As being a mathematics major at Harvard into the belated ’90s, Yagan forever changed the marketplace for student cheat sheets, then dominated by the iconic black-and-yellow CliffsNotes booklets, together with his SparkNotes, a totally free Web-based copycat. Next, Yagan went following the music company, producing the file-sharing device eDonkey. Ahead of the company ended up being litigated away from presence with a record-industry lawsuit, it boasted the planet’s many popular file-sharing computer software, larger also than Napster.
Now Yagan had attempt to bring able to online dating sites, a market that is growing by a wide range of, as Yagan saw them, costly and unsatisfactory rivals like IAC’s (NYSE: IACI) Match.com. Yagan figured he could inflict severe harm on Match, the industry giant with 2007 income of $349 million, along with other big membership web internet sites such as for example eHarmony and JDate simply by using the exact same strategy he employed with SparkNotes. “Take a business that is existing” he explains, “reduce the revenue that industry creates by providing a free of charge item, after which claim the rest of the income on your own. “