Apertura de Sesiones Ordinarias con subtitulado

[0:00]Hello, and welcome back to "How I Built This," a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. On the show today, how a couple of guys in their early 20s started a software company that would eventually become the world's largest online dating business. That's Neil Clark Warren, the founder of eHarmony. I'm sure you know the name, and you've probably heard the commercials. In a few minutes, we're going to hear about how Neil, a clinical psychologist, came up with the idea for eHarmony when he was in his 60s, and how it grew into a hugely profitable business. But first, we're going to hear from a much younger founder, someone who launched a dating site based on algorithms way before eHarmony even existed. His name is Dale Kunkel. He's a software engineer who, in 1993, while still in college, launched a company with his friend, Mike Kocourek. It was called Match.com. And this is how Dale's entrepreneurial journey began. Match.com started in about 1993, and it started as a bulletin board system. And the reason that we started it was we wanted to bring dating into the computer age. We were computer science majors at the University of California, Santa Cruz. And it was just something that we thought was an interesting idea, and we thought it would be fun to build. And it was a very simple concept. It was just an online database of people looking for other people. And the idea was that you would go in and you'd create your profile, and then you would search through the database. And we had about 50 different fields that you could fill out about yourself. And then you could search those fields, and you could find other people that were interesting to you. And the bulletin board system was a dial-up system, so you would dial in with your modem. And then you would connect to our computers, and you would be able to interact with the system. And then once the World Wide Web came around, we quickly pivoted to that. And in 1995, we launched the website Match.com. So you guys were still students when you came up with this idea? Yes, we were. And what was the impetus? I mean, how did you come up with the idea? Well, we had a lot of friends who were single, and we just thought it was an interesting problem to solve. And we were computer science majors, so we loved building things. And we thought this would be a fun project to work on. And we also saw the potential for it to be a real business. And so we started working on it, and it just kind of grew from there. And how did you fund it? We self-funded it for the first couple of years. We were basically just using our savings from our part-time jobs. And then we eventually raised some money from angel investors. And then we got some venture capital funding. And then we eventually sold the company to Cendant Corporation in 1999. And how much did you sell it for? We sold it for about $50 million. Wow, that's incredible. So you guys were in your mid-20s when you sold the company for $50 million. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, it was a great experience. And we learned a lot, and we're really proud of what we built. And what do you think was the key to your success? I think the key to our success was that we were really focused on the user experience. We wanted to make it easy for people to find other people that they were compatible with. And we also had a really strong team, and we were very passionate about what we were doing. And I think that really came through in the product. And what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? I would say, just go for it. If you have an idea, just start building it. Don't wait for permission, and don't wait for everything to be perfect. Just get started, and iterate as you go. And also, surround yourself with great people. That's really important. And finally, just have fun with it. It's a lot of hard work, but it's also a lot of fun. That's great advice, Dale. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thanks for having me. That's Dale Kunkel, co-founder of Match.com. Next up, Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony. Stay tuned.