About Us
Chris Coyne Co-founder, President, & Creative Director
Chris has masterminded three of the world’s most popular
websites. As Co-Founder and Creative Director of
TheSpark.com, Chris oversaw development of both TheSpark.com
and SparkNotes.com. TheSpark earned acclaim as Maxim
magazine “Site of the Year,” Yahoo’s “Best of the Web” and
countless press mentions including USA Today, Jane, Time, and
Newsweek. SparkNotes.com remains the world’s most popular
educational website and has been written up in The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher
Education, and U.S. News. As Co-Founder and Creative
Director of OkCupid, Chris is once again trying to bring
people happiness — this time by playing matchmaker. Chris
graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Mathematics.
Sam Yagan Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer
Sam has spent six years as an entrepreneur, first as Co-founder and
CEO of TheSpark.com, Inc., maker of SparkNotes, the world’s leading brand of educational
study aids. More recently, he has served as President of MetaMachine,
Inc., developer and distributor of the world’s leading P2P
file-sharing application, eDonkey. Sam has also served as
Vice-President and General Manager at Delias, Corp., and
Vice-President and Publisher at Barnes & Noble, Inc. Sam has a BA
in Applied Mathematics & Economics from Harvard College and an MBA
from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Max Krohn Co-Founder, Director
Max Co-Founded TheSpark.com and served as its Chief Technology
Officer; at OkCupid, Max designed the Ok Web Server (OKWS) and
continues to help with OkCupid’s technological development. OKWS
is specialized for building fast and secure Web services. Despite
its emphasis on security, OKWS shows performance advantages
relative to popular competitors such as Apache, Flash, and Habob.
After co-founding OkCupid, Max decided to take some away to pursue
a Ph. D. in computer science from MIT. Max graduated summa cum
laude from Harvard College with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.
Christian Rudder Co-founder, Editorial Director
Christian first gained fame as Editorial Director of TheSpark.com,
where he authored the web’s most popular personality tests. He also
designed and wrote TheSpark’s series of infamous science projects,
including The Fat Project, Stinky Meat, Stinky Feet, and Date My
Sister. In addition to contributing to OkCupid’s editorial content,
Christian moonlights with his band, Bishop Allen. Christian graduated
from Harvard College with a BA in Mathematics.
Vinay Pai Chief Technical Officer
Vinay’s skills with the red and blue shells can even knock Chris Coyne out of first.
Vinay is second_phoenix on OkCupid.
John Marc Imbrescia Software Engineer
JM was a devoted
user
of OkCupid for over a year before becoming an
employee in February of 2006. Prior to that he worked a boring but not
altogether soul sucking job as a reporting expert in the .NET world.
Happy to be devoting his time to something interesting JM has taken over
as testmaster. On weekends you will often find him around the city
playing poker. JM graduated from Rensselaer
with a BS in Electronic Media, Arts and Communication
and Computer Science.
Eujern Lim Software Engineer
Eujern loves soccer.
Eli Gwynn Software Engineer
Eli plays the saxophone, loves jazz music and can speak Mandarin at the level of a 6 year old Chinese child.
Yes, that picture’s actually him.
Tom Quisel Software Engineer
Tom’s robotic arms give him twice the strength of a normal man, but we can’t find him a keyboard that doesn’t shatter after a few days.
Meghan Beres Office Chick
Meghan holds an Honours BA in Dance and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa, which totally qualifies
her to work at a web company. She does lots of things, but primary among her job duties are making sure Sam
doesn’t go insane, writing surveys, busting spammers and never, ever letting the programmers run out of Diet Pepsi. (Seen “Gremlins” Yeah.) She is meghanberes on this site.
Erik Steigler Network Administrator
Erik tries to make sure the servers don’t get overloaded, he also drinks a lot of the Pepsi that Meghan ensures is available.
James Dowdell Software Engineer
Elusive and mysterious, of him not much is known. At different times
and in several places his presence was often claimed, influencing the
outcome of great events from the sidelines; few have dared come
forward publicly, and of them most were quickly silenced. Scant fragments
remain, floating on the outskirts of rumor and myth:
“...materializing the Longest Road from nowhere, the emigres of His
Great Nation wrecked havoc on the island...”
“...and He called down great raking lightening upon Chaos Bag[?] and
all who followed him ... and they were obliterated...”
Rumored to have last been seen in a pointy magician’s hat with moons
and stars sprinting south on the Brooklyn Bridge screaming “How do I
get to Uptown?!!”
Peter Welch Web Designer
Peter Welch has very large hands. Goldfish provided for scale.
Craig Hammell Web Developer
Craig's Urban Terror skills can not be bested.
