Gary Kremen

Gary Kremen (born 1963) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who invented online dating, founded the personals site Match.com, was the first registrant of Sex.com and founder of Clean Power Finance, and is the current chair of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Since 1993, Kremen has been a private and angel Investor in over 50 companies (individually or through venture capital funds), of which several have gone public or had liquidity events.

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. 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.

From 1995 to 1996, Kremen founded and served as president of NetAngels.com, Inc., an Internet profiling and personalization company that suggested web sites to users. He left when NetAngels merged with Boston personalization software firm Firefly Network, Inc. in 1997, and Firefly was sold to Microsoft in 1998 in a reported $40 million deal.

In 1999, Kremen was listed as an equity-holding officer or director of Brightcube, Inc. The same year, he sold Computer.com for $500,000.

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