I’m Jake Kozloski, CEO and co-founder of Keeper. My favorite companies are ones that communicate a clear vision of how they’ll improve the trajectory of humanity and outline a path for how to get there. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Tesla are a few that set this example. Keeper is no different. I want to outline Keeper’s vision for you, taking inspiration from Musk’s classic Tesla Master Plan.
Keeper’s initial product is a high-end, high-touch matchmaking service. We facilitate romantic connections where the man and woman meet all of each other’s stated preferences for a long-term partner. Men or women can either pay for first dates or put down a deposit to receive free matches (one at a time), which converts to payment upon marriage.
No other matchmaker offers 100% criteria matching, let alone a money-back guarantee if your date doesn't meet the preferences you gave us. This is because other matchmaking services are low-tech, inefficient, and badly-incentivized. They would rather make ten mediocre matches than one perfect match. In the extreme, you get applications like Hinge and Tinder, which in the best case match you with thousands of people few of whom, or even none, you’d ever want to marry. Keeper believes that quality trumps quantity for lifetime partnerships. That’s why guaranteed quality is the cornerstone of our company and brand.
Our long-term mission is to build an AI matchmaking system that can find everyone their best match - accessible to and affordable by everyone on Earth. A match for everyone, and for everyone a match. More happy families, more love shared.
We’re in a fertility crisis fueled by a marriage crisis that jeopardizes the future of humanity itself. Our mission is to address this crisis head-on by reversing the decades-long trend against marriage and family-formation.
Our first task is to be the world’s most effective matchmaker, which is why Keeper is designed to beat traditional high-end matchmakers head-to-head. But we’re not making another matchmaking service. We’re making the best possible matchmaking service, as just a step in our mission.
Keeper’s strategy is to enter the high end of the market where customers pay a premium, then dive downmarket, achieving higher unit volume, lower unit cost, and lower prices with each successive product iteration.
The second major iteration of Keeper will offer the same 100% criteria matchmaking at roughly 1/10th the price, and the third iteration will be another order of magnitude cheaper.
As a fast-growing technology company, all free cash flow is plowed back into product to drive down costs and iterate as quickly as possible. People getting matched by Keeper today aren’t just solving their own problem, they are helping power Keeper’s product development and scaling to offer that solution to everybody.
We often hear two protests against using technology to create romance, "attraction isn't a math problem" and "dating apps incentivize against long-term relationships.”
To the first — attraction is a series of conscious and subconscious evaluations your brain makes about another person. These evaluations are based on a long list of criteria ingrained by your biology and upbringing. The preferences and traits you value in the person you’re looking for are recordable and measurable.
In the past, intermediaries like friends, family, and matchmakers would introduce you to a compatible partner using judgement based on intimate knowledge about both of you. Today, Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision algorithms can make these inferences more accurately and efficiently than traditional intermediaries.
With enough information about two people and their preferences, creating a match is straightforward. Mass cynicism about existing dating apps is due to the fact that no product before Keeper has matched users based on all of their expressed and unexpressed preferences. Very few people have experienced what it’s like to match with someone who is actually everything they have always wanted.
To the second argument: Yes, every current dating product creates poor incentives. Here’s how we’re fixing those broken incentives:
Current Options: Only let you filter on about a dozen criteria, leaving you to sift through a deluge of incompatible matches and distracting you with fleeting relationships along the way.
Keeper: Lets you filter on every criteria your heart desires and matches you only with people who fit 100%.
Current Options: Present limited information about each person, placing photos front-and-center. By reducing people to their appearances, they create a Pareto distribution where a few men receive almost all of the female attention (and vice-versa) - to a much greater extent than what’s natural.
Keeper: Looks matter, but so do hundreds of other things. Keeper presents you as a whole person, including everything that’s important for evaluating a long-term partner.
Current Options: Obfuscate intentions and allow people seeking short-term relationships, even on "serious relationship apps.”
Keeper: Everyone on Keeper is looking for a serious relationship. Anyone who isn’t gets the boot.
Current Options: Uniform and unisex user profiles ignoring individual preferences, sex differences, and the nuances of attraction psychology.
Keeper: Profiles are sex-differentiated and tailored to each user's preferences, emphasizing the traits that each individual cares about the most.
Current Options: Don’t account for the different standards men have for short-term and long-term mates. Women will often match with a man thinking they meet his long-term standards, while he’s only considering her for a short-term fling. This creates frustration for women and distraction for men.
Keeper: Captures everyone's preferences for a long-term partner up front and only matches you with someone who fits the bill 100%, preventing short-term mate-seeking behavior.
Current Options: Let you date several people at a time, making everyone feel less valued and more disposable.
Keeper: One ultra-high-quality match at a time. If you are not interested in your match, we’ll let them know and try again.
So, in short, the master plan is:
- Build high-end matchmaking service with guaranteed 100% criteria matching and aligned incentives for finding every user a spouse.
- Use that money to build a more affordable, productized, semi-automated matchmaking service with the same guaranteed 100% criteria matching.
- Use that money to build an even more affordable, fully-automated matchmaking service that finds every user love on the first try.
While doing the above, provide best-in-class guidance and feedback to people on how to improve themselves to increase their attractiveness in the eyes of their ideal partner.
We hope you’ll join us on this journey.
Amor vincit omnia.
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