Launch HN: WittyThumbs (YC S17) – We help improve online-dating conversations

53 points by bored 8 years ago | 36 comments

Hi HN, we are the founders of WittyThumbs (https://wittythumbs.com/), a place for people to learn how to improve their online-dating conversations. We started this company because it’s the resource we wish we had years ago.

The two of us had that sinking feeling in our early 20s that we’d missed our best opportunity to date because while everyone seemed to have thriving dating lives in high school and college, we were preoccupied by more “nerdy” endeavors. Having focused on career at an early age, we were relatively clueless about dating.

We spent years dissecting dating and learning the skills piece by piece, like it was an engineering problem. The skills and confidence eventually clicked for us. We discovered rules we could follow to help us navigate the messy world of modern dating. Looking back, we saw no reason why it had to be a grueling 10-year process. We started blogging about texting techniques and Lior coached dating professionally for in-person clients.

Having earned a reputation among our friends for being dating and texting gurus, it got to the point where tons of friends were asking us for advice every time we’d hang out. Liron wrote some custom chat software that organized all the shared texts and screenshots of various men talking to various women. Suddenly we were all hanging out in these chatrooms and analyzing one another’s texts. So we’ve seen signs that many people really need this kind of dating advice.

On WittyThumbs, you can post anonymized online-dating conversations you’ve had and get feedback from our team of experts and the user community. You can also request a private 1-on-1 chat with an expert to get realtime advice about a conversation, or about any dating subject.

We’d be happy to answer any questions you have about us, our company, or plans for the future.

robterrin 8 years ago |

Thank you for creating something and trying to help people in one of life's most important activities. I want you to know that everything after this is coming from a place of genuine respect and support. My preemptive apologies for being blunt.

"The two of us had that sinking feeling in our early 20s that we’d missed our best opportunity to date," is a bad sign.

First, you were in your early 20's! Grow, learn, break a heart, get your heart broken, travel, read, get fired, start a nonprofit, experience life. Why were you so caught up in finding your optimal date while some of the best (i.e. most painful) growth opportunities were passing you by? I am not sure you have the perspective or life experience to be counseling people on something like dating.

Second, dating is not a game you can "win." One of my favorite professors ever, a statistics genius with possibly a touch of Aspergers, explained to our class one time how dating is like science. A "failed" experiment is knowledge gained about the world! A "failed" relationship is a chance to learn about yourself, others and relationships. The only way is to try.

Third, this is creating an arms race of banter instead of allowing people to genuinely connect. There's a famous OK Cupid article demonstrating why being your most authentic self is actually beneficial to your dating life (https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-mathematics-of-beauty-51bd25...).

There are a number of other reasons I think this is not a good way to spend your time, as a business, as a life pursuit and as a thing that detracts from the world, but I'll stop here so I don't sound like a complete jerk. I would strongly urge you to reconsider. Mostly, I think you just need time. Again, kudos on making a thing.

travmatt 8 years ago | |

>Second, dating is not a game you can "win." One of my favorite professors ever, a statistics genius with possibly a touch of Aspergers, explained to our class one time how dating is like science. A "failed" experiment is knowledge gained about the world! A "failed" relationship is a chance to learn about yourself, others and relationships. The only way is to try.

I'd disagree with this. A failed experiment is valuable to the extent you're able to draw the correct conclusions from the failure, and there's not magical guarantee that people will be able to do so. I'd argue that many people, especially those who may use this service, don't really have the experience and context to place their failures into. I'd bet most would blame themselves for their failures and withdraw further into their own projections of what made them fail, such as their lack of money, good looks, etc.

>Third, this is creating an arms race of banter instead of allowing people to genuinely connect. There's a famous OK Cupid article demonstrating why being your most authentic self is actually beneficial to your dating life

I think this is the most pernicious dating advice I typically see. Besides the fact that people have many different facets of their 'self' and have no idea as to how to present their best attributes, it essentially tells people who are looking for reasons as to why they're failing "no, this is your fault". Much better advice would be to exercise, socialize more, take an acting or improv class, go to counseling - in short, don't just 'be' yourself, change who you are to become a better person.

Liron 8 years ago | |

> A "failed" relationship is a chance to learn about yourself, others and relationships. The only way is to try.

Sure, you can use that logic to argue that any skill should be self-taught in order to appreciate the "journey" of trial and error. But if you just want to learn a skill as efficiently as possible, in this case dating skills, it's nice to have access to expert advice.

kowdermeister 8 years ago | | |

What's your conversion ratio as an expert?

gorpomon 8 years ago |

Just shared this with a friend who could use some help in this dept.

I think with products like this, the first instinct is to play up the potential "ick" factor, or to view it as Silicon Valley enabling the idea of privileged people looking at prospective dating partners like objects instead of people. However, I'm really for these services! I think they're fun, and they can really help people who for whatever reason have issues with social interaction.

We don't berate people who get help with diet and exercise (or who try and automate it), so why throw shade on people who get help with how to talk to prospective partners. From years of online dating, I can attest that changing up your approach and trying new things is exactly what gets you some success.

I wish all people were more open and empathetic online, but the truth is some people (yes, mostly women) are absolutely bombarded with messages that are at best emotionally vacant and at worst misogynistic, and that shuts down openness. Try going on a ladies OKCupid for a bit, you'll see how bad it is. Anything that can help set you apart from those messages, and elevate your conversation is in my view a good thing.

As long as they don't get weird and pickup-artisty about it down the line. :-)

dgudkov 8 years ago | |

>the truth is some people (yes, mostly women) are absolutely bombarded with messages that are at best emotionally vacant

That's true, men are not bombarded with messages. They would love to be bombarded with any messages but they aren't. There is a huge disproportion between who makes the first step -- in 99% of cases it's the men. I understand that women would prefer to receive only well-written, thoughtful messages with a bit of personal touch. The problem is that when men write such messages, they end up in the waste bin with roughly at the same rate as "emotionally vacant" messages. No equally thoughtful, polite response, no any response at all. You might think that in theory the response rate should be higher but in reality it's pretty much the same. Therefore, switching to "emotionally vacant" messages is a logical behavior strategy, because it optimizes time and emotional investment per response. If making more effort produces the same poor result then why bother?

Online dating is a horrible experience not only for women, but also for men. In a different way, but hardly less embarrassing.

Liron 8 years ago | |

Totally agree with your points!

craze3 8 years ago |

Congrats on the launch guys! I've been tinkering around with similar ideas for some time now, and I gotta admit your guys' execution is awesome. Feels like Tinder meets Genius.

I assume you guys are running OCR on the uploaded screenshots? Do you plan to expand this to a dating coaching service?

One last nit-pick: Your website looks rad, but the Disqus style comments kinda kills the vibe for me. Makes it feel a little tacky or spammy... Is that just me? I think a custom commenting system would be best, but even the Facebook comments plugin would be a step above this.

Liron 8 years ago | |

Thanks!

Your feedback is basically describing our exact discussions about what absolutely has to make it into the 1.0 release.

We got away without implementing OCR yet. We'll add it pretty soon in order to make the posts searchable.

Having our own comment system would be nice. We did write our own annotation system (modeled after Google Docs UX). The Disqus comments were one of the few instances where we managed to force ourselves not to scope creep the 1.0 :) we couldn't help spending a couple hours to integrate their SSO feature though.

Liron 8 years ago | |

> Do you plan to expand this to a dating coaching service?

We currently are the world's most affordable source of high-quality dating coaching, that's basically our revenue model. You can ask our experts any dating or relationship questions at https://wittythumbs.com/chat

NumberCruncher 8 years ago |

It may not be the mainstream opinion but I have to put this [1] here as a case against text communication in dating.

[1] https://therationalmale.com/2011/08/26/buffers/

brad0 8 years ago |

Firstly I agree with the posts below talking about actually having human connection. This is the most important thing.

I also want to point out that this is actually pretty damn good. I know I was clueless when I first started dating and this would have helped.

I think this could be a great first step for people who want some feedback about what they're doing right and wrong. The problem is when these people meet face to face these same issues will come up. Again, they're going to need some feedback. That might be a good avenue to move into later if this takes off?

Primarily though - work on yourselves and understand who you really are. Once you do these things the rest should fall into place.

dominathan917 8 years ago |

I made something similar that crowdsource tinder responses, got 7000 unique visitors in the first week but I got tired of maintaining it

http://sharpmagazine.com/2016/04/06/this-guy-built-an-app-to...

I still have the code that actually allows you to directly connect to Tinder's API... so your users could just sign in with facebook instead of having to take screenshots. Don't know if you're interested but shoot me an email if you are

nathan.mh@gmail.com

arenaninja 8 years ago | |

Is this "you" "anybody on HN" or "you WittyThumbs"? Because it sounds cool as heck, but I'm not associated with WittyThumbs

dominathan917 8 years ago | | |

It was you "WittyThumbs" because I think they'd put it to better use but I'm open to having someone else start it back up.

Liron 8 years ago | |

Aha, Twitch to our Genius :) Emailed you.

christopherslee 8 years ago |

Is this like http://www.evolveapp.com/ (Techstars Boston '17.)

Liron 8 years ago | |

Hm, looks like they're building a CRM to track your dates, while we're giving you advice about how to date better.

dollardude1 8 years ago |

Few questions:

* What's your traction like? How many active users and what's the weekly growth rate like?

* When did you launch this product?

* What are your monetization plans?

* How has the YC experience been so far?

Good luck!

Liron 8 years ago | |

> When did you launch this product?

Before today, we've been quietly testing various iterations of a live dating & relationship advice service on the web. We think dating advice is a big need that has many use cases (e.g. texting to get a first date, how to act on a date, how to read signals/hints, how to define a relationship, how to handle a breakup, how to get your ex back). For YC S17, we decided to double down on the use case of texting on dating apps in order to get a high-quality first date.

Today is the first time we've gone live with WittyThumbs, a dedicated site around this use case, and the first time we've built annotated posts (like Genius's song lyric annotations) to showcase the kind of advice we give.

> What's your traction like? How many active users and what's the weekly growth rate like?

Our experts have given live advice to over 1,000 users on various topics and have had good repeat-usage numbers. The most encouraging thing is that some of our users are extremely passionate about the service and really appreciate having us on call. We ourselves would have been such users only 5-10 years ago, so it's nice to validate that we're not the only ones.

> What are your monetization plans?

It's basically what you see at https://wittythumbs.com/chat - we charge for our experts' time giving you live advice. Professional dating coaches usually require setting appointments and paying ~$200/hour, so we're high quality and affordable. In fact, you can use us to get 5 minutes of advice here and there (e.g. help me interpret this text I just received), and only pay for the time you use.

> How has the YC experience been so far?

We got into YC on April 27 and the first day of the batch is actually tomorrow, so it's early in the game. I will say the biggest thing about getting into YC, or any incubator really, is that it's really nice to have a support network of smart people who you know are there to help you.

Fragoel2 8 years ago |

Nice idea overall, something fresh and that some people will find really useful (I can manage alright myself :) )

It seems to me that all advice is given by your experts, which is nice but also time consuming. Since you're gathering all this data, have you considered using machine learning instead?

pgt 8 years ago |

Wow, this is amazing. How will you scale it past the initial founder experts?

Liron 8 years ago | |

We've already scaled it to 15 experts internationally, which is how we're able to offer 24x7 live advice.

It turns out there are a lot of talented dating coaches out there and we haven't had a problem finding them through various channels. It's a matter of screening, monitoring and additional training to ensure that the quality bar stays high.

oregondan 8 years ago |

This definitely sounds like a service a lot of people could benefit from, and I wish you the best of luck, but my mind went straight to White Christmas episode of Black Mirror...

Liron 8 years ago | |

Haha I know what you mean, we're fans of the show and really enjoyed that episode.

isoskeles 8 years ago |

Where does an application like this fall in YC's "request for startups". Is that list just a bunch of fluff to project lofty morals?

jcsnv 8 years ago |

- Are you worried about using the name of a high-end clothing brand? - Can I get a link to Hermes? - How is WittyThumbs associated to Hermes?

dang 8 years ago | |

We replaced the name Hermes with WittyThumbs above. The OP asked us to do it right after posting but I didn't see the email till now.

Using an older internal name can be a hard habit to break :)

bored 8 years ago | |

Hermes was our temporary name, we're going under the name WittyThumbs now.

adamqureshi 8 years ago |

You know there is a luxury brand who's been in business , like forever: called http://www.hermes.com/

martinald 8 years ago | |

This is also the name of a very, very, terrible parcel delivery service in the UK.

adamqureshi 8 years ago | | |

Really? also, ask any HNWI and they'll instantly recognize hermes as the ultra luxury brand with exotic skin handbags selling for $100K. :-) can you imagine the confusion and i bet its trademarked.

bored 8 years ago | |

Yes. Hermes was our temporary name, we're going under the name WittyThumbs now.