- Duration: 30 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JQA3KH9SBSEA9TTM06GF3DQY (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JQA3KH9SBSEA9TTM06GF3DQY)
Transcript
[Cody]: It looks like you didn’t finish the onboarding, so I don’t have your information in front of me. Not a huge deal, but you will want to do that at some point. I’m actually curious, normally it doesn’t let you even book one of these meetings until you finish with that. [Michael Houck]: How did you book this meeting? Oh, Jake introduced us over email. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: That’s right. [Cody]: My bad, I’m forgetting. [Michael Houck]: You probably do this same meeting ton. So I do. And I do. [Cody]: When was that? I’m having trouble. There’s a couple. That’s right. That’s right. It was just a little wise back. That’s why my memory is not catching up. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, cool, man. Sorry, it took me a second there to get fully caught up. Yeah, so I don’t have a ton of context because I don’t have that onboarding. But that’s okay. Do you want to just kind of it’d be awesome if we could just kind of kick things off here by if you want to just tell me like a little bit about your dating journey? What have you tried? Have you tried the apps? Have you tried other matchmakers? How do you feel like it’s gone? [Michael Houck]: That kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, I didn’t know you were one of the co-founders. So congrats on building an amazing product and business. I’ve been a huge fan ever since I met Jake last year. Featured you guys in our deal flow newsletter to a bunch of investors a couple of times, I think, when you were raising. So yeah, I hope that was helpful. But it’s a huge fan. I think you guys are at like, you’re doing this very high leverage point in society. You’re building a sort of an arbiter with AI. And I think it’s just a really smart model. So I’m a fan, as a founder to founder, I’m a fan. But yeah, so let’s see. So I’m 34. I was married for the last four years up until about six months ago. I met my ex-wife. In New York through Hinge and have, you know, dated extensively through apps before that. Also met people in person through church, places like that. But, you know, just got divorced because she changed her mind and no longer wanted kids. And that was like my one deal breaker. So I was like, I’m out. And so really just looking for something that will not waste my and swiping through a million things on the app, I’m just not interested in doing that anymore. And so if I’m going to go with a digital solution as part of my plan to find my next wife, I see it probably being something in the matchmaking space, and I’d rather go with something like this, which seems more accurately curated than a person matchmaker could possibly be a larger pool. [Cody]: Sure. Yeah, that’s certainly the goal. Yeah, so what context are you coming in with in terms of just how we work and all that stuff? I don’t want to say stuff you already know. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think I understand how a product works. I might have some specific questions about that. But I did have a couple of questions about the onboarding. So I guess the questions that I didn’t complete are mostly ones that I wasn’t sure how much context to add to them. Is the widest amount of context possible? Should I just add 10,000 characters? How much detail should be in those answers? [Cody]: Yeah, I mean, generally, more is better. So however much you can stomach. Got it. [Michael Houck]: And that’s all stored, I guess, privately somewhere. It’s a sense of information in some cases. [Cody]: Oh, yeah. Yes, security very seriously. So I don’t know if I could give you the hyper-technical details right now. I’m not one of the technical guys, but if you want those, I could get them from the engineers. [Michael Houck]: No, it’s okay. Just wanted to make sure. Yeah, I guess I also don’t live anywhere right now. I’m nomadic. I’m currently in Nashville, sort of seeing if this is a potential spot to plant roots. I’m also looking at Charleston and Dallas and a couple places. Does that basically mean that I should wait until I have a firm location to put in the location question where like, it won’t be worth it for me to move forward until then? [Cody]: Um, yeah, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know if I would say quite as strongly as like, it’s not worth it at all. But yeah, I mean, it obviously certainly helps to have a sense of that. It would be awkward if we made you we found you an incredible match that ultimately you can’t, you know, see through because You know one location and you don’t end up there or whatever be devastating actually Yeah, so yeah, I would recommend having some clarity on that but you know like We can always start off with whatever clarity that you do have I have no clarity like I’m like week to week in a different city right now, so [Michael Houck]: Maybe maybe I just I don’t know I could just pick the leading contender for where I might end up, I guess. [Cody]: Yeah, and we could restrict the search for the time being to people who also have some more location flexibility and freedom, and then expand to people who have less freedom once you have clarity. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, would it be possible for me to say, here is a list of a couple cities I’m not considering anything outside of those cities? Is that possible? [Cody]: Yeah, totally. So yeah, on the location step, you’ll see when you revisit it, there’s ideal, acceptable, and unacceptable locations. And you can just toggle between one or none. My bad. OK. So just enter your ideal ones. And then if you’re some, any that you definitely know or know. And basically, the difference between that toggle is if it’s all or some, any that you don’t explicitly specify will be assumed to be acceptable. And vice versa. [Michael Houck]: So if you’re one or some, so this is, this is all I see here. [Cody]: So if I pick like, let’s say Nashville, so this is a trade step. There should be a, a corresponding preference step. Um, let’s see. Yep. Okay. [Michael Houck]: So yeah, I guess for, for, for my, location, what should I just put pick one of them, basically, I just pick one that’s matters less. Okay, cool. That sounds good. I’ll do that. I’m trying to think of any other specific things. What do people usually put in the the anything we missed? [Cody]: It’s, you know, very wide ranging. It could be anything from I don’t know if you have any very specific things about yourself that you feel like are important to tell us. Do you feel like you’re psychologically unique in any ways, neurodivergent, anything like that? Do you have any unique lifestyle considerations, specific food allergies, or you hate dogs, or whatever it is, things that you think make you a unique puzzle piece. That’s the most important stuff. Got it. [Michael Houck]: And does that get shown on the profile, or is that just fodder for the AI matching system? [Cody]: It’s potentially both. So I don’t know, I mean, if you already know this, stop me. But basically, we have this like three layered search process, where first layer is just like quantitative structured data, pretty dumb, but you know, hits every, you know, potential possible pairwise combination. And then middle step is like AI, right? So a lot smarter, everything from like, sort of lighter weight NLP models, all the way up to like heavyweight LLMs. And then like, last step is, you know, humans, human matchmakers Etc. Etc. And so they are, you know, adding that last layer of sort of discretion and they also tailor the profiles to be, you know, super just look good to human sensibilities and also tailored to your match. So they will custom, you know, I can’t promise what will or will will or will not be included in that profile. It just depends on what we feel like is going to be appropriate to your like, you know, look good to your match. But like, if there’s anything that you definitely don’t want shared, you could specify that. [Michael Houck]: OK, got it. OK, and then I guess like, OK, so in the preferences section then, so like the last couple questions, I got stuck at the physical preferences question because I was like, how specific should I be? What do people normally put for that? [Cody]: Yeah, if you’re giving us a precise number of frames, so that’ll be trouble. But if you want to do a freckle range, we can work with that. No, I mean, generally, I would say, here’s the most useful way that you can give us information. Give us the most possible information that you can or can tolerate putting down on the page, and then just prioritize it for us. So if you want to be hyper-specific, that’s awesome. That’s great, because we might have that person, and better to know it than not know it. But then if you can just say like, you know, like here are must-haves and here are nice-to-haves or whatever, right? So it’s like, yeah, it’d be awesome if she had 47 freckles, but I’ll take anything from 12 to 50. [Michael Houck]: It’s like, you know, that’s the good way to do it. Okay, that makes sense. And then one other sort of setup question is photos. So like, I sort of get the dating app photo game, but for you guys specifically, like how many photos is ideal to include? Is it just a more is better type thing or what? [Cody]: Yeah, I would say with diminishing marginal returns like after six. OK, partly partly the I mean, if you want context, they’re happy to give it like one of the reasons it’s nice to have more is just because if you’ve already like hyper optimize your photo game, then like this will matter a little bit less. But like one reason is like, you know, we’re going to test all your photos and that just gives us a wider range to choose from and just a higher chance that you have a really good one in that in that batch for us to show you off with. And also, like, you know, for what it’s worth, like, there are a lot of sort of inferences that can be made about somebody’s personality and stuff from photos. So just getting more fodder there is nice. But yeah, I would say three, three minimum diminishing marginal trend after six. [Michael Houck]: Okay, so I’ll go for six plus, I probably need new photos, honestly, because I’m, okay, here’s, here’s, here’s one more question. And sorry, I’m peppering you. [Cody]: I know. As long as you want. [Michael Houck]: I’m like, I’m in the process losing some weight that I gained in the last year of the marriage where I was just depressed. [Cody]: Sure. [Michael Houck]: Is it better for me working with you guys to wait until I get to that point and like, obviously take new photos and things like that? Or is it like, like, can I can we say like, I should just finish the onboarding and then maybe we don’t push it out there until I give it go? Like, can I go like pause like off? Or how does that work? [Cody]: Yeah, it’s a really good question. So there’s kind of two parts to it. I’ll answer the second one first. You can pause or unpause your matchmaking status whenever you want. So you can do that yourself. There’s a button in the portal. It works exactly as you’d expect. When you’re paused, the gears just stop. You can unpause at any time and the gears just start moving again. No discontinuity. How much did you optimize your profile before we do the search? I would say it’s like a weight calculation. It’s like, yeah, You could wait forever. You could wait until you’re on Schwarzenegger Recommend waiting forever if you think that you have a photo shoot coming up right around the corner Or if you think that you’re gonna be losing a lot of weight, you’re gonna look a lot better in three months It’s like yeah that can be that can be helpful Obviously that we would we wouldn’t want to find the perfect girl for you and then show your profile to her and have no right, [Michael Houck]: you know, so The more the more I trust the the matchmaking process that you guys have The more I feel like I should wait a little bit before sort of you showing you to those first people who might be my best matches, you know Yes, I would say that’s probably optimal if you feel like you’re gonna be having some gains soon Okay, cool, okay, that’s probably what I’ll do then I’ll probably answer the questions that I can but I probably won’t submit until like a couple months down the line and then I guess like Yeah, so what happens after that? Let’s say I’m in one of these cities, and I move forward with the profile, and it’s good, everything’s set up right. How quickly do matches start coming in? What’s the interaction model there? Give me some context of what happens next. [Cody]: Yeah, totally. So that actually is going to be changing within this year. Right now, because we’re not at 100% automation yet, we still have humans in the loop, it’s highly variable. So like, um, it can be anywhere. The timelines, I mean, it can be anywhere from like a couple of days or a week, um, for your first match to six weeks or sometimes in rare cases, more like it just depends on, you know, on all the, all the variables that go into matchmaking. Um, and as well in full transparency, I always like to just be really, really blunt about this aspect of it. Like probably the thing we have a super accurate algorithm. It’s what we focused on this far. The thing that we do the least well. Is transparency and regular updates. So not because we don’t want to, it’s just a non-trivial problem to solve at scale, and the updates aren’t going to be exciting. It’s going to be like, yep, we’re still searching. So usually, I would project the most likely experience is that you sign up, you hear from your matchmaker at first because you need some more information or whatever, you make sure you’re all copacetic. Then she starts doing the search and it’s like radio silence for like four weeks. And then one day she calls you up and she’s like, I have the perfect girl for you. Um, okay. So obviously you’re always welcome to reach out in the interim. If like you have questions, we’re always here. But, um, uh, yeah, anyway, that, like I said, it might be worth mentioning. Like we are going to be launched, like we’re going to be hitting full automation in this summer. Um, so at that point, theoretically, like we’re going to be launching a massive new portal rebuild and there’s going to be like way more interactive elements for you to like just all that like active regular deep updates and stuff that people are hungry for like that’s all going to be there so you know that’ll change I’ll eat my words here in about six months but for right now yeah everything always takes longer than you think even when you [Michael Houck]: plan for it to take longer than you think right yes that’s right that’s right um well cool I’m excited about that that sounds good but yeah I mean the transparency communication I don’t really it’s fine I basically view this as sort of like a, I don’t know, like a, like a high upside thing, you know, like, it’s not like it’s, I’d be betting the farm on this, but yeah, it’s a little bit like a golden ticket. That’s right. Right. Exactly. Okay. And then what, so the matchmaker shares this match with me, I say like thumbs up and then she gets thumbs up from the girl too. And then we get introed or what happens there? [Cody]: We’ll show it to the woman first. So make sure she’s super bought it and definitely want wants to, you know, we don’t want to waste your time. Definitely wants to meet you. Then we would show her profile to you. And then, yeah, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down based on the profile. It’s only ever one match at a time. So obviously, like our goal here is to be the opposite of Tinder. It’s like low volume, high quality. [Michael Houck]: And it’s the best match we can possibly find based on our current understanding of you. OK, I guess two sort of final questions then. One is, Oh, the first one just popped out of my head. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: We’ll do the second one. [Michael Houck]: Any general tips for as I fill out the answers to these questions, especially sort of the, I guess, the ones that are more text-based? What causes people to have success on the platform that I might not think about coming from other dating apps? [Cody]: Yeah, it’s a good question. So the biggest levers that you can pull to get the best possible results are one of my kind of already told you, it’s like, it’s not just the quality of information you give us, but there’s like two layers to that. So it’s like, A, just like give us a lot and prioritize it. I already told you that one. The one that I haven’t really mentioned is like, which is maybe intuitive to you, but it’s like, not to everybody, like do you have introspection to like try to make your stated preferences as close to your revealed preferences as possible? It’s, you know, there’s obvious issues like the most common Common reason that we offer a match or and people go on a date and it doesn’t work By far most common reason is that they’ll be like yes You found me exactly who I said I was looking for but I realized I had something else that I want that I did forgot Yeah, it’s a little maddening but you know, it’s okay it’s part of the it’s part of the part of the part of the process We’re gonna bake it in here eventually by just like generating AI generating profiles or something like that letting people letting people say know on this or whatever. But yeah, so the more you can do that, the better. Okay, cool. [Michael Houck]: I didn’t remember my second question. So I guess if it pops up, I’ll shoot you a note. But yeah, how’s the business going? Everything? Everything good? Oh, I remember my second one. I’m sorry, I’ll ask it after. But yeah, how’s things going with the business? Good, man. [Cody]: I mean, you know, we’re, we’re coasting along here. We closed. I don’t know how much you’ve, I remember the last time you I don’t know when the last time we talked with Jake or whatever it is. But we closed our pre-seed, got $2.2 million last fall. So we have another year, year and a half of runway from here. And that should be plenty of time to launch the full auto product, get to PMF, and take off and go to the moon from there. So I’m really optimistic. I think we’re in a great spot. But we’ll see. We’ll see. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, it’s always a gamble with a startup. You know, we raised 85 million and then the company fell apart. So, you know, it happens. [Cody]: Okay, and then final question. [Michael Houck]: Sorry, now I’ve been like going crazy on you here. The cities that I’m talking about, so Dallas, Nashville, Charleston, do you guys have good coverage there? Cause that was probably primarily like SF, New York, you know, maybe Miami, LA, but yeah. [Cody]: Is there coverage in those places? Yeah, for sure. We have people in every major city, exactly the number of people in them. [Michael Houck]: I could look it up if you want. [Cody]: I don’t know off the top of my head. Yeah, just a range would be would be would be helpful. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Give me it’ll take 30 seconds for me to pull that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sorry, what’s the cities again? Dallas, Nashville, and Charleston are my my big three. Okay. [Cody]: We have That’s actually less than I was expecting Phil 5,000 and now 7,000 in Nashville. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Sorry. [Cody]: Okay, that’s what pop it off And Charleston In Charleston, we’re in Charleston and Dallas is very surprising. [Michael Houck]: That’s interesting to me as well. Yeah, I Okay Well, I appreciate you sharing that I’m excited. I will I guess I’ll probably reach out in a couple months so like June July probably as I get myself in shape over here and Yeah, I’m excited to try it I think it’s gonna be really cool Sick man. [Cody]: Yeah, I’m excited to have you I don’t know. I’m assuming this is something you already talked about with Jake. We’re like any any relevant possibility might be interested in get involved as an angel? [Michael Houck]: Um, I could be Yeah, if you guys have a safe open. [Cody]: Yeah, we’re kind of doing like a little little pre raising for the next round just to you know, we’re kind of always raising but yeah, of course. Yeah, send me send me what you got. [Michael Houck]: I’ll take a look with see where the business is at right now. But I love the concept. And yeah, I think could definitely be definitely just maybe putting a small check in and and just kind of being part of it. [Cody]: Cool, man. Yeah, I’ll send you the stuff. Cool. All right. Cool. Great to reach you. Great talking to you. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, man. Good to meet. And well, I’m excited to be a user now, too. [Cody]: Let me know if you have any questions. Cool. I’ll see you, man. [Michael Houck]: See you, bro.