CHICAGO TRIBUNE - Feb 19 - Sam Yagan co-founded OkCupid in 2003 and sold it to IAC in 2011 for $90M. He is now CEO of IAC’s online dating division, Match Group. Yagan also co-founded startup accelerator Excelerate Labs, which became Techstars Chicago. He explains what he looks for as an executive, mentor and investor.
Q: With the influx of dating apps, would you acquire any of them?
A: Until you have a massive amount of usage, it’s just not that interesting to us.
Q: You co-launched a venture fund in 2014 called Corazon Capital. What are your investment criteria?
A: The product, business and market have to make sense. But our No. 1 criteria, by far, is great entrepreneurs.
Q: What have you learned as an investor that you wish you’d known as a founder?
A: I think overestimating the market size is near the top of the list of the things entrepreneurs most get wrong.
Q: What are you doing to help women in tech?
A: A quarter of the founders that have gone through Excelerate and Techstars are women, including Sue Khim at Brilliant, Diane Melville (formerly) at ScholarPro, and Melissa Moline at InRentive. Those are all companies that I’m on the boards of.
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