18 Quotes & Sayings By Sam Yagan

Sam Yagan was born in San Francisco and grew up in New York City. His father was a housepainter and his mother a homemaker. Sam's first job was delivering newspapers and he eventually became a staff writer for the "San Francisco Chronicle". He graduated from Stanford University with a BA in English Literature Read more

Sam moved to California in 1963 to work as a journalist for Life magazine, where he covered the space race, the Vietnam war, and the rise of Silicon Valley. In 1970, Sam co-founded the first venture capital firm focused exclusively on consumer technology companies, called Advanced Communications Ventures. The company invested in well-known companies including Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Intuit Corporation, Dell Computer Corporation, Netscape Communications Corporation, Yahoo!, eBay Inc., Amazon.com, EarthLink Inc., eToys.com, iVillage.com and many others.

Sam remained an active partner with Advanced Communications Ventures until its sale to Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1999.

1
I'm an off-the-charts introvert. To me, being around groups of strangers is exhausting. I've had to sort of train myself to think about two tactics: finding common ground and invoking humor. Sam Yagan
2
New Year's Eve to Valentine's Day is our peak season, and in many ways, Valentine's Day is our Christmas. Everybody in the world makes the same three New Year's resolutions: health, career and money, and love. Sam Yagan
3
OKCupid's model is almost entirely based on advertising, which is the way most online media is monetized these days, whether it's the news or whether it's sports, and we think online dating is going to evolve in the exact same way. Sam Yagan
4
I think for marketplace businesses, and when you think about online dating, it's not a social network. It's not a place where you go to talk to people you already know; it's a place you go to interact with someone you've never met before. Sam Yagan
5
The sort of the most efficient way for online dating marketplace to evolve and, in fact, any marketplace to evolve is to have one really big market where people can enter and exit as they please, where people have really advanced search, sort, and filtering technology. Sam Yagan
6
When you're thinking about building your own online dating profile, especially on OkCupid, you should go through the same steps you're thinking about when you're going out to meet someone new. You want to put your best foot forward. Sam Yagan
7
Your goal in an online dating profile and in your first message to somebody is to strike up a conversation. Sam Yagan
8
We sold OkCupid to Match in January of 2011. In September of 2012, I became CEO of all of Match, which is the operating segment of IAC that contains all of the dating properties. Sam Yagan
9
I get to be the nosiest friend or acquaintance that anyone has because it's - my job is to ask you about your dating life all the time. Sam Yagan
10
My friends and the people I know understand that I'm going to ask them what they're doing, how they're dating, who they're dating, where they're going and what they're doing. I'm constantly asking those questions and making sure I'm in touch with the customer. Sam Yagan
11
One thing matters more than anything else for a dating product, and that is the quantity and quality of the people who use the product. It's really freaking hard to get critical mass. Sam Yagan
12
We were intrigued by the fact that we had so much actual behavior among people on our dating site, OKCupid. Sam Yagan
13
My work involves online dating, but I believe almost every behavior exhibited online has an offline corollary. Really, the medium doesn't change human nature. Sam Yagan
14
Dating is a numbers game. What we try to promise is good first dates. Once that first date happens, it's really up to you. Sam Yagan
15
When people talk about the impact of mobile dating, everyone focuses on real-time meeting - this idea that my pocket will vibrate every time a hot girl walks by. That's important. But it's not transformative. Sam Yagan
16
In dating, the question is how many Tinder knockoffs are we going to have, and are any of them going to take off? Sam Yagan
17
I think of OkCupid as an online bar; a place where singles can go, have fun with each other and in the process hopefully meet new people, some of whom might turn into a romantic relationship. Sam Yagan