Coffee Meets Bagel: CEO Dawoon Kang

What’s the creation story behind Coffee Meets Bagel?

I started Coffee Meets Bagel with my two sisters because we wanted to create a company that would make a positive impact on millions of people's lives. We looked at different problems that we felt passionate about, and dating very quickly came up.

Again and again, it was becoming a growing problem for many of my single friends, including ourselves! I think this generation is going through a tremendous change in our lifestyle. We spend a ton of time focusing on our career, our friends, family and, ourselves, but there leaves very little time for meeting new people.

So new set of challenges that are becoming larger for this generation and the future. And we feel really excited about the possibility of helping others create meaningful connections and find meaningful partners!

In the past, you’ve talked about why traditional online dating isn’t very good and how you wanted to make the alternative. Could you expand on what was the problem?

A striking observation that we’ve made on current online dating services was that a lot of women felt unsafe and unexcited about using online dating. When we looked further into what was happening in the dating space, we realized that online dating has always found difficulty in recruiting and retaining women. The gender ratio in this industry among online dating participants are 65% men to 35% women.

Wow!

If you layer in the activity level between men and women, where guys are usually twice as active than women, the gender ratio can be very lopsided on any given day. You can't be an optimal experience, because guys are frustrated since they don't hear back and women are frustrated because they feel overwhelmed. And so we've our key to creating the best experience for everyone in the straight community is to be able to recruit and retain women.

When you first started, were there any big struggles that you had to overcome?

There are always struggles as a startup team that is trying to create something out of nothing with limited resources. Every day is a challenge. First, you need to start off with recruiting your first employee who's willing to buy into your vision and feel excited and committed about making those things come to fruition

They have to see the world through your lens and create the vision that you want to achieve. Other problems include fundraising, creating a technology platform as an non-technical founder, trying to get to the bottom of consumer insight that’s going to give you an edge in providing the best product experience that's better than your competitors, evolving and continuing to innovate, and creating a culture and process that's going to support creativity and innovation. Those are all part of the fun and the challenges that we experience on a daily basis.

When you made the app in mind to be more women-friendly, how did you ideate on the features that would make your vision come true?

Everything just starts with consumer insight. We interviewed a lot of women to find out what are the important factors when it comes to online dating. Why don't women use online dating — what’s their fear? Is there a concern? Is there some cognitive dissonance? What is it? A lot of them told us their stories.

So we identified two things as critically important in online dating for women: quality and safety. And then we decided to focus all of our effort in being able to deliver on quality and safety.

Going back to your challenges, something famous that happened was your pitch on Shark Tank. Two years ago, you and your sisters were offered the largest sum of money ever to buy out your company, and you turned that down. What pushed your decision to do that?

You know, we never went on there to sell our company.

More than courage, I think it's just the conviction and our belief in what we're doing and our team's ability to execute. Online dating is a very huge industry. Like I mentioned the show, Match.com makes a billion dollars in revenue every every year.

This market was very very ripe for disruption. And so, we started Coffee Meets Bagel because we wanted to change the way this generation met new people. We wanted to make it more authentic, deeper, fun, and friendlier. We’re still at the very beginning of this journey and we didn't want to stop.

I know there was a lot of pushback and some of it felt very gender based. Can you weigh in on the disparity with the way that people react to you, versus a more “traditional-looking” founder?

The thing about, was this gender based or not, is that unless like somebody explicitly made gender based comments, it's really hard to tell for sure. It’s not like we're A/B testing this kind of response, right.

But we did hear a lot of people call us greedy, crazy, and stupid. When I hear all those things, I don't know for sure if we would have received the same comments if we looked differently — more explicitly, if we were three white men.

When I went on Shark Tank and I basically said “no way we’re selling, we’re going to be big, so we're turning down your offer,” I also got called courageous, confident, and visionary. So I don't know. My belief is that I think so — I think we would have received a very different set of comments had we looked differently. But, you can never fully know I guess.

Yeah for sure, it’s very hard to test for.

I think with all the gender issues that have been getting uncovered in Silicon Valley, I think it's great that more and more people are noticing and hopefully are more mindful of the different stereotypes and biases that we operate under.

This includes men and women and all kinds of people — it’s not like there is just one kind of human being right. And so we just have to be more mindful of those. And we also have to really work on making our workplace a truly truly diverse place with equal representation of every one. It goes beyond gender to include race, background, and etc. I think it's only when we actually have a really diverse representation of all kinds of people can we really root out these kind of stereotypes. And hopefully we'll get there soon.

Hopefully! As a young woman going into the workplace, these stories can make you feel less encouraged to go into an industry that feels like it doesn't want you there. But, I’m not sure if I’m being too sensitive, because obviously, no one’s out to get me. But the fact of the matter is, it does have a higher chance of happening to me than it would someone else, such as a straight white male.

Yeah, I think we need to be very realistic about the fact that this exists and it's disappointing and also discouraging. That feeling is very valid and it should be discussed and recognized. At the same time, we can be the drivers of the changes that we want to see.

There are lots of great things happening — for one, people now recognize that gender diversity is a problem. And now there are a lot of channels and platforms for us to discuss and voice more of these kinds of opinions, and we have to fully embrace that kind of conversation. We have to help each other out and all that so we can actually see the changes that we want to see.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a professor at Columbia University. She was saying how it might feel bad now, but the general trend for diversity is improving. When she was in college, her best friend couldn't be a surgeon, but now her best friend is a surgeon! And so there has been progress.

You know, it's great but it also makes me sad that we are like “oh yeah I'm grateful that women are allowed to be surgeons now.” Like we’re still talking about this! But yeah, at least it’s good that this kind of blatant discrimination has been rooted out at least in the United States.

Yeah, it’s a little crazy that Columbia University didn't accept women until the 80s.

Yeah it's insane. It's both very encouraging and discouraging. Encouraging that wow, not very long ago the situation was really bad. And now we can't even remember or even imagine that because things are so different now. So that's great.

And now I think from here on out, it will be be harder because it’s the very subtle things that need to be changed. The things that we are used to doing, that we don't even know that we are doing — those are going to be much more difficult to root out because it requires a cultural change. It requires a generation of education. It requires that we raise our children differently. In all of this, it's going to take time.

In companies with different cultures, for example Uber, what do you think they can do for them to be better leaders to their companies? Should they hire diversity facilitators to educate them?

Honestly, change has to come from the top. For startups, large and small, I believe that the company culture is a reflection of the people and its leader.

So if the leader’s not talking the talk and walking the walk, it’s not going to happen. There needs to be more education around the importance of culture, and finding the right culture and right values from the very beginning. And really working on helping startups realize the importance of it, and educating people on the importance of diversity so that, even if you’re a small startup who feels like they don't have the resources to dedicate their time and money on those kind of issues. Even for some, I still believe there needs to be more education around how important diversity is.

And it’s difficult to do that. Sadly, for a lot of startups, since we are so resource-constrained, unless there is a business metric difference that diversity is going to positively influence in the short term, it's hard to invest.

I say this because I've been there. And so, it’s important to quantify to the extent that we can, because — even though this is what we're supposed to do because this is what's right, which is important — companies are not there to do that.

And so it needs to be compelling for the mainstream, which would be showing the real business impact of being diverse. And I truly believe there there are positive benefits to valuing equality.

Yeah, of course!

Customers nowadays make choices based on their values, right. So what you can afford, what services you choose to use, what products you choose to buy — it’s all a reflection of your own values. So I really believe those kinds of things will have a business impact, and I think it's important to dedicate some resources to thinking about that so that we can actually convey that message.

Flipping the topic around to education and business school, I noticed that you completed a MBA at Stanford. There's a lot of talk in the startup world about how you don’t need a degree to succeed. What has been your experience? What did you learn from your MBA?

I'm gonna start by saying — yeah you don't need an MBA, or a college degree, or really anything, right, to start a business. There are tons of people who start without any formal education and do very well. But, there are also many people who start without a formal education who also don't do very well. So there's no hard and fast rule.

But in my experience, having a MBA has been incredibly helpful to my startup journey. Especially as a first time entrepreneur who was new to Silicon Valley — I didn't grow up here, I didn't work here, I essentially just jumped into the industry — having gone to one of the top MBA programs in the nation really gave us a leg up in establishing a network of entrepreneurs and investors that we needed to talk to, not only to fundraise but also get advice from.

In anything that you do in life, networking is so critical. Knowing the right people and being able to leverage them is really critical to your success, and that's what a MBA provides. Sure, I didn’t truly need it, but meeting people was the most valuable resource that I received from my MBA program.

Do you think completing a Stanford MBA made people respect you and help you more?

Your alumni network is going to be critical. For example, every time I launch in a new city I just email my alumni in that city like “hey guys, I'm coming in here.” And everybody is willing to help you. I’ll ask, “hey guys I’m looking for somebody who’s experienced in leading customer service in consumer company” and suddenly I’ll know tons of people. “Hey everyone, I need to learn more about subscription business.” Again, tons of people.

I mean, this is super helpful right. Because you're trying to do something that has never been done before, being able to talk to the right people who have experience doing something similar that you can draw parallels from — that’s really important because there's no way you've done all of this yourself.

And lastly, of course, you can honour the attention of people because it’s like yeah, I have an MBA from Stanford — this is really helpful too.

Last question: what advice would you give to today's young graduates coming out of college?

The world is your oyster. Be really curious and open minded, but also very aggressive about gaining new experiences, learning new things, and meeting new people. Be relentless about your experiences and also be very reflective about them!