A CALIFORNIA
DREAM

Justine Jen-Jen Li and Alexander Djerassi both attended Princeton University, but they didn’t officially meet until they were living in San Francisco after college—and with the help of an algorithm. “As a product manager obsessed with efficiency, I enjoyed coming up with ways to apply those same metrics for success to places they don’t really belong, like my romantic life,” says Justine, who works at a software company and is also a multimedia artist, of how she and Alexander first became acquainted. “What began as an archaeological excavation of his social media profiles turned into a series of surveys designed to surface pain points and navigate retention issues throughout our courtship.”

For Alexander—an entrepreneur, amateur magician, and the former chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department—Justine’s data-driven approach was both amusing and revealing. “Those surveys gave us confidence that despite straddling a multitude of differences, we ultimately had mutual product market fit,” she recalls.