Christian Rudder – The Quantified Self

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:04)
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:46)
My guest today is Christian Rudder, who is the first of hopefully many guests who are not investors per se. Christian's career arc seems too interesting to be true. He's best known as a founder and CEO of OK Cupid, the popular dating site, but I'll let him walk you through the rest. He's a data and math junkie, a musician, and a very interesting thinker and business person. We discuss, among other things, interesting trends in OK Cupids data, artificial intelligence, the NSA, and great books on the Civil War. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com forward slash rudder, R-U-D-D-E-R, and now, please enjoy my conversation with Christian Rudder.
Good morning, Christian. Thanks very much for doing this with me today.
Maybe we'll start with a couple origin stories, one very short, how I came to be in your living room this morning, and then a little bit longer one, kind of your back story, since a lot of people won't be familiar. Certainly, we'll be familiar with your work and your businesses, but maybe not you personally. Just so people know, since it's kind of an odd connection, I met Christian through Jeff Graham, who was the first episode guest on the podcast, friends, I think, for a long time, and he recommended that I reach out to Christian. It turned out in the course of our conversation that I was a huge fan of data clism, Christian's book. Tiny little world here and really excited to be here with you today.

**Christian Rudder** (2:11)
Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:12)
So maybe we could start with your story, kind of a quick narrative, kind of the highlights of your career, mainly because it's kind of been all over the place. You've done a lot of interesting things.
And I'm particularly most interested in the transitions and how sometimes a career flows very naturally. It seems like you've jumped from entire different arenas to new arenas. So maybe how you how you got to each spot.

**Christian Rudder** (2:37)
Yeah, I mean, it'll be hard to kind of connect it into a whole theory or a whole story. I mean, I I guess I was I was a founder of OK Cupid, which is a dating site that that's probably the kind of tent pole of my life, I guess. I was also the main songwriter in a band called Bishop Allen, also played in the band. I was one of the people who helped make spark notes. I wasn't a founder, but joined very early on, which is spark notes are like study guides, kind of modern day Cliffs notes, I guess.
And I wrote Dataclysm, as you know, and I guess I did that not chronologically.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:11)
I guess what was the first major, was it the band? Like when you came out of school, what did you do right out of school?

**Christian Rudder** (3:18)
Well, when I came out of school, I was actually working. I had started this, I won't even call it a software company, but I wrote this program with my friend called Report Engine, which was like for stockbrokers. It was like a random idea. My girlfriend's dad at the time was a stockbroker and he like needed something and I made it.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:36)
Did it pull?

**Christian Rudder** (3:37)
It didn't even pull away. We weren't even like that ahead of the game. This was like 98 So yeah, you entered in from statements what was going on in an account and it made all these really nice reports and charts and stuff, actually a lot like how Dataclysm ended up to kind of tie the room together, so to speak. So we did that. We really didn't know what we were doing. We sold a few copies of it, but unquestionably a failure. It didn't really go anywhere. And then I moved to Austin where I was there for like three months and my main job was baking bread at this place, Texas French Bread.