Meet Up With The Harvard-Stanford MBA Sister Act Behind Millennial Dating App Coffee Meets Bagel

Arum and Dawoon Kang are dealing with Tinder making use of their app that is dating for

(Left to right) Dawoon, older sister Soo, and sister that is twin, pitch on tv program Shark Tank

Arum Kang arrived up using the basic concept for Coffee Meets Bagel during an MBA at Harvard company class. She ended up being certainly one of a a small number of pupils through the HBS MBA course of kenyancupid 2011 to take to start out their very own company.

Today, Coffee Meets Bagel solutions globally. The Tinder-like relationship app has made over one billion introductions up to now, accountable for 100,000-plus partners in pleased relationships.

Arum operates the app—targeted at millennials—with her double sis Dawoon and older sis Soo. In 2015, they also pitched to a panel of high-profile investors on United States truth tv program Shark Tank.

“i did son’t get to HBS reasoning I happened to be planning to begin a company, but being here certainly exposed me more to entrepreneurship,” Arum recalls.

“In therefore ways that are many my MBA experience permitted me become a business owner. We don’t think We may have gotten started at all if i did son’t have that system of individuals i really could make use of, that have been therefore ready to help.”

Initially from Southern Korea, the Kang siblings result from a grouped family members of business owners. Their dad went their scrap that is own iron; their mom handled a variety of pubs and restaurants.

Dawoon has constantly had entrepreneurship inside her head. While Arum went for Harvard, she decided on Stanford on her behalf MBA.

After finishing her MBA at Stanford last year, Dawoon invested years that are several JP Morgan until, whenever Arum graduated from Harvard, she joined up with forces along with her siblings to begin her very very first company.

“We desired to make a move that directly impacts individuals’ everyday everyday everyday everyday lives,” Dawoon recalls. “Dating arrived up being a typical discomfort point.

“There’s plenty of fatigue and frustration with contemporary dating—i do believe it is become really complicated,” she continues. “I’m interested in using Coffee satisfies Bagel as a car to alter the discussion; to obtain this generation to talk about and link more authentically.

“once you think of major millennial dating apps now, there’s Tinder, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel.”

On Coffee Meets Bagel, users are paired through a good algorithm, deciding to either ‘like’ or ‘pass’ a profile to discover the best possible match.

In September 2017, the San company that is francisco-based large number of matches to ascertain the ‘most liked’ singles at company schools over the usa. There clearly was debate one of the b-school community whenever ladies MBAs from Harvard had been reported as the utmost appealing (most liked regarding the software), whilst the many liked guys arrived from Stanford GSB.

“There had been plenty of attractive individuals at Stanford!” Dawoon laughs. “With numerous people that are like-minded there was clearly a lot of dating going in. In a course of 300 individuals, there have been like 30 partners! We definitely had my reasonable share of dating.”

When Dawoon speaks women in technology, she takes a far more severe tone. She’s keen to use her place as a tech that is female to advertise the part of females in a business nevertheless dominated by guys.

“from the using computer technology course in university and reasoning, I try not to belong right right right right here,” she claims. “I struggled and I also straight away thought; I’m perhaps not great at this. I believe if there was indeed more women represented when you look at the course, i’dn’t have jumped towards the conclusions that are same quickly.

“It makes a big difference for young adults to see representation of one’s own sort involved in a specific industry,” she continues. We need to get every person equally represented up for grabs.“If we really would like equality,”

Do you’ll need an MBA to be a business owner? “No,” Dawoon concludes. “But it is been extremely valuable in my situation.

“One for the things you leverage can be your system. Employing the right skill; getting good partnerships; all that comes down to individuals we realize through the MBA.”