Gary Kremen

Who is Gary Kremen?

Gary Kremen is the engineer and entrepreneur who invented online dating, founded the personals site Match.com, was the first registrant of Sex.com, and founded Clean Power Finance.

Born in the Chicago area, he graduated from Niles West High School in 1981 and then graduated with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Northwestern University in 1985 and an MBA from Stanford University in 1989.

Kremen launched the software firm Los Altos Technology and headed the company until late 1992.

In 1993, Kremen founded Electric Classifieds, Inc. the first company to bring classified advertising to the Internet. Funded by private investors in November 1994, he launched the online personals service Match.com in April 1995. After troubles with venture capitalists over his insistence that the company serve profitable alternative market segments including the LGBT market, he left Match.com in March 1996, remaining on the board of Electric Classifieds. Over Kremen's objections, Match.com was sold to Cendant Corporation for $7 million in 1998 and sold by Cendant to Ticketmaster a year and a half later for $50 million.