An Ivy League economic policy center widely cited by legacy media received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a group run by its co-founder’s brother, a dating app founder with a controversial past.
Sam Yagan, a co-founder of online dating service OkCupid, has donated $400,000 to the Yale Budget Lab. Yagan’s history includes a sexual harassment lawsuit and investments in companies with legal and regulatory failures.
Danny Yagan, Sam’s older brother, is the Budget Lab’s co-founder and chief economist, according to the policy center’s website. The Yagan Family Foundation which Sam Yagan and his wife Jessica started donated $200,000 to the Budget Lab in both 2023 and 2024, according to ProPublica.
Sam Yagan faced backlash in 2014 over a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Whitney Wolfe, an executive at dating app Tinder. The lawsuit claimed that another Tinder executive subjected Wolfe to “sexually charged abuse and threats,” and Yagan, “looked the other way,” according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
At the time Yagan was the CEO of Match Group, an American internet and technology company that operates popular online dating sites including both OkCupid and Tinder. Wolfe later went on to found rival dating app Bumble and stated that Yagan was unmoved and “didn’t feel compelled to do anything in response,” to her sexual abuse claims, according to NBC.
The budget lab is a policy research center that studies how government policies affect the American economy. They claim they are a non-partisan center that provides in-depth analysis of federal policy proposals, per its website.
The budget lab, founded by three former members of the Biden Administration including Danny Yagan, “aims to address gaps in current economic analysis,” according to Yale Daily News.
Sean Rad, CEO of Tinder, Greg Blatt, chairman of Match Group and Sam Yagan, CEO of Match Group and co-founder and CEO of OkCupid, celebrate Match Group’s initial public offering (IPO) at the NASDAQ stock exchange on November 20, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
“Our goal is to bring fresh ideas and new methods so policymakers can make better choices. To that end, we have been building tools to analyze the fiscal and social impacts of government policies,” according to its website.
The Budget Center has analyzed topics like the impacts of artificial intelligence on the labor markets, economic effects on tariffs and created models of early childhood education and care.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and The Associated Press are among several organizations that have cited the budget lab, according to its website.
Yagan is also co-founder of Corazon Capital, a venture capital firm whose portfolio companies have faced several controversies.
In 2022, a Corazon portfolio company, SafeGraph, faced criticism for selling the location data of individuals who visited Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, according to Vice. The company tracked how often people would visit, how long they would stay, where they came from and where they went to after, the outlet reported.
Clarifai, another company in Corazon’s portfolio, came to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in April over data privacy violations, according to Reuters. The company reportedly obtained three million OkCupid user photos to train their artificial intelligence recognition technology. (RELATED: Amazon’s Ring Doorbell Stored Strangers’ Faces, New Lawsuit Claims)
SpotHero is among another portfolio company under Corazon that is being sued in California over pricing practices, according to Open Class Action.
Danny Yagan’s work has also been funded by liberal organizations such as the Arnold Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, according to the Budget Lab’s website. The Arnold Foundation is a philanthropic organization focused on evidence-based solutions, according to its website. The Sloan Foundation is a non profit grant-making institution, its website states.
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