Sex and the Chi-ty: Product Management vs. Dating

By: Cathy Campo, Co-Editor-in-Chief

They say dating is a numbers game—which is convenient, because I go to business school.

HBO's Sex and the City cast Left to right: Samantha, Miranda, Carrie, Charlotte

Welcome to Sex and the Chi(cago)-ty, a column for those of us trying to optimize our romantic lives somewhere between group projects, recruiting, and townhouse parties. My name is Cathy (this close to being “Carrie”), and I’ve been single for about a year after back-to-back relationships that lasted longer than some VC-backed startups.

Before Kellogg, I worked in television at Netflix—mostly on unscripted series, which is just a fancy way of saying “reality TV.” I sat in rooms where we brainstormed dating show concepts like Too Hot to Handle and debated casting decisions based on unattainable good looks. Back then, I thought I was watching love unfold. Now, I realize I was just watching the MVP version—the “minimum viable partner.” (“MVP” is an acronym for “minimum viable product” for all you non-techies out there). (An editor has reminded me that the much more popular definition of “MVP” is “most valuable player” which tells you how much I know about sports).

Cut to now: I’m halfway through my MBA and trying not to fall for anyone who uses “synergy” in a sentence outside of class. I also spent the summer interning in product management, and I couldn’t help but wonder… are dating and product really all that different?

In both, you define your MVP, run a bunch of A/B tests, get your hopes up, and pray the latest version doesn’t crash on launch. You gather user feedback (sometimes unsolicited), look for patterns in the data (fuckboys: 100% failure rate), and keep iterating until the right version sticks—or you decide to sunset the whole feature set and pivot to self-care.

When I started dating again last year, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted: someone driven, funny, tall, and preferably not in my section. But over time, like any good PM, I learned to update my criteria. Maybe ambition doesn’t have to look like a 10-year plan. Maybe kindness trumps credentials. Maybe I don’t actually care about height. (I do actually, I’m so sorry. In my defense, I’m pretty tall.)

Dating at Kellogg—in a compressed, beer-fueled, LinkedIn-heavy ecosystem—is its own case study. It’s weird enough when your situationship is in your marketing group. It’s weirder when you realize their ex is your friend’s roommate. The venn diagram of single people at Kellogg is basically a circle. And yet, somehow, we keep trying.

I recently started seeing someone (I know—plot twist). And while it’s new and probably not IPO-ready, I’m learning that sometimes the final product doesn’t always look like the original roadmap. He’s not Carrie Bradshaw’s “Mr. Big.” He’s not frustratingly complicated or emotionally unavailable, and he doesn’t disappear for months at a time. He’s just good. And the PM in me recognizes that sometimes the best product is the one that quietly works.

Welcome to Sex and the Chi-ty. If you’ve ever found yourself Ubering into Chicago for a man who doesn’t pay, circling back to your Q1 crush, or accidentally falling for someone in your IPG, slide into my inbox to write your own column (pseudonyms are welcome!). Dating at Kellogg is basically a group project. We’re all iterating on love. Might as well do it together.