OkCupid Raises $6 Million

GIGAOM -- Jan 12 -- OkCupid raised $6 million from a group of angels. Each time I talk to Yagan about his new company, he pulls out some variation on the same line: "Our goal is to reduce GDP by half a million dollars by completely eliminating the subscription online dating market." Yagan says he can run a successful dating site without making people pay, something PlentyofFish has also had success with. OkCupid currently has 600,000 active users (logged on within 90 days). Match.com has 1.3 million subscribers. PlentyofFish reports a quarter million users logging in per day. Yagan led SparkNotes and eDonkey before but, didn't take venture capital. He talked to twenty VC firms last year but went with collecting checks from five angels, whom he says he's not disclosing because we've never heard of them. FULL ARTICLE @ GIGAOM

 

Comments

[Matt]

"Our goal is to reduce GDP by half a million dollars by completely eliminating the subscription online dating market."

I think okcupid.com is a great site. It's not easy to have a free site that pulls in quality hip profiles. A site needs attitude to pull that off. Hats to its CEO and the Harvard math grads.

Though, I'm not quite sure how well we'll all be doing as free sites down the road if we take down all paid dating sites.

I have a fun hip upcoming free dating site myself. Based on my revenue numbers, it seems we'll lose a decent chunk of our revenue that comes from the relevant ads served from paid dating sites. There are other relevant categories of course. But I'm not sure how well those will pay.

I know a decent chunk of revenue on my small but fun and growing free dating site comes from the ads of paid dating sites.

As a free dating site owner, I hate to say it, but don't we need the paid dating sites, since their ads are most relevant and convert most?

[Neal]

Boy, this all reminds me of the commodity conversations we had in economics class, back in college. If that's where we're headed - I picked the wrong industry. :(

[david]

I agree, having paid sites is simply part of the system. I operate a free site myself but i don't believe everyone should go free. Singleshunt.com