Sam Yagan (born April 10, 1977) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of OkCupid.[1] In 2013, he was named to TIME Magazine's '100 Most Influential People in the World' list.[1] He is the Vice-Chairman of the e-dating site Match.com.[2]
Yagan is the son of Syrian immigrants, Al and Dr. Haifa Yagan,[3][4] and grew up in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and studied at the Illinois Math and Science Academy and eventually Harvard University.
Yagan holds a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University, where he earned distinction as a Siebel Scholar, an Arjay Miller Scholar, and the Henry Ford Scholar, the award granted to each class’s valedictorian.[5] His brother Danny Yagan is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.[6] His wife Jessica Droste Yagan is the CEO of Impact Engine, an impact investing fund.[7]
In 1999, during his senior year at Harvard, Yagan and two of his classmates, Chris Coyne and Max Krohn, started the online study guide SparkNotes.[8] Christian Rudder joined shortly after the founding. A year later they sold the company to Barnes & Noble for $30 million.[9]
eDonkey was a part of MetaMachine Inc and was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network. Yagan was the CEO of MetaMachine Inc.[10] As the developer of eDonkey, Yagan testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing a need for balance between innovation and intellectual property.[11]
In 2006, MetaMachine, Yagan, and founder Jed McCaleb agreed to pay $30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits brought by the RIAA.[12] In accordance with the agreement, MetaMachine, Yagan and McCaleb agreed to discontinue distribution of its software as well as to deprecate previous copies of its software.[13]
In 2003, Yagan again teamed up with his Harvard classmates Chris Coyne, Max Krohn, and Christian Rudder to found online dating website OkCupid.[14] Yagan and partners designed OkCupid with a question-and-answer-based system.[15][16] In 2011, Yagan led the sale of OkCupid to Match Group, a subsidiary of IAC, for $90 million.[17] Yagan was the CEO of Match Group for three years and left at the end of 2015 before joining the company’s public board as vice chairman.[18] While Yagan was CEO, Match Group started Tinder.[19]
In 2009, Yagan, Kelli Rhee, and Kapil Chaudhary co-founded Excelerate Labs with the financial backing from Sandbox Industries.[20] Excelerate Labs merged with Techstars in 2013.[21]
In 2014, Yagan co-founded Corazon Capital with Steve Farsht.[22] Yagan is also the former CEO of ShopRunner, an e-commerce network that provides two-day shipping across multiple merchants. He led the sale of the company to FedEx in December 2020.[23]
In April 2013, Yagan was listed as one of TIME Magazine's '100 Most Influential People in the World'.[1] In 2011, Yagan was named to Crain's "40 under 40" in Chicago.[24]
Sam Yagan is married to his high school sweetheart, Jessica Droste Yagan.[25][26]
OkCupid and SparkNotes co-founder Yagan is a prominent figure in Chicago's technology scene. He sold the dating company to Match Group parent IAC in 2011 for $90 million and went on to co-found local accelerator Excelerate Labs, now Techstars Chicago.
Many of Tinder's users don't realize that it is owned by Match; the app came from its R&D lab and launched under Yagan's guidance.
Excelerate Labs, Chicago's first and most prominent tech startup incubator, is joining TechStars, a Boulder, Colo.-based competitor
The $13 million Corazon I, also led by Yagan and Farsht, was known for bringing in local entrepreneurs as limited partners, including Inventables founder CEO Zach Kaplan...The firm has participated in Series A-sized rounds for several Chicago startups.