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Shayan Zadeh, founder of Zoosk: $250 million sale to Spark Networks
Startup Exits
English - October 21, 2020 17:34 - 40 minutes - 73.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 12 ratingsBusiness Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: Thejo Kote, founder of Automatic: $115 million sale to SiriusXM
With friend and co-founder Alex Mehr, Shayan Zadeh came to US from Iran at a time when both countries had no diplomatic relations or direct flights. They went on to study computer science, work at NASA and Microsoft, and start Zoosk – an Inc 5000 dating platform that went on to exit for $250 million.
On this episode of the Startup Exits Podcast, we chat with Shayan about:
• Coming to US as a founder
• Generating and filtering startup ideas
• Weathering a storm vs. Beating a dead horse
• Early days of Zoosk and key pivot
• Why have two CEOs at a startup?
• Cancelling an IPO
Shayan Zadeh is currently the CEO of DressBarn.
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