But the more he thought about it, the closer he came to an important realization: He wasn’t the customer. In fact, no guys were the customers. While men would be writing the checks for the service, they wouldn’t be doing anything if women weren’t there. Women, then, were his true targets, because, as he put it, “every woman would bring a hundred geeky guys.” Therefore, his goal was clear, but incredibly daunting: He had to make a dating service that was friendly to women, who represented just about 10 percent of those online at the time. According to the latest stats, the typical computer user was unmarried and at a computer for hours upon hours a week, so the opportunity seemed ripe.

To enrich his research into what women would want in such an innovation, Kremen sought out women’s input himself, asking everyone he knew—friends, family, even women he stopped on the street—what qualities they were looking for in a match. It was an essential moment, letting go of his own ego, understanding that the best way to build his market was to enlist people who knew more than him: women.

In his mind, if he could just put himself in their shoes, he could figure out their problems, and give them what they needed. He’d hand over his questionnaire, eager to get their input—only to see them scrunch up their faces and say “Ewwww.” The explicit sexual questions went down with a thud, and the notion that they would use their real names—and photos—seemed clueless. Many didn’t want some random guys to see their pictures online along with their real names, let alone suffer the embarrassment of family and friends finding them. “I don’t want anyone to know my real name,” they’d say. “What if my dad saw it?”

Read: The lure of online dating is not, in fact, irresistible

Kremen went to Peng Ong and Kevin Kunzelman, the men who were developing programming for Match, and had them implement privacy features that would mask a customer’s real email address behind an anonymous one on the service. But there was a bigger problem: He needed a female perspective on his team. He reached out to Fran Maier, a former classmate from Stanford’s business school. Maier, a brash mother of two, had always been compelled, albeit warily, by Kremen—“his fanaticism, his energy, his intensity, his competition,” as she put it. When he ran into her at a Stanford event and told her about his new venture, he was just as revved. “We’re bringing classifieds onto the internet,” he told her, and explained that he wanted her to do “gender-based marketing” for Match.

Maier, who’d been working at Clorox and AAA, jumped at the chance to get in on the new world online as the director of marketing. To her, Kremen’s passion and pioneering spirit felt infectious. And the fact that he was turning over the reins to her felt refreshingly empowering, given the boys’ club she had been used to in business. Maier showed up to the basement office with pizza and Chinese food and got to work.