Gary Kremen and his Entrepreneurship journey

By Brittany Staves

Becoming an Entrepreneur sounds like the right path for a person who is independent, self-motivated, and has a vision for the future they want to build.

Sounds easy? Develop an idea and then be passionate about it!

Gary Kremen is the founder of several companies including, but not limited to; Match.com, Los Altos Technology, Sociogramics, Clean Power Finance, and Sex.com.

Kremen grew up in Chicago with two working parents in the public school system. He took his academics seriously but was very problematic and disobedient at the same time. He worked during the summers unloading and loading trucks in a warehouse. This was his first introduction to Entrepreneurship. His boss could make a profit out of any situation and he admired that.

It takes one thing to spark an interest!

Kremen was very well educated. He graduated from North Western and Stanford Business School. He jumped right into creating Start-Ups. Match.com was a huge success for him. Only 5% of Americans had Internet at the time so there was no guarantee this company would work. Kremen took a huge leap of faith but it turned out to be good. This email service grew 3–4% every day in its popularity.

There were several steps taken for Match.com to be as successful as it became. Kremen understood the female's needs and concerns first. He understood why some customers would be hesitant to trust the program and lastly, he kept the program working — there was no setback or delays that denied customer satisfaction.

Match.com worked hard to ensure its customers knew that it was a safe and friendly engine that was meant to be a positive thing; not an embarrassment. Ways Kremen did this was by providing absolute privacy, booting creepy people off the system, and by being honest and completely transparent with his customers. If there wasn’t a match then there simply wasn’t a match and the message would be relayed to the customer.

Kremen has always been the CEO and founder of his companies. He had a team board who shared his same passion and helped provide ideas for figuring out what needed to be changed and what needed to be enhanced to engage customers. His team worked 7 days a week and was under his strict authority. There were constant clashes in opinion and differing visions. Which was a challenge in itself.

Kremen is 100% a businessman and any opportunity there was to make a profit he jumped at it. He bought several generic domain names in hopes that one day someone would want to buy it off of him. Kremen had several patents, like dynamic web pages which he profited off of as well. He kept his spending low and lived like he didn't have much.

Gary Kremen's road of Entrepreneurship didn’t stop at Match.com. He invested in several other companies that he was interested in developing. He fixed problems and wrote software to help bring big business in. He continued to find ways to build companies he was interested in like the Solar Company because he's always had an interest in sustainable living.

What we can all learn is that startups can be a bumpy ride but you just have to stick with it! Find what you love. Find your passion. Find something you want to invest all your time in to make it great!

“97% of the people who quit too soon are employed by the 3% who never gave up!” (unknown)