Brad Stephenson
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Brad Stephenson is the founder and CEO of Datebook and former baseball player.
Out of high school, Stephenson received scholarship offers from UVA, East Carolina and Harvard. After choosing ECU, Stephenson played backup to the NCAA Catcher of the Year his freshman year.
He spent his summer in the Cape Cod League for the Falmouth Commodores, playing against Evan Longoria of the Chatham Anglers, before transferring to VCU. A third transfer to NSU gave Stephenson the starting role, where he hit .364 and was selected to Division 1 2nd Team All-State as a catcher, earning an invitation back to the Cape Cod League.
After one week, The Bourne Braves released him. Instead of going home, he slept in his car and convinced the coach to let him catch bullpens while he shopped for another team.
One week later, the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox signed him as the backup to Tony Sanchez, where he caught and shared a host family with Joe Kelly. Knowing playing time would be limited behind Sanchez, the 4th overall pick, Stephenson re-purposed himself as a pitcher and although he hadn’t pitched in 10 years, he threw two scoreless innings, striking out two. [1]
When a catcher from Team USA returned, Stephenson was out of a roster spot and interestingly enough, the Braves wanted to sign him back again. He spent the rest of the summer in Bourne batting .297 and threw an additional scoreless inning against his former team the Red Sox.
After the season ended, Stephenson stayed in Tampa with Scott Kazmir, Evan Longoria, Justin Upton, BJ Upton, and David Price after the World Series (a group who has made close to a billion dollars combined).
The following offseason, Stephenson opted to stay in Arizona and briefly caught bullpens for the Detroit Tigers during the Arizona Fall League. He then decided to focus on starting his own tech business.
In 2014, Stephenson founded Datebook [2], a competitor to Match.com and eHarmony and launched an iOS app [3] and an Android [4] app, both of which have grown at an alarming rate.
A short time later, Stephenson was selected to the Who's Who for Executives and Business Professionals, noting the importance of a female's perspective being incorporated into the online dating experience (his co-founder is female).
According to Alexa[5], Datebook ranks far above average for female visitors, and well below average for males. This aspect alone makes Datebook an anomaly, a company that has literally reversed the norms of online dating by having the women outnumber the men.
In 2015, Datebook became the first dating site allowing users to chat via live video, much like Skype, a game changing feature which creates trust amongst users by ensuring legitimacy.
It is noted that Stephenson has volunteered his time with the Special Olympics [6] for several years.
Datebook was featured by ABC News in early 2016. [7]
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][12][13]
References[edit]
- ↑ Lydia Wheeler, "STARTUP Move over, Match.com: Local web developer creates online dating site", Inside Business: The Hampton Roads Business Journal, August 1, 2014
- ↑ Datebook Android App
- ↑ Datebook iOS App
- ↑ "Datebook on Facebook"
- ↑ "Datebook on Google+"
- ↑ "Datebook on Twitter"
- ↑ TheBaseballCube.com
- ↑ LinkedIn.com
- ↑ Worldwide Who's Who
- ↑ Alexa
- ↑ Brad Stephenson
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Brad Stephenson Google
- ↑ Brad Stephenson Datebook
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