About a decade ago, I decided to launch a startup around socialization. It was called KonnectR, I stopped it around 2016 and wrote my thoughts at the time as a conclusion of that story. However, the idea stuck in my mind. Dating was a thing, but in an era where many are moving from one area to another in a seemingly interrupted fashion; the problem is deeper. People also need to meet, not necessarily only to date.
In recent years, friends, especially one, kept notifying me about the new trend of apps around the vertical. The idea of having dinner with stranger seemed to be a reality.
I had to try one them, my choice landed on Timeleft a few months ago.
EDIT: I drafted this article in May, it took me quite some time before publishing it.
It is good to meet humans
My first doubt when I arrived at my first dinner was whether I will have a nice experience, one that I would like to repeat. Back in the days, I was scared that such a project will attract socially awkward people that would not manage to make it work. It was one of the very good reason for which a group was infinitely better than a one to one.
And… my experience was close to perfect. Interesting, open-minded, social people. In a sense, what would you expect from people ready to try a dinner with strangers. Perhaps some credits are due to the matchmaking algorithm but when you group people from a small and local population it can not be very advanced. My best guess is that they use basic information like average spending per night out, number of nights out per week, age, gender and level of education.
This good experience got me thinking a lot.
My vision was myopic
KonnectR’s tagline was “right here, right now” and I tried to deliver. My holy grail was spontaneity, as I thought it was the key to have people actually showing up to meet three other strangers. Generating my wow moment would have required hundreds of users, with a share of them active around at the same time in the same area. Today … I would use the word “impossible”.
I had run my figures on that and was investigating to restrict my first vertical around professional events and fairs where I could hope reaching user density in an easier way.
Assuming they started from a similar instinct, Timeleft did not try to adjust the audience, it has an adjusted version of the proposal: “dinner, next Wednesday”. How do you make sure people stick to the plan? You just sell tickets.
To be fair to myself, I feel that the natural disposition to pay grew over the years. Or perhaps it is just me aging.
The butterfly effect is real
If I have to give myself some credit, most of my choices were about staying on the quickest path to deliver my vision. In hindsight, this obsession with “right here, right now” had many side effects:
- No fixed time. So you need something to remind people live, you need to be in their pocket. You need an app.
- No fixed time. You can not manually find people a place to meet (which I am almost sure the people at Timeleft are doing). You need automation! I had to integrate with an API to get places (bars, restaurants, …) , check their ratings, check the type of meeting spot, check the opening hours.
- Spontaneity of the moment? You need localisation to suggest people something around them.
An app is an order of magnitude harder of a commitment than a web only solution. Cross-platform app development has become more mature over the years too. My project was a one-man show and that little difference costed way too much in terms of time and energy.
And… of course, the killing blow: user acquisition. Konnectr’s user pool had to probably be two order of magnitudes bigger than Timeleft’s. Finding 6 people willing to have dinner together in my target audience on the same week feels visible with pocket money..
Have I learnt or am I (still) a fool?
When I first thought about all this, everything seemed so obvious that I asked myself “how did I manage to be so stupid?”; in a sense it is good. On the other hand, I am aware that, hindsight is 20/20. And I still do not have a strong feeling about whether it is acquired permanent wisdom or just ex post facto observation.
I did not build my project hidden in a garage, I exchanged with many qualified people around it. Regularly with some. Not all were enthusiastic. I might have been tone-deaf, yet I do not remember hearing anyone remotely leaning to what now seems obvious.
Deep analysis on the matter aside, I do not think I would start such a project today. I can tell it “smells” of something that will likely not work. Again, is it experience? Foolishness? Or a fear of failure?
Surely a bit of everything.
