Make Love with Your Data

#sxsw #datalove

We will tell the compelling story of how data science created not only a multi-million dollar business, but also one of the greatest single sources of love on earth. OkCupid is responsible for 40,000 first dates every single day-all because of our analytic approach to human interaction.
We’ll present actual data, beautifully visualized, on the ways that people behave when they think no one is looking. We'll examine, for example, the double-standards that men and women hold each other to. How age is much more than just a number. Why hiding user photos would make OkCupid more effective-and why users would never let us do it. The data will underpin our insider's take on entrepreneurship, emphasizing the ways we adapted to patterns in the numbers on our road from 0 accounts to 25 million. We'll interweave the story of our company with the story of our users, and by the end you will leave with a better understanding of not just OkCupid and data, but of human nature.

Presenters

Christian Rudder

Pres & Co-Founder of OkCupid

Match Inc/OkCupid

Christian Rudder is a co-founder of OkCupid, one of the largest dating sites in the world. Today, he serves as President, running the day-to-day operations, and leads OkCupid’s data science team, scouring the digital universe for meaningful trends. The online outlet for Rudder’s data research is OkCupid’s blog, OkTrends. OkTrends highlights how big data relates to human behavior in real life and online; Rudder’s research and findings have been featured in The New York Times, Harper's, The Atlantic, and were the subject of a New Yorker feature. OkCupid was acquired in 2011 by Match, Inc.
Prior to founding OkCupid in 2003, Rudder worked at SparkNotes, which he joined soon after its launch in 1999. SparkNotes was sold to Barnes & Noble in 2001.
Rudder graduated cum laude from Harvard, with a degree in mathematics. His first book, Dataclysm, extends his OkCupid data science work to broader topics and datasets and will be released by Crown in fall 2014.

Sam Yagan

CEO Match, Inc/Co-Founder & CEO, OkCupid

Match Inc/OkCupid

Sam Yagan is the CEO of Match, Inc., a division of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), and co-founder of OkCupid. In this role, he oversees the management of IAC’s global online dating portfolio, comprised of over 40 brands, including Match.com, OkCupid, OurTime.com, Meetic, Twoo and Tinder. Yagan co-founded OkCupid in 2003 and grew it into one of the most popular dating sites in America. In 2011, Match, Inc. acquired OkCupid. Yagan’s prior entrepreneurial ventures include SparkNotes (founded in 1999), and eDonkey (founded in 2002). He sold SparkNotes to Barnes & Noble, Inc., where he served as Vice-President and Publisher and oversaw the expansion of the previously all-digital brand into an expansive multi-platform media business.
Yagan has a BA with honors in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Harvard College, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 2013, Yagan was named to Fortune Magazine’s “40 under 40” and TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”