Harvard Grads Play Cupid

Three of the Harvard alums that created the popular crib-summary site SparkNotes.com have their sights set on a new web venture: capturing the sparks of romance.

Sam A. Yagan ’99, Christopher R. Coyne ’99, and Maxwell N. Krohn ’99 have released CrazyBlindDate.com, a Web site designed to add spice to the online dating community by pairing users up on blind dates.

“Sometimes you just want to go out immediately, with reckless abandon,” the team says on the site.

Also behind the creation of a more conventional online dating site—OkCupid.com—the three Harvard graduates hope to enhance the dating scene at universities like Harvard.

CrazyBlindDate—which is focused on Boston, New York, San Fransisco, and Austin—was born when an inspired Coyne called Yagan from a bar in 2002.

After five years in the making, over 1,000 people joined the Boston network on the day it was launched.

According to Yagan, CrazyBlindDate aims to provide a way for students to spontaneously meet each other on extremely short notice.

“It is a great way to meet people in general,” he said of the site, which caters to surfers seeking everything from long-term relationships to a one-night stand.

Students said the site may provide a boost to the lackluster campus dating scene.

“I think this applies to Harvard people because they can’t get a date regularly,” said Edward C. Robinson ’09.

But others feel that being paired with a stranger is a gamble.

“It’s too risky; you don’t know who is on the other side,” said Grace Kim ’11.

The fame of the creators’ previous sites may help make the case for CrazyBlindDate.

“If the people who made SparkNotes made it, then why not?” said John Koullias ’11.

The trio’s last online venture, OkCupid.com, has hundreds of thousands of users and is close to reaching its goal of being the largest dating site in the US, Yagan said.

“We hope to convert all OkCupid users into CrazyBlindDate users,” Yagan added.

CrazyBlindDate’s launch included a link on the OkCupid’s site to “A Site just for our college town, Boston.”

Yagan, busy running two dating sites, said his plans for the future include “lots of ideas for new businesses.”