Rudder joined
SparkNotes in October 1999, a few months after its founding. Rudder was the creative voice of TheSpark.com, which was the viral content arm of
SparkNotes during the site's early rise to popularity. He became TheSpark's
creative director in March 2001. Soon after the site's sale to
Barnes & Noble, Rudder began building
OkCupid with SparkNotes founders Chris Coyne,
Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn.
OkCupid and writing The online dating site OkCupid launched on January 19, 2004, with Rudder and his three business partners as co-founders. Rudder focused on the front-end product and developed the site's editorial voice. From 2009 to 2011, OkCupid published statistical observations and analysis of members' preferences and connections; the blog posts were written by Rudder and gained widespread media attention. In February 2011, OkCupid was sold to
IAC Inc., the owner of Match.com and other dating properties, for $90 million. Following the sale, Rudder served as president of OkCupid until he left in 2015.
Dataclysm book Rudder expanded his writings for OkCupid into the non-fiction book
Dataclysm, which became a
New York Times Best Seller in September 2014 and was a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize that year in the Science & Technology category. ==Music==