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Project Fixup — Meet People. Not Profiles.
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@spressto few q's ;)
1) please provide some detail on how the actual matchmaking occurs
2)what do you believe about human connection that other dating sites don’t?
3) some people say the dating space is super difficult with Match.com as the dominant player. How do you see yourself breaking this stigma?
4)how many dates have your initial customers booked on average? what's the mode number?
5) what does it take to launch additional cities?
6) what are your per date margins? are there any incremental costs to the company?
7) how quickly are daters connected?
For 2) We believe that chemistry happens in person. All that back-and-forth messaging on other dating sites, while occasionally entertaining, is also time-consuming and inefficient and doesn’t increase the likelihood of actually hitting it off with the person when you meet.
To be honest, I think many dating sites probably secretly believe this as well, but their business model is based on getting people to engage digitally instead of actually meeting in person. We’re one of the first dating sites whose interests are actually aligned with what most single people want - to go on dates in as easy and fun a way as possible, without any of the work.
3) We see the dating market as having three main waves. The first one, the traditional online dating website space, has been dominated by Match.com, no question. For a long time that was the only game in town, but then there was the second wave - online dating apps with less detailed profiles and more lightweight back-and forth texting when there’s a mutual match. This space has been dominated by Tinder.
The third wave, and where we feel there is now a huge opportunity, is for true dating apps that cut out the online messaging altogether and get people out on actual dates. Professional matchmaking is not a new idea, but making it work using technology at scale is. It’s a very different dating space from where Match and Tinder reside, and this is where we think Project Fixup can become the dominant player.
6) We have a pay per date revenue model - each side pays $20 and we make $40 in revenue for every date we organize. There are two main per date costs: the fixup specialist’s time approving the date and providing customer support, and the payment processing fees.
Our initial calculations based on the cost of that time and the number of fixups one specialist can support give us a per-fixup margin of 87%, so about $35 in gross profit.
While less scalable than a self service website, these margins compare favorably to other scalable service businesses like Lyft and Washio (both of which we love…). In their cases, 85% might go to the person delivering the service and 15% back to the company, while in our case it’s the reverse.
4) Our initial customers have on average booked a little over 3 dates each (3.11 to be precise). The mode is technically 1 date, but the majority of our daters are repeat customers, there is just a lot of diversity for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 repeat daters:). And that number will continue to go up over time.
@frumpy Great questions! I’ll share my answers as I write them.
For 1) The way our process works is that members fill out a questionnaire that tells us who they are, the type of people they’d like to meet, and their interests. Their answers go through a streamlined, proprietary digital matchmaking process that takes into account demographic information, mutual interests weighted by importance, attractiveness, overlapping schedules, and post date user reviews to output the best potential fixups. These fixups feed into our human approval system so that our fixup specialists can review them en masse to confirm and send them out.
Our computer algorithms help scale the process, while the human element takes into account any factors not captured by the algorithms. The combination enables us to curate quality dates in a scalable way.
@spressto I imagine a lot of the back and forth btw daters who are interested in each other often involves scheduling. How are you addressing this and simplifying for your customers?
@frumpy Yep, scheduling can be a huge challenge for busy professionals trying to go on dates and there’s typically a lot of back and forth on dating websites.
Our process takes the pain out of this process by having our members share all the dates and times that work with their schedules. We then automatically schedule their fixups during overlapping times that work for both them and their date. If their schedules change, they can easily reschedule their date through the system by viewing all other times that work for their date and selecting a new one. They add a personal note with each reschedule so the other person knows the reason for the date change.
5) It’s actually a bit easier than you might think. All we need to do from a technology perspective is create a new dating market geofence in our system and identify the best first-date venues in that city by leveraging Foursquare and Yelp data. Our fixup specialist reviews the list of venues, refines, and uploads the venues into our system.
From there, it’s all about getting new members into the system, which we do through a combination of blogger outreach and PR, partnerships with affinity groups, referrals, and paid marketing.
Project Fixup is also unique in that we can start to generate revenue and create quality dates even with a small base in a new market. In San Francisco, for example, we launched on July 21st and sent out our first fixups on July 28th. The more we grow, the more date options we have and the easier our matchmaking becomes.
@spressto clarifying - Fixup is picking/reserving the venue (restaurant, etc) for the date, not just connecting the two daters to meet in a certain place at a certain time that and allowing the daters to set the details after that?
@frumpy Yep! In addition to the person and time, we also select a venue for the fixup. Our venue selection is based on the date themes that our members select (craft cocktails, wine bars, coffee, etc.), and the distance that each have to travel to get there. We don’t currently provide reservations as our locations tend to be more casual first date spots versus restaurants, but we send people out on off-peak days and times so there is rarely a wait.
We’ve found that most of our members really like this part of our process. It lets them discover a great new bar or coffeeshop without having to deal with the pressure of selecting a location.
7) The speed of which daters are connected can vary a bit based on scheduling constraints, demographic preferences, and other matching factors. Many of our members get fixed up on a date within 3 days of signing up. Once they receive a fixup, they have 2 days to confirm and the date will happen 3-14 days out.
Convenience is a huge part of our value proposition and we are moving towards putting people on dates in near real-time by enabling them to get fixed up and meet someone new the same evening they request interest. As part of this mission, our system was built to deliver dates on demand.
@frumpy Let me know if you have any other questions!
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