Hollis Johnson/Business Insider
- Sam Yagan started his first company, SparkNotes, his senior year at Harvard University without money or a foundation to build professional success.
- Yagan went on to be the CEO of Match.com after co-founding OKCupid and is now the CEO of ShopRunner.
- He credits his success to being present, surrounding himself with people smarter than he is, and being willing to fail.
It didn’t take Sam Yagan long to start his first company — he didn’t even have a college degree yet. But creating a company successfully takes more than a good idea, it takes leadership and the ability to accept failure.
In his senior year of college at Harvard University, Yagan and his close friends created SparkNotes, a study guide website. From there, Yagan became the president of eDonkey, co-founder of OKCupid, and CEO of Match.com. He’s now the CEO of ShopRunner, a competitor to Amazon Prime’s shopping service.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL explains why you should get up at 4:30 am every day
See Also:
- The cofounder of SparkNotes got a flood of hate mail when his site went live — and he knew it was a good sign
- A former Navy SEAL says the notoriously brutal SEAL training boils down to a single lesson
- Sallie Krawcheck thought she hated banking until she asked herself a question that led to her to become ‘the most powerful woman on Wall Street’
SEE ALSO: The cofounder of OKCupid says 3 lucky moments led him to run a multi-billion-dollar company
SEE ALSO: Match Inc CEO Sam Yagan Reveals How Math And Data Predict Love Online