1. Dating is a Breeze
I’m impressed with any app that gains significant traction in the Dating space. Other than social media, it seems to me almost impossible to scale beyond a few keen early adopters for the following reasons":
There’s an incumbent oligopoly with deep marketing pockets (Tinder, Bumble, Hinge) ready to stamp on your dreams.
Gaining traction presents the ultimate chicken-and-egg problem: the product only works with a critical mass of users, but no one wants to join until others are already there. Classic catch-22.
If your product works, it results in the customer churning out, and (maybe) coming back months, years or even decades later.
I’ve tried a few alternative dating apps over the years, but invariably, I’ve given up pretty quickly due to reason 2. No one wants to go to a singles mixer at Wembley Stadium with just ten other guests, four of whom are in town for two days.
Last week, I tried a new dating app called Breeze, which seems to have overcome the network effect challenges (at least in London) and solves the biggest problem with dating apps - the time and effort it takes to meet someone.
Most dating apps follow this sequence if successful ✅
Swipe —> match —> chat (“how was your weekend?” YAWN) —> switch to Whatsapp/text —> organise a date —> meet-up —> fall in love —> delete the app.
Or in most cases:
Browse —> match —> chat (“How’s your week going?” YAWN) —> ghost.
Breeze eliminates the chatting part, and focuses on serious matches and facilitating IRL dates. Here’s the flow on Breeze:
Browse —> match —> each user pays £9 for a date —> each user shares their availability —> Breeze organises the time and the location and shares it 30 hours before the date time.
If you match with someone and then decide not to go on a date with them, you get given one free pass, after that, you’re blocked from the platform. This removes the disposable and transient nature of the other apps and punishes you for being a casual swiper.
I think their pricing model is very clever, too. Rather than relying on the freemium model like the others, all users see the same pool of “candidates” and you only have to pay if you match and actually want to go on a date.
For me, this is the correct time to extract value from the user: at the point where they are receiving real value from the service. It certainly won’t look as good to an investor craving monthly recurring revenue, but it feels to me a better way to do business.
I’ve used the app for a week now and have four real dates lined up. I don’t have to talk to them beforehand, and I have no choice but to attend otherwise I’ll be kicked off the app. Perfect.
Good luck to them! (Breeze, not my prospective dates).
2. It’ll be AI right
Last week, I shared an article sharing an interesting perspective on the future of “knowledge work” in an AI world. The author postulates that we should focus on “wisdom work”. For me, nowhere is this more obvious than in customer service - it’s now commonplace to have your issue or request triaged and dealt with 100% by an AI bot. Fantastic if your problem is solved, enraging if not.
At Bob W, we’re using Intercom’s incredible tool “Fin AI”, but prioritising it as a first point of contact in cases where the bot will do a better job than a human to resolve the problem AND if the knowledge required to solve the problem is relatively static e.g. enquiries about check-in times. Furthermore, it’s crucial to give the “speak to a human” option in the first interaction
It’s easy to train a bot to explain to guests how to check into a building and surface that information in seconds. It’s not quite so easy to use a bot to calm a guest down when they don’t like the view from their apartment. These interactions require wisdom, empathy, care and a measured response. A human response.
The author of the article develops this point further and shares three skills that will become vitally important in a post-knowledge-work age:
Emotional clarity: Learn how to take your emotions seriously, not literally
Discernment: You can’t see the world clearly if you can’t see yourself clearly
Connection: Vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder
Reflecting on these virtues reminded me that there’s nothing new under the sun. For centuries, philosophers and theologians have been trying to make sense of the world, extolling the virtues of leading a good life - whatever “good” is for their chosen deity or ethos.
The virtues mentioned above are utterly human and base, not altogether different from the teachings of the Stoics, for example.
All of this is to say that we don’t need to reinvent being a human in the post-AGI world, rather double down on the basic qualities of being a nice, caring and generous person.
Have a great week, all 🙏