's data behind sure sure sure yeah yeah and then we would it differ that is you know we have two billion or something questions that have been answered and so you net you answers to questions sorry so two billion answers on four thousand questions so it's very dense I'm out of answers for questions so you look at the cross correlations and then we've figured out tied those back to outcomes like are you gonna be together for a long time and all this kind of thing like real observed outcomes and the sleeping with one this is probably the most practical I like that one I like the ones we've done on like race and how the races interact but everybody else doesn't like those and I think cuz they're - they're - they're too sad it's interesting because we've never really been able to take an analytical approaches because we haven't had this much serve data that's like dishonest yeah for sure yeah no it's amazing because you get to like watch people act while they think that no one is watching you know what I mean so like people are doing this stuff or whatever on their phone or on their laptop in their bedroom never even considering the ramifications that it can be analyzed later so like if people act in like a weird racist pattern or in a weird horny pattern or just do whatever they're doing it honestly um not motivated ly like they might have a lab or on a survey or something so yeah it's pretty cool do you think math geeks and specifically statisticians are having a moment right now some of thats Nate Silver's yeah for sure keep a trans blog I mean Nate's over his his results are undeniable so you nothing bad to say about that whatsoever um a lot I feel like it answer your question is yes I feel like a lot of is pretty overblown I've spent a lot of time with a wide variety of social data at this point especially you know working on the book and future blog posts and stuff but like you know whether there's it's often with this data there's like a human-shaped hole in the middle of it all like most sites like Twitter there it's an amazing platform for disseminating information but they don't ask you if you're a man or a woman when you sign up or your age or how tall you are or your orientation or your ethnicity or any of the million things that we have on everybody so like you can find out how information flies back and forth but the deeper questions of like who is sharing what with Twitter is a hard place to figure that kind of thing out so the media story of like stats and big data on all that stuff I feel like it's kind of overblown Madison's Wow all right well I love Andrea statisticians are gonna be shaking their fist I do look at a very strong usually we're here in Sunnyside Queens meet an actual couple that actually met on OkCupid because as hard as the team over there works to get all the math and all the data and all the statistics right it all comes down to chemistry you two met on OkCupid that's right sure did oh boy all right so how how did it get to this I didn't like going to the bars I didn't like being set up on blind dates really and I'd even try the speed-dating and then the one that I randomly selected was a total scam Wow so they just charged your card and totally didn't nobody showed up except the few other guys were there but the hosts weren't there so it was just one of those that was like mmm I need to try something different a different website alveen savvy Justin really just came out of nowhere yeah okay keep it had this selection process where you could star who he wanted to get to know better and we both had rated each other very high so then OkCupid messages you and says you have connection he was in hip C which is not New York City but me not being from New York I really didn't know where Pepsi was I had a quick google it and so who messaged him first I did okay it was as I had rated him he's got the right notification that I gave him like I think the first message was just an instant message that said Poughkeepsie question mark and I said yeah those are like you know after I googled it I said what what's this about um and then I think he responded and was like yes and then we just chatted and this is how you know it was an instant connection every day for three weeks we talked to each other either by Chad on the phone and after that three weeks it was like okay you're not a serial killer let's meet in person I actually told my mom you know I'm gonna this guy I met online and she's like maybe you have to be careful you know it's online dating and you really don't know the person and like mom it's not the 90s it's not there is a 2000 it's fine it's safe you know yeah it's New York City it's not like we're going some sketch of town or anything you know it kept stick yeah it's not like we're going to begin to map out so yeah I told him to meet us in New York City yeah safer much safer good we went out to dinner we'd went for a long walk it was raining and we share an umbrella so she very very first maybe you can love this this is this is like a rom-com right here's one thing that's memorable is that not I don't know how you want to say it but our candle wasn't lit they gave us the table without a lit candle so I asked just and I was like can you get us one from the other table and he was like really and I was like please and then he was like okay so we did it I was like all right he'll he'll do things for you generally believe now there are people who because of OkCupid have found love or found a great relationship that they wouldn't simply would not have been able to find oh and that's a high incontrovertible fact I mean we set up like forty thousand dates a day like first dates so tons of I mean we have this like extreme niche like menu item like 10 pages deep where you can tell us if you disable your account and if you come back to us and you put in a name of the other person you're dating like 300 couples a day go through and tell us bother to go through this like crazy ass chain saying that they're in a long-term relationship with someone from OkCupid so the real number is probably like 3,000 you know how that 13 of attrition goes right so like um 100 percent yeah I mean there's people in this office that married the people they met on OkCupid oh um yes and have kids from it and some of my friends or especially like a lot of my acquaintances have kids with people they've met with and like it because of things like Facebook and also just his life is busy they never met those people otherwise they might have met someone else that's also great but we made it easier and hopefully better every single stat that we record it's meaningful and there's a lot at stake emotionally so you can make somebody feel very good you can make somebody feel bad the hugely popular dating website OkCupid is under fire right now the site allowing users to pay to filter out potential dates based on body type nuts yeah I don't know the start of the process is when you do that there have been quite a few naysayers from for quite some time now who have said you know the Internet is making us more dislocated than ever we're having less and less human contact etc etc d are you guys making a conscious effort now to actually set yourself now bring people together sooner do you think long term sites like ok keep it are actually gonna make us more social in the physical sense I mean for sure I mean I think that is the paradox that many people have noted that the internet supposed to connect us but actually it does connects everybody because you're sitting there with your phone or whatever right and like you know for a site like Facebook it does it like replaces friend like having a conversation sometimes or gchat whereas with OkCupid it like it's it it's meant to increase the amount of that stuff that's that's really all we're trying to do we we don't like it once people sit and have 20 message threads going on whatever you know like two-second for anybody really so like I think that's part of the reason OkCupid and mass comm that we were like thriving even though there's all these other ways to connect and it's mostly because those ways also disconnect you a little bit and we're alternatives to actually get you together with someone else it seems like every single website that's out there startup is for making things easier to do by yourself everything's supposed to automate this everything's ecommerce it's online I don't have to go to a store I don't have to talk to anybody everything's automated everything will be just delivered well this is actually connecting to people people get to me because of this hopefully in real in real life that's our goal there are plenty of websites that people use every day not a lot of websites that actually lead to people getting married and falling in love after having kids what what does that feel like I mean it's awesome I like uh I think it's a big reason that all of us come to work every day on time at least uh you know how maybe do a drag your ass in at 10:30 otherwise but um yeah it's it's it's really cool to be doing something in tech that isn't about selling Pringles to people who have tweeted about Pringles or about serving ads more efficiently or about whatever any of the million boring-ass startups that are that are totally great services that people love or whatever like this is not that we're not trying to make money and whatever we make money but you know there's nothing no harm comes about Kay Cupid you know it's like people meet they fall in love they meet whatever they go on another date it's like all of that stuff that's generating like the best thing that you can make all right there's the stage where you know you talk about love and being in love and then I guess at some point there's the OkCupid profile shut down how how soon after you guys started dating did you shut down your profiles and was there like ceremonies you do it together what would happen well we discussed it there's a big discussion yeah um good no we just talked about it and we're like you know he's like I'm really happy and I was like yeah I'm really happy and you know let's make this official is like kind of our official thing that's our anniversary and like um we have really like nice dinner went to the waterfront over on Long Island study this February is very warm very nice so looking out over Manhattan where you have a lie and then we were like you know what you're the one and it's time to be a big problem what do you think about the fact that if your site is successful that is if you can match two users who want to be together well they will then not be users of the site anymore is that a real problem in downsize let's not remember why is that not real problem well I mean it's a thing that keeps us from no matter what happens okay keep it won't ever be as big as Facebook I'm not worthy the most genius when it's an attitude right no but it's just not possible for that exact reason so it limits that the absolute top end but until you get there um having two people even forget them leaving the site having someone walk out the door say how the roommate asked hey what are you doing where you going I'm going on a date on this dating site okay keep it blah blah blah have that exchange sit on the couch how was your date go get it in the guy's mind that's great the best thing that could possibly happen is two people get married every fool at their wedding knows that they met on OkCupid that's 300 people or whatever there yeah it's like dad is definitely that's one of those like non-existent problem I mean it's a thing but it's it's nice we sincerely would love it if more people would find love or whatever they're looking for via OkCupid definitely being free and removing the money equation from from dating it was amazing it definitely frees you up to be more moose about it more more human like you say so and so we always tried to push it that way as much as possible keep things light in the copy keep things open an interface and also get the platform open we're like reward shunting people into marriage wasn't just like JDate for one specific type of person it was for everybody for whatever you wanted you wanted to hook up you wanted to date kind of casually you wanted to find someone long-term you wanted to get married we set it so that you could make it do any of those things or all of those things for you and that creates another again like just like a lower barrier to getting people to just do something because they can determine their goals as we said Justin lived in Poughkeepsie and I had never been before so on my first train ride I started to take a couple of photos on the train right out and then every time I took the train I'd ever see him I would take a couple more photos and these are all just shot on my iPhone you have set the bar that's so high for me and for everyone else watching this so I kind of hate you for it but this is amazing our first Christmas together I wanted to make him something special and so I drew a picture of the view from his apartment in Long Island City and then of course Grand Central where we met I was shocked this was like one of the best things I'd ever gotten I loved it still loved it logical Wow I were we Wow it is I this is just not even fair really I it's not fair I this is that's so awesome and all it in it started with a little OkCupid message yeah tipsy question mark my advances in this age of social networks and increased connectivity we're oftentimes feeling lonelier than ever what's made OkCupid so successful in spite of an acquisition is that no one has lost sight of the mission the knowledge that if they do their job right and build the right kind of software a simple one word message can turn into a beautiful relationship it's an OkCupid dot-com poll they said that Wednesday nights are when most people get a little go to a visit but get see and a lot of you want to know what that means that means you have a good time in for Kip see you you