72-year-old journalist, a leading column of tips, has launched a dating service based on the startup accelerator Standford

It would seem that today there is just a sea of ​​opportunities for people to communicate. But this, apparently, only complicates the search for his “second half”. This material interested us because it covers two very interesting areas - start-ups and the nuances of communication between people, in particular, building relationships with customers. It seems to us that this is a rather interesting experience. By the way, we have previously translated articles and not quite standard behaviors that help to succeed in business.

From the now classic OkStupid service to the exclusive The League novelty, there are many websites that can be used to diversify your intimate life. But none of them compares with dating services in real life - at least, the founders of the recently launched project called “Tawkify” think so.

“Human speech is incredibly limited,” said project co-founder Jeanne Carroll in the online magazine Business Insider. “People are not always completely honest when they describe themselves for online dating sites. The algorithm does not work. Profiles on sites do not match people. "

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Photo 1. E. Jeanne Carroll (left) and Kenneth Shaw (right)

Carroll has led a popular advice column titled “Ask E. Jeanne” in Elle magazine since 1993. This column is a “long-lived” in the American press. She talked a little about everything: about wisdom, which is related to love, relationships, common rules of etiquette and professionalism. Carroll also wrote for magazines such as Saturday Night Live, Esquire and Outside, and she was the first female Playboy editor to write articles.

However, Tawkify is her first application project. This application has a more traditional approach to dating than the ones that you could see until now.

People who want to find their soul mate on this site cooperate with the matchmaker. She considers the questionnaires of other users of the service “Tawkify” in order to find the most suitable pair for this or that person. After talking with a potential partner (in person or by phone), the matchmaker organizes a date for two people. Service users pay a membership fee (of $ 599 per month) to meet new people twice a month. True, it also often depends on the person whether he wants to go on a second meeting with a potential partner with whom he met, thanks to the matchmaker.

Tawkify is positioning itself as a service that provides a complete package of services for those who want to find their soul mate on the Internet, in contrast to the so-called “event generators” websites, which rely only on algorithms and technologies.

“We simply bring the users of the service together without controlling anything,” says Carroll. “Despite the fact that we are engaged in the matchmaking business, and we have a lot of data about different people, we cannot control them. This is subject only to Mother Nature. We just have to make sure that the matchmaker arranged a date for two, and that she picked up people who are matched with each other. ”

Dates are always full of various activities: recent meetings included trips to famous whiskey bars and rock and roll tours in New York.

“We always strive to ensure that the dates of our customers do not look like ordinary gatherings at dinner. After all, such meetings are more like an interview for admission to work, as people are interested in quite ordinary things, such as: “What do you do?” And “Where do you work?”, Said the co-founder of the project, Kenneth Shaw. “If you see your partner in action during your dates, you begin to perceive him from different angles. It also helps to learn more about a person’s hobbies. ”

Photo 2. Shaw (left) and matchmakers working on the Tawkify project in San Francisco

Shaw and Carroll met more than five years ago when Elle magazine was looking for a developer for its own Facebook application. After exploring the most popular applications on Facebook, they stumbled upon My Purity Test, a quiz app that Shaw developed while he was a permanent adviser at Stanford.

More than 6 million people have become My Purity Test users, thanks to advertising in student dormitories. Then the service got into the TOP-30 of the most popular applications on Facebook. Shaw sold My Purity Test to Speeddate.com in November 2007, shortly after he received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford.

Then he went to work at Microsoft as the main technology developer for One Kings Lane (before launching the Tawkify project with Carroll in 2012).

“The main reason for launching Tawkify was that Kenneth didn’t have a girlfriend,” Carroll recalls with a laugh.

And admittedly, it worked.

Carroll and Shaw decided to bring their idea to life last summer with StartX, a startup accelerator based at Stanford. As a company that uses modern technologies to a minimum and is the result of the work of the founder, who conceived this project in the 70s, the Tawkify service cannot be called a typical development of StartX.

“The level of intelligence of StartX employees is staggering. People are creating products that in the future will solve the problems of global warming and medical crisis. It's great, ”says Carroll.

Photo 3. Service developer Patrick Shi (left), Carroll, Shaw, and user platform designer Susan Huang from StartX.

The show added that within 10 weeks, Tawkify was able to change the client compensation system, as well as corporate ethics, and the mailing list strategy. At the moment, matchmakers earn 40% of the monthly fee of their own clients.

“We learned a lot from communication with other founders,” he said. “StartX is truly an amazing company that has become our mentor!”

Currently, Tawkify has 27 matchmakers in cities such as New York and San Francisco, with hundreds of users. The founders are planning to expand the project in Boston. Any person who does not live in the above-mentioned cities can also use the services of the Tawkify service, however, he will pay at preferential rates, as he will use video chat to communicate with the matchmaker.

Conclusion

In our opinion, such an approach is worthy of attention as it corresponds to one of the most current trends today - personalization. What do you think? We welcome comments.