Is your company cool enough for T-Pain? Zoosk is.

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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By Jennifer Cabala

A self described “tech geek”, Shayan Zadeh knows how launch a company while still maintaining a healthy perspective.  As co-founder and co-CEO of Zoosk, he brought the “fun” back to online dating. He has 50 million happy users and a Flo-rida / T-Pain Song named after his company to show for it. 

Shayan will speaking at StartupDay 2010 about the importance of “Picking Founders and Advisors.” We spoke to Zadeh about the origin of great ideas, good accidents and the two words that warm this entrepreneur’s heart.

When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? I heard how passionate other entrepreneurs were about their work compared to any other career path. I was in grad school and hearing them talk about their companies made me want to become one. 

What was your last corporate job? Product Manager at Microsoft for the servers and tools team.

What was your first startup? SynteSoft. We built computer-aided decision support systems and optimization software with parallel and network-based computation capability. The company was a finalist in University of Maryland’s business plan competition. However, we couldn’t pursue it. The reason, at the time, all of the founders were on student visas.  So we had to drop the project and go get our green cards.
How did you come up with the idea for Zoosk? It was an accidental discovery. We were building a marketing research company that was leveraging social media. One weekend project for that company had a dating connotation. It took off and we realized there was a huge opportunity to re-invent online dating for 21st century. 

What is your company pitch?  Zoosk is a social network for your dating life, just like Facebook is a social network for keeping up with friends and LinkedIn is a social network for your professional life.

What is the best moment in your entrepreneurial career?  Many, many of these. One that always warms my heart is when we get thank you notes from users who have found a relationship that has made them very very happy. Now we are getting these on a daily basis but they still give me a kick.

What are some startup myths? There is no overnight success. The romanticized stories about overnight success are just that. The entrepreneur behind even the most successful startups has had very bad days.  They have also doubted their plans, ideas and future. However, it’s human nature that when we look back, we just remember the good parts. So don’t get disappointed if your daily life as an entrepreneur is not always rosy :)

What will you be talking about at StartupDay ?  How to pick co-founders and advisors and why it’s a damn important decision.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received ? Experiment often and fail fast.

What is next for you and your company?  We want to make Zoosk the best and biggest online dating service worldwide. We are well on our way but still need a year or two of excellent execution and innovation. 

So how do you get Flo-Rida and T-Pain to write a song about your product? According to Poe Boy Music Group CEO Elrin “E-Class” Prince the song came about this way: “One of T-Pain’s boys, Tay Dizm, was talking about how he met some fine girl on Zoosk. He was talking all kind of mess about how good she looked and that she actually had good credit. T-Pain responded from the booth and was like “I need me a Zoosk Girl“. The jokes then turned into a song and it went from there.”
 
Although T-Pain won’t be there, you can hear Shayan and other founders speak about topics that will help you build your business at StartupDay 2010. Register today! Ticket prices go up Friday at midnight and they will sell out.

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