Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wasn't All, and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, remember
Speaker 1: how you claimed on a recent episode of the podcast
Speaker 1: that you're a millennial. I knew you were going to
Speaker 1: start with this again. Uh, yeah, I did claim. I
Speaker 1: backed it up to even by your own definition of
Speaker 1: being a millennial, which is someone that had Facebook while
Speaker 1: they were in college, I am, in fact a millennial,
Speaker 1: although I am an older one. I admit, Okay, did
Speaker 1: you ever? But here's the thing. Did you ever do
Speaker 1: online dating? No? Is this another is this a new
Speaker 1: definition of millennials that you're going to start using? Kind of?
Speaker 1: I mean, don't necessarily, but I do think that's pretty important.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you never did online dating and
Speaker 1: neither did I it kind of makes us both not
Speaker 1: really millennials. Yeah, I think. I mean, I'm definitely not one,
Speaker 1: But I also kind of think maybe that's another thing
Speaker 1: where I'm like, that is a pretty big thing in
Speaker 1: the world that really divides people by a few years,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you say? Yeah? I think so, And I have
Speaker 1: to admit I have absolutely zero personal experience with online dating,
Speaker 1: although I don't know about you, but I've always been
Speaker 1: sort of curious about it, and whenever I meet up
Speaker 1: with my single friends, like I would sometimes borrow their
Speaker 1: phones and look through their Tinder profiles and the Tinder
Speaker 1: app and just sort of play around with it, which
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting to see how it works. Do
Speaker 1: you swipe for them? I do? I do? I swipe
Speaker 1: on everyone and then just see what happens. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard that's like a thing like people who never did
Speaker 1: online dating vicariously swipe it on behalf of their friends.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a phenomenon. Anyway, I do really
Speaker 1: think this is a pretty big bright line dividing one
Speaker 1: generation from the next, and especially because there will never
Speaker 1: probably be another generation in history that didn't have online dating.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a big thing and kind of makes
Speaker 1: me and you more similar to boomers and previous generations
Speaker 1: too than millennials and so forth, so forth. But it
Speaker 1: seems like the implications of the rise of online dating
Speaker 1: are probably still at this point underappreciated and under explored. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of gets to a point that has been
Speaker 1: brought up on previous Odd Lots episodes, which is this
Speaker 1: notion that a lot of the economic models that we
Speaker 1: still use today are sometimes based on really outdated notions
Speaker 1: of society. So the idea that we're all going out
Speaker 1: to say a bar or a restaurant and meeting our
Speaker 1: future partners or spouses does seem pretty out of date
Speaker 1: given the rise of online dating, and the same for
Speaker 1: you know, meeting your future partner through friends, Like nowadays
Speaker 1: you're just as likely to meet them through an online platform,
Speaker 1: if not more so. So definitely something new that would
Speaker 1: need to be sort of factored into a lot of
Speaker 1: economic models, I think absolutely. You know, like an essence
Speaker 1: of the economy is sort of predicated on people getting
Speaker 1: married and having kids and buying a house and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff, and if that process is going to
Speaker 1: change in some way, then you would imagine there would
Speaker 1: just be all kinds of ripple effects. So anyway, obviously
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about online dating today, but specifically
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking to a hedge fund manager
Speaker 1: who I guess and his spare time or maybe as
Speaker 1: part of investing Will find Out has done a lot
Speaker 1: of research into the world of online dating and even
Speaker 1: put out a very entertaining note on the subject. Examining
Speaker 1: uh from a very from very US data points. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let's bring in Dan McMurtry of Tyro Partners. Dan,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us. Hey, guys, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having me. So Dan, before we get started, or
Speaker 1: I guess to get us started, why don't you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about who you are, what you do,
Speaker 1: and uh, why this was the subject that you thought
Speaker 1: was worth spending your time on going through charge, collecting
Speaker 1: data and even sort of writing up a note on
Speaker 1: the subject. Sure. So I run a small long short
Speaker 1: fund out of Manhattan, UM, and our approach is to
Speaker 1: look for what we think are big thematic drivers that
Speaker 1: are gonna play out over five or ten or twenty years. UM.
Speaker 1: There's a million things you can research, and so when
Speaker 1: we think about how to best allocator research time, UM,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily want to focus on you know, chief
Speaker 1: socks or expensive stocks from amentum stocks. So much is
Speaker 1: what we think are qualitative angles that are really um
Speaker 1: starting to show up in data but I haven't really
Speaker 1: been discussed. And we especially like things that are kind
Speaker 1: of validated but are not appreciated for the magnitude of
Speaker 1: the change. You know, I'm twenty eight, and so as
Speaker 1: somebody in my age bracket, I've kind of observed this
Speaker 1: shift where it's not just that online dating has become popular,
Speaker 1: it's it's killed all other forms of how people meet.
Speaker 1: And so it's now you know, sev of relationships depending
Speaker 1: on where you live, UM and in some cities, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's become completely dominant. And so this is interesting
Speaker 1: and kind of in every part of my life became interesting.
Speaker 1: One in terms of dating, it was the only option
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out, you know, how the hell
Speaker 1: does his work. And at the same time at work,
Speaker 1: we were looking at, you know, how is that impacting
Speaker 1: consumer spending, How is that impacting household formation, How is
Speaker 1: it impacting you know, any number of other things. And
Speaker 1: we've observed this shift, and so as we started to
Speaker 1: dig into it and get some data, we realized, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a much much bigger deal. So we've been
Speaker 1: working on it for about three or four years UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the as we do as we sort
Speaker 1: of partner with people who are entrepreneurs or other things
Speaker 1: like that and uh talk to you on kind of
Speaker 1: the startup scene in private markets, and we were actually
Speaker 1: looking at potentially starting a dating company several years ago.
Speaker 1: So we did a lot of work and we spoke
Speaker 1: to a lot of engineers. We were thinking about poaching
Speaker 1: some for it for a little startup. We decided not
Speaker 1: to do it because we saw it was a kind
Speaker 1: of network effect business. But this day that's really kind
Speaker 1: of came together. I spent some time in Asia and
Speaker 1: in the Middle East this summer and kind of seeing
Speaker 1: how these apps have affected culture globally really kind of
Speaker 1: clicked into a place of view of what was going
Speaker 1: on and how this was a much much bigger deal
Speaker 1: than anyone really thought. Dan. First of all, let me
Speaker 1: just say that this paper is really amazing and very
Speaker 1: very funny, and part of the thing that makes it
Speaker 1: so special is it's sort of written in this very
Speaker 1: dry way, and it includes sentences like, you know, men
Speaker 1: struggle more in the dating market when young and overtime
Speaker 1: adjust expectations as the market prices their deficiencies more shrewdly,
Speaker 1: which is just an amazingly entertaining sentence. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: when you started doing research for this paper, like how
Speaker 1: much was anecdotal or based on your own experiences versus
Speaker 1: sort of rigorous academic research. In other words, did you
Speaker 1: go out and sort of do your own field research
Speaker 1: for this one? Let's say, well, we wrote it. We
Speaker 1: wrote it. We thought it was a very funny subject
Speaker 1: matter to write. It's a strange topic to write about
Speaker 1: in any sort of professional context, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: write about it. We were gonna be funny to sort
Speaker 1: of ironically write it very straight, and then um, you know,
Speaker 1: put little jokes in there. Um, But yeah, all of
Speaker 1: the above. I mean it started out. You know, the
Speaker 1: interest in this started out because it's the way people
Speaker 1: in my age age bracket date, and so everyone's sort
Speaker 1: of commiserating about, um, their problems and their successes and
Speaker 1: things like that. I've used all of these apps and
Speaker 1: all of my into have and it's something that's frequently discussed. Um.
Speaker 1: As those of you followed my Twitter will know, I'm
Speaker 1: a bit of a comic, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the comedy community talk about It's just been
Speaker 1: a frequent discussion. And so what I was interested interested
Speaker 1: in was I was hearing a lot of opinions that
Speaker 1: sort of up close, maybe conflicted, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people on average were frustrated with the experience, and I
Speaker 1: was I was fascinated to see everyone simultaneously be frustrated
Speaker 1: and yet they continue to grow and grow and grow,
Speaker 1: even though a lot of people would say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just generally disillusioned with using dating apps. And I've
Speaker 1: also seen great successes. I know people have gotten married
Speaker 1: off of Tender, which leads to amazing best man toasts
Speaker 1: and things like that. And I've seen people have terrible experiences.
Speaker 1: But it's one of the things where everyone seemed to
Speaker 1: be talking about it, but I haven't seen any And
Speaker 1: it's become a very serious day to day part of
Speaker 1: almost everyone's lives who's under maybe thirty five and some over,
Speaker 1: and yet there hasn't been a lot of serious research
Speaker 1: done it lead in the financial economic community. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: what literature exists? So we first the first thing we
Speaker 1: do when we're looking at any subjects at work is
Speaker 1: we do a thorough literature review. So we've looked at,
Speaker 1: you know, a number of nonprofit think tanks, university research entities,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of good sociological research done on
Speaker 1: dating and health information, marriage and all of that. Divorce
Speaker 1: and one of the things that was very interesting to
Speaker 1: me was as we look through these papers, it was
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, at one point, we could
Speaker 1: find a lot of data showing that online dating had
Speaker 1: now become the dominant factor in dating, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, all these papers still sort of treated it
Speaker 1: like a footnote, it is kind of owned by the
Speaker 1: way some people are dating online, even though eighty or
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the data inputs into those papers were
Speaker 1: being heavily influenced by that factor. So we said, that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting set up for further research. So at
Speaker 1: that point, we spoke to people at pretty much every
Speaker 1: dating company you can imagine, ranging from e Harmony to Okay,
Speaker 1: cubid to match too, Tender or Facebook dating, all of them,
Speaker 1: and we also spoke to people that ran actual matchmaking
Speaker 1: business is kind of old school and those tend to
Speaker 1: be higher end. It was a very editive research process
Speaker 1: where we kept having different hypothesies about how this market
Speaker 1: was working, and then as we did more research, we
Speaker 1: kind of kept invalidating them until he came to something
Speaker 1: that made a lot of sense, and and then we
Speaker 1: started going back out and when we had an idea
Speaker 1: what we thought was going on, we started going and
Speaker 1: doing specific polling UH and then looking in specific geographies
Speaker 1: because we had a sort of view that essince you
Speaker 1: what happens is an online dating site goes up, goes up.
Speaker 1: Men immediately join it because dudes are going to do that.
Speaker 1: Women slowly go onto the platform. There's a lack of
Speaker 1: trust at the beginning, and over time what tends to
Speaker 1: happen is the women are actually in a position of control.
Speaker 1: Even though that that is what what would is initially
Speaker 1: like scary about online dating, particularly for women, is the
Speaker 1: unknowns and the lack of feeling safe and things like that.
Speaker 1: But particularly looking at markets and the elite East in
Speaker 1: an Asia where women have significantly less agency than they
Speaker 1: do in the United States, we saw happen with this
Speaker 1: very clever dynamic of women all of a sudden realizing, okay, wait,
Speaker 1: I can see unlimited guys I might want to go
Speaker 1: out with. I can say no to as many many
Speaker 1: of them I want without any possible repercussions, and I
Speaker 1: can be very very choosy about who I want to
Speaker 1: go out with. But that also means I don't have
Speaker 1: to go out with whoever my dad wants. Signatures introduced
Speaker 1: me to I don't have to participate in these sort
Speaker 1: of weird pseudo arrange structures that I don't really like.
Speaker 1: And also instead of having to date within my immediate
Speaker 1: social circle, which can have bad ramifications of things don't
Speaker 1: work out, I can date everyone in this city or
Speaker 1: everyone within fifty miles at least level the playing field,
Speaker 1: if not put women in a dominant position, particularly in
Speaker 1: those markets. And that's the first time that's ever happened
Speaker 1: in you know, most of the Middle East, in a
Speaker 1: lot of places. And we think that's a really interesting dynamic,
Speaker 1: just looking historically, because dating for women is so much
Speaker 1: riskier than it is for men. And so we did
Speaker 1: a lot of interviews with women using these apps in
Speaker 1: different countries and their experiences. And I think that Americans
Speaker 1: have a very Americans and Europeans probably have a very
Speaker 1: skewed opinion of what dating is like globally, and I
Speaker 1: also think men tend to have a very skewed opinion
Speaker 1: of what dating is like just in general. So it
Speaker 1: was this iterative process of you know, we've used them all,
Speaker 1: We've talked to a lot of people, We've done the
Speaker 1: academic research, we've talked to people at companies, uh, and
Speaker 1: then we've kind of iterated that with question list we had,
Speaker 1: and then we've tried to test our hypothesis against new
Speaker 1: incoming data, and really we got to a point where
Speaker 1: all the new incoming data was sort of confirming our model,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And that was where we got very
Speaker 1: comfortable with the overall thesis, and we shared the these
Speaker 1: are the few people, and they everyone was very very
Speaker 1: interested in most of the stuff we write about as
Speaker 1: hedge fund guys nobody cares about, and so we made
Speaker 1: a decision to publish it. We just wanted to put out,
Speaker 1: you know, not a stock pick so much. It's just
Speaker 1: here's our general framework on this market. We think it's
Speaker 1: a very big deal, and we think people aren't really
Speaker 1: appreciating that this is not a fad and this is
Speaker 1: not a niche app. I mean, this is the number
Speaker 1: one grossing app on the Apple Store and Google Play
Speaker 1: for you know, forever, and it needs to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's fascinating to me how I
Speaker 1: think it's just psychological bias against something that is still
Speaker 1: categorized as being sexual in nature that is causing people
Speaker 1: not to really think big picture about what's going on here?
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that if you look through existing literature,
Speaker 1: sociological literature on household formation and so forth, that dating apps,
Speaker 1: the rise of dating apps is often treated as a footnote,
Speaker 1: even though much of the data and much of these
Speaker 1: new households are being formed by dating apps, and so
Speaker 1: they're being simultaneously they formed the core of the new information,
Speaker 1: but also they're dismissed. What is the error that that
Speaker 1: leads to when you see people dismissing the significance of
Speaker 1: dating apps or treat partnerships relationships that form via dating
Speaker 1: apps as being exactly equivalent to partnerships that formed via
Speaker 1: any other form, whether it's meeting in a bar or
Speaker 1: through churches or work or whatever. What kind of errors
Speaker 1: does that lead to in terms of analysis? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so it's really about if you think about any sort
Speaker 1: of analysis of a process like this, there are gating items.
Speaker 1: So before you get to a question of who somebody
Speaker 1: might want to date, the first question is who is
Speaker 1: the what is the available pool off of which they're
Speaker 1: making those decisions. So, particularly in America, UM and in
Speaker 1: other places you America is not a very densely populated country.
Speaker 1: So in America, especially if you're dating within your social circle,
Speaker 1: and you know, particularly before you know, seventies of the sixties,
Speaker 1: people generally less mobile. The actual dating pool people are
Speaker 1: selecting from is quite small, um, so it might be
Speaker 1: a few hundred people, and then you filter for people
Speaker 1: who are available, people in the appropriate age range, people
Speaker 1: who are from good families, things like that, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other variables that get upweighted around the
Speaker 1: social standing within that given sort of click or tribe,
Speaker 1: and so that's there's a lot of variables to get
Speaker 1: thrown out. So the first effect that online dating happ
Speaker 1: has is that your dating pool size effectively becomes unlimited.
Speaker 1: So it's going from realistically several hundred people. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say it's the people at work, it's the people
Speaker 1: at the bar after after work, it's your church, and
Speaker 1: it's a couple of social activities you're not going to
Speaker 1: interact with in any material way more than several dozen people.
Speaker 1: It's not a few hundred people. People go through that
Speaker 1: many people on a dating app in like an hour.
Speaker 1: The average time somebody spends looking at another profile and
Speaker 1: a dating app is two to three seconds. So the
Speaker 1: initial pool being drawn upon goes up massively, and so
Speaker 1: then the question is if somebody has millions of people
Speaker 1: to choose from instead of a hundred, do the variables
Speaker 1: they're selecting people on change? And most of the historical
Speaker 1: um pay as we've seen, really try to take a
Speaker 1: really really rational approach to dating. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if either of you know anyone who's ever dated, but
Speaker 1: it's not the most rational process. I've met people who
Speaker 1: have dated. And so we've seen a lot of things
Speaker 1: where these papers are sort of arguing that men and
Speaker 1: women's create like a spreadsheet in their brain of Okay,
Speaker 1: this person went to this college, this person has this
Speaker 1: income power, they sorted and then they select based on that.
Speaker 1: Most people have had very small actual available dating pools,
Speaker 1: particularly in smaller towns. Of your work, you have your
Speaker 1: afterwork activities, church, a few other things. Particularly historically, that
Speaker 1: pool gets very small. You're talking a few hundred people
Speaker 1: at most when you would justust for appropriate aid range
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, correct gender for your preferences and
Speaker 1: things like that. Online dating flip sets and now the
Speaker 1: pool side is unlimited. In addition to that, a lot
Speaker 1: of the historical studies and still a lot of studies
Speaker 1: really focused on academic attainment and things like that, as
Speaker 1: if people are using a ranking algorithm in their head
Speaker 1: and that just tends to not be true. It can
Speaker 1: give me true in certain populations in cities, which is
Speaker 1: tends to be the people doing the academic studies, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really bear out over broad populations, with the
Speaker 1: exception of sort of minimum gating items. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a high school degree, or if
Speaker 1: you're in a college educated area you don't have a
Speaker 1: college degree, it does get harder. But beyond that you're
Speaker 1: looking at now, so basically going from a few hundred
Speaker 1: people being your choice set to millions. And then when
Speaker 1: people are looking at profiles, they're spending between two and
Speaker 1: three seconds deciding yes or no, And so that means
Speaker 1: that that the decision about swiping it left or right,
Speaker 1: are saying yes or no is a lot more about
Speaker 1: kind of the visual element of the profile, and so
Speaker 1: you can get there's different elements in there which might
Speaker 1: correlate with college education, but it really comes down to
Speaker 1: how can you present yourself with photographs in some text
Speaker 1: Each platform, individual platform uses a slightly different user interface
Speaker 1: so that people can either find different information about potential
Speaker 1: matches they value or showcase and or showcase information they
Speaker 1: think is valuable. So it's leading to kind of an
Speaker 1: instagrammification of dating, people making very quick snap judgments and
Speaker 1: then people chat. But the other thing is that the
Speaker 1: match ratios for men and women are radically different. Women
Speaker 1: are getting a minimum of five times and in many
Speaker 1: markets twenty five times the inbound like that a male
Speaker 1: account is getting, And so that introduces a lot of
Speaker 1: other gamifying elements around Look, you could be the greatest
Speaker 1: person ever, but if you if you come into some
Speaker 1: of these methods Q and your forty back, you're probably
Speaker 1: not going to get seen. So then it introduces elements
Speaker 1: of a random chance around what time of day like
Speaker 1: or a message is sent, and how do you really
Speaker 1: draw attention? So also rewards behaviors that draw attention so
Speaker 1: you can stand out because there's just so much volume,
Speaker 1: and it's very similar to a lot of things in
Speaker 1: markets right now. And you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: right now are looking at you know, a few high
Speaker 1: profile CEOs. They're doing some very flashy things and wos
Speaker 1: what people saying? They're getting all of the attention and
Speaker 1: that's really the same thing that's happening right now in
Speaker 1: dating is if you are not able to draw attention
Speaker 1: to yourself to stand out because the pool is so
Speaker 1: much larger, you have a big problem. So that's leading
Speaker 1: to people going on, people having to change their strategies
Speaker 1: how to get dates. And then when you go on
Speaker 1: the date, you have to stand out because everyone knows
Speaker 1: that in ten seconds you can go on your phone
Speaker 1: and you can have another date, or you may know
Speaker 1: that you have five, ten, twenty alternatives waiting in the
Speaker 1: wings on your phone. So if there's a red flag
Speaker 1: on date one, there probably is not a date two.
Speaker 1: People are not hanging around on Overall, in the whole population,
Speaker 1: people are not hanging around in bad relationships as long. Wait, Dan,
Speaker 1: can I ask a real quick question. But whether it's
Speaker 1: on the profile itself, like on one's profile, or whether
Speaker 1: it's showing up, is it smart strategy to be wearing
Speaker 1: cargo shorts. I am an advocate of a cargo shorts
Speaker 1: all the time, but my cargo short oriented dating app
Speaker 1: is not doing that well. And I just think there's
Speaker 1: a conspiracy against me at Apple from the top, and uh,
Speaker 1: Tim Apple himself does not want this to happen, but
Speaker 1: I think it's just an inevitability. Everyone's gonna wear nothing
Speaker 1: but cargo shorts in the kind of huge I just
Speaker 1: wanted to clear that up. Yeah, are you a B testing?
Speaker 1: Like is there one profile where you're wearing cargo shorts
Speaker 1: and another one where you aren't? You know you joke,
Speaker 1: But we did several years ago do some a B
Speaker 1: testing with dummy accounts, and I think one of them
Speaker 1: did have cargo shorts on. We made an account called
Speaker 1: Chad that was the worst person ever, and it did
Speaker 1: way better than I thought it would. It was really offensive.
Speaker 1: I think it actually outperformed my actual account, which is
Speaker 1: just crushing um. But it comes back to like attention,
Speaker 1: like if you make if you if you have like
Speaker 1: a shirtless dude in cargo shorts, that the entire profile
Speaker 1: is ridiculous, you're gonna get some percentage of people saying
Speaker 1: yes because they say, oh that's funny. They're actually such
Speaker 1: a thing. It's like a hate like some people will
Speaker 1: match with somebody just to say mean things to them
Speaker 1: in the d M. You know, you get a lot
Speaker 1: of that, but yeah, you can. We did a bit
Speaker 1: with cargo shorts. So before we get onto more of
Speaker 1: the economic implications, I just wanted to ask you're you're
Speaker 1: talking about online dating basically making the whole dating market
Speaker 1: more efficient, so you have greater access to a bigger
Speaker 1: pool of potential mates, which is a terrible word, but like,
Speaker 1: I just wonder how much of that efficiency is actually
Speaker 1: offset by having an enormous amount of or a number
Speaker 1: of people to actually choose from and and having to
Speaker 1: go on dates with with various people. In other words, like,
Speaker 1: how much of the efficiency from online dating is actually
Speaker 1: offset by the stress and burnout of doing this constantly?
Speaker 1: Excellent questions. So I think it's important to understand that
Speaker 1: stress and burnout is a huge factor in dating. That's
Speaker 1: the least romantic thing to say, ever, But at some
Speaker 1: point you're making a judgment of I really like this person,
Speaker 1: you know, we're in loved at it up, but you know,
Speaker 1: I think there might be somebody else that could convince
Speaker 1: you to break up with them and go with somebody
Speaker 1: else in a lot of circumstances, and historically, when you know,
Speaker 1: if you live in a small town like I'm from Richard, Virginia,
Speaker 1: if you know three people and there's really like twenty
Speaker 1: that you think are potential long term life partners. At
Speaker 1: a certain point, you're gonna say, do I really want
Speaker 1: to risk this good thing for you know, five or
Speaker 1: six other potential options? When the clock is starting to
Speaker 1: run down, it starts to be an illogical, interrrational decision
Speaker 1: the real differences, and so that still exists as you
Speaker 1: get older, you get to a certain point, like at
Speaker 1: some point you're gonna say, I'm really tired of playing
Speaker 1: this game. I'd really like to you know not. And
Speaker 1: that's not true for everybody. Some people enjoy dating. I
Speaker 1: think that's insane. I think dating is stressful, especially early dating.
Speaker 1: But um, there are people who like that. But what's
Speaker 1: important understand is that it's more about during like specifically
Speaker 1: during your twenties and early thirties. This is providing at
Speaker 1: any point in time, you have an escape pass you
Speaker 1: can pull, you can always go, and you have hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands, of potential options. And so you're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna try on this is not bad. You're gonna
Speaker 1: try on more pants. You're gonna you're gonna have more
Speaker 1: options to try out. You're gonna go on more first
Speaker 1: dates that are gonna end badly. And I think what's
Speaker 1: happening is that's allowing people to sort of build a
Speaker 1: database of what their deal breakers are, which you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna include all thirty Rock references in that because
Speaker 1: I love that show. You you're gonna figure out that
Speaker 1: doesn't work for me, that doesn't work for me. This
Speaker 1: is a problem. And now of those ethics are going
Speaker 1: to be good. But you're not going to stick around
Speaker 1: in a relationship if there's a clear red flag off
Speaker 1: the bat, because you can be on another day tomorrow,
Speaker 1: So you're not gonna go out with, you know, a
Speaker 1: sketchy person two or three or four times again. Overall, obviously,
Speaker 1: individual people will make terrible decisions. It's what America is
Speaker 1: all about. But it's the massive increase in alternatives and
Speaker 1: so as you go through more and more dates, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that's been studied quite a bit.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna post some more papers about this is that
Speaker 1: between about the nineteen nineteen fifties and now, the median
Speaker 1: person when they get married is having seven to twelve
Speaker 1: times as much dating experiences as their parents. I think
Speaker 1: that numbers low balls. I think people still, uh I
Speaker 1: don't want to sound promiscuous. So people are when they
Speaker 1: are making a decision to get married, they're coming in
Speaker 1: with way more information, They've seen a lot more. They're
Speaker 1: also more aware of how stressful it is to date,
Speaker 1: so there isn't that factor of, oh, I wonder what
Speaker 1: else is out there. You're like, no, I know what
Speaker 1: else is out there. I'm really good, Like this is solid.
Speaker 1: So you're just making a more informed purchasing decision, if
Speaker 1: you want to sound like an economist about it. And
Speaker 1: that's really really changing things. And as a result, I
Speaker 1: think this is driving a reduction and divorce. The other
Speaker 1: issue is that absolute marriage rates, particularly marriage rates below
Speaker 1: twenty five, are going down a lot, and in my
Speaker 1: personal opinions might offend some people. I think getting divorced
Speaker 1: before your brain is fully formed around twenty five years
Speaker 1: old is kind of crazy because you have very little
Speaker 1: life experience. You said getting divorced before, did you mean
Speaker 1: getting married before? I mean both, but yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: getting married before is statistically a worse idea because you're
Speaker 1: not at a point where you're not a point of
Speaker 1: stability personally. You don't have a lot of life experience.
Speaker 1: You haven't all the dating experience. You're making a huge
Speaker 1: decision with very little information going in. You're gonna generally
Speaker 1: be unable to withstand kind of shocks better than you know.
Speaker 1: We could wield miss team to Leven here and he
Speaker 1: could explain it, but you're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: withstand shocks very well. One of the things that's happening
Speaker 1: as a result of that is that people are are
Speaker 1: are dating a little bit longer. People are also moving
Speaker 1: in together more, and the probability that if you live together,
Speaker 1: if you cohabitate, you do get married is dropping because
Speaker 1: people are moving in for six months, twelve months, two
Speaker 1: years and just saying, okay, can we actually live together.
Speaker 1: We might really love each other, but are we going
Speaker 1: to kill each other if we live together? Which is
Speaker 1: an important question to ask, uh if you think of
Speaker 1: getting married, So you're seeing you know, you're just seeing
Speaker 1: a lot more trials, and so you could you could
Speaker 1: comp that to the market and say you're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot more trading volume, which tends to lead to more
Speaker 1: efficient pricing. And so what we think is happening is
Speaker 1: people are basically going on more bad dates, figuring out
Speaker 1: more of what doesn't work for them. They're living with
Speaker 1: people before they get married, and then when they do
Speaker 1: get married, and all of that up until the marriage
Speaker 1: decision is is can be very stressful and hard, and
Speaker 1: that I think that's why all the dissatisfaction is there.
Speaker 1: But when do actually finally find somebody, they have way
Speaker 1: more information. They're making a much more informed decision overall,
Speaker 1: and you're seeing better marriage outcomes where people are actually
Speaker 1: you know, they know what they're getting into and they
Speaker 1: actually can make it. They're making an educated decision about
Speaker 1: whether or not they think this is gonna work. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to note that on a statistical basis,
Speaker 1: marriage is a lot more about downside risk and upside.
Speaker 1: I mean, you you can't really predict if you're going
Speaker 1: to be the most happy you've ever been, but you
Speaker 1: can probably predict if, like this person is going to
Speaker 1: kill you with an AX. So you need to really
Speaker 1: you want to avoid the ax murder situation as much
Speaker 1: as possible, more than you want to have like the
Speaker 1: notebook happen. Right. That's yeah, it's really like kind of
Speaker 1: depressing and unromantic though that like, okay, yes, maybe there
Speaker 1: are fewer divorces now. But basically that's just about eliminating
Speaker 1: the left side of the tail. Basically, it's not that
Speaker 1: marriages are per se better, it's just that there are
Speaker 1: fewer of the really bad sounds like yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean I think you know, I'm from a only that
Speaker 1: had I'm from a divorced family, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you that you know, the left tail is not fun.
Speaker 1: And people getting into these decisions of like where like
Speaker 1: you see this a lot investing people optimize, people in
Speaker 1: their head optimize to this dream scenario that it's really
Speaker 1: really dangerous. It's kind of a siren song. You're thinking
Speaker 1: about perfection. You're not thinking about something that is consistently
Speaker 1: good and consistently positive. And I think overall it's better
Speaker 1: for people, and people are happier if they have something
Speaker 1: that is consistently good. Then if they make these moonshot bets. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say that the moon shot bet thing is
Speaker 1: huge in this because because the dating pools are so large,
Speaker 1: people are a lot pickier, particularly women when they're under
Speaker 1: call at twenty five. Everyone is trying no matter you know,
Speaker 1: who you are, what you look like, whatever, everyone is
Speaker 1: trying to punch above their weight because statistically, it will
Speaker 1: probably happen given you have unlimited swipes, right, so you
Speaker 1: have unlimited at at that's never been the case before,
Speaker 1: and so everyone is trying to punch above their weight,
Speaker 1: and that's actually causing there to be more competition in
Speaker 1: the market. But people tend to find that that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually work so well, that doesn't you know, you're probably
Speaker 1: going to get to go on a few dates with
Speaker 1: people that are way out of your league, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you make that happen, great for you. But over time,
Speaker 1: people sort of, you know, get their expectations, your expectations
Speaker 1: get priced to a reasonable level in the market over time,
Speaker 1: and all this sounds very, very unromantic. I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of describing what's happening dispatched. I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the issue also, is it's very hard for people to
Speaker 1: describe this market is passionately because it says something about you.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound like a psychopath describing people
Speaker 1: falling in love as a pricing function, but the data
Speaker 1: looks the hell of a lot like a pricing function,
Speaker 1: and using a pricing function is the only way we've
Speaker 1: been able to actually solve this. So I kind of
Speaker 1: got to, you know, put on my psychopath hat and
Speaker 1: and talk like one for a minute to understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. I'm but then there are strategies, you know,
Speaker 1: you can use to get outcomes that you're happy with. Here.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not this is not a circumstance where
Speaker 1: everybody's doomed. It's just people are going to go through
Speaker 1: a period of struggle and then the bright side is
Speaker 1: people are finding what they're looking for. And then the
Speaker 1: great thing about online dating also is that there are
Speaker 1: all the big properties, but there's increasingly more and more
Speaker 1: deep niche categories where people can find very specific traits
Speaker 1: if they want a certain type of partnership. So it
Speaker 1: might be considered abnormal or or or interest oriented, or
Speaker 1: ethnicity oriented or something like that. People can select into that,
Speaker 1: you know. So for example, you know, we have a
Speaker 1: friend of the firm is Orthodox Jewish family, and he
Speaker 1: was talking about how, you know, when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: it was all family introductions and now all the kids
Speaker 1: are on you know, Jase Wipe and things like that,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like, it's weird because I don't understand
Speaker 1: it at all. But there's still dating within the pool
Speaker 1: that i'd like them to date with so great. So
Speaker 1: you know, people are getting the outcomes that they want
Speaker 1: and they are limiting the left tail. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it reminds me a lot of when people
Speaker 1: get into an investing and they start thinking, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to pick some genius stock. I'm gonna be the
Speaker 1: guy who buys Amazon at a dollar a share, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make all this money, and they realize over time, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if I can do a solid like on
Speaker 1: my retirement portfolio over thirty or forty years, like that's great,
Speaker 1: But that's not a fun process of adjusting your expectations,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think it's a lot like that. Well,
Speaker 1: since you're talking about dating um from a slightly psychopathic,
Speaker 1: numbers based slash investing strategy perspective, I'm wondering, given that
Speaker 1: online dating is sort of the dominant form of dating now,
Speaker 1: is is real life dating where the alpha is Like,
Speaker 1: is that where you could maybe find some interesting matches
Speaker 1: and maybe outperform the broader market? If that makes sense?
Speaker 1: I think so. If I'm gonna just put my hypocrite
Speaker 1: hat on here for a second, but my girlfriend I
Speaker 1: actually met offline, but it's happening less And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things is, you know, every one of
Speaker 1: the common comments about millennials, you go to a barner,
Speaker 1: everybody's on their phone, So there are less people who
Speaker 1: actually have the conversational skill to you know, strike up
Speaker 1: conversation form of connection. The other thing is, as I said,
Speaker 1: when you're on the apps, people are spending two to
Speaker 1: three seconds at most on average on each profile. So
Speaker 1: if you can actually start a conversation and then you
Speaker 1: and that person are going to share you know, let's
Speaker 1: take two or three or four minutes of mutual attention,
Speaker 1: that's giving you, you know, hundreds of times the exposure
Speaker 1: that you're getting otherwise. So I definitely think that if
Speaker 1: there our way, if you can do that without being creepy,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a lot of you know, alpha there. I
Speaker 1: think that things like a friend of friend introductions and
Speaker 1: family introductions are likely structurally dead because the risk there's
Speaker 1: such a big risk factor there that now is not necessary.
Speaker 1: You know, it's always been the case that well you
Speaker 1: introduce somebody within your friend circle, be does it may
Speaker 1: strengthen you know, loyalty within the tribe over time, but
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, then it's a really bad thing
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be awkward as hell, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: make Christmas parties terrible. And I think everybody has been
Speaker 1: through that experience. And so because there's unlimited dating alternative,
Speaker 1: if nobody's gonna do that anymore. But I do think
Speaker 1: there's there are a lot of opportunities to you know,
Speaker 1: do better than you might on the apps by being
Speaker 1: proactive in real life. And the other thing that you know,
Speaker 1: we point out is we we joked in the paper
Speaker 1: about don't ask us about dating advice, and I really
Speaker 1: don't want a bunch of people ask me about dating advice,
Speaker 1: but I do have some dating advice. Finally, this is good.
Speaker 1: This is probably gonna be one of the first actionable
Speaker 1: things on odd logever because you know, you we don't
Speaker 1: normally are in the business of investing or trading advice
Speaker 1: or anything, but finally someone is going to offer something
Speaker 1: substance these apps spark. In many cases, the engineers at
Speaker 1: the dating app companies are actually programmers who are coming
Speaker 1: from slot machine programming jobs like gaming relays a Less
Speaker 1: Vegas like that, so they are incredibly good at manipulating
Speaker 1: these quick dopen feedback loops basically like you know, the
Speaker 1: Stanford Marshmallow test thing, and everyone fails it, and everyone
Speaker 1: fails it, particularly if it has anything to do with sex.
Speaker 1: It just overrides everything else and you're you're competing against
Speaker 1: your lizard brain. You're gonna lose. So it's very hard
Speaker 1: to draw attention stand out. One of the ways that
Speaker 1: you can, it seems like you can get around that
Speaker 1: is if you can target or if you're if you're
Speaker 1: targeting audiences that have a demonstrated ability to resist that.
Speaker 1: And I think a good proxy for that is people
Speaker 1: who are very passionate about something or some sort of
Speaker 1: intense hobby or something like that where they're very very
Speaker 1: focused on you know, long term skill development things like that,
Speaker 1: so you know, athletes, artists, things like that, people who
Speaker 1: are very very focused on kind of not immediate payoff
Speaker 1: work and things like that. So I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are having very positive experiences meeting people. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people when they go to a new
Speaker 1: city are talking to me. They're like, well, how do
Speaker 1: I meet people in a new city. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you can do their dating apps. That's gonna work overall,
Speaker 1: but you know, join a club, go do you know,
Speaker 1: not to be too share as I go to a
Speaker 1: cross fit class, go to yoga, go to an art class,
Speaker 1: go like go do an activity, join some sort of
Speaker 1: club where it's centered around everybody really enjoying that thing
Speaker 1: and being very passionate about that. And that could be
Speaker 1: a good place where again you can meet people in
Speaker 1: real life who may share similar character traits that you
Speaker 1: value and you can do well that way. But you've
Speaker 1: really got to put yourself out there. And I think
Speaker 1: the other thing is for people who are especially young professionals,
Speaker 1: who are trying to you know, make it, and they're
Speaker 1: grinding and they've got all these things going on. You know,
Speaker 1: it is a lot of work. Very easy to hop
Speaker 1: on your phone and just go swipe slight slip, swipe,
Speaker 1: and then you've got a date versus you know, spending
Speaker 1: several hours finding an activity, going to activity, you know,
Speaker 1: going out and doing something and and so that's that's
Speaker 1: a strategy that can work. It just takes a lot
Speaker 1: of work. It's similar to doing kind of fundamental investing.
Speaker 1: It You're gonna have to do an enormous amount of work.
Speaker 1: And you're gonna feel really stupid about it a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. You know, this is not an efficient
Speaker 1: market in the sense that you can't achieve your desired
Speaker 1: outcomes and you can't you know, find somebody. Everybody finds
Speaker 1: somebody eventually. But I do think that focusing on people
Speaker 1: who have kind of established delay gratification skills is a really,
Speaker 1: really good strategy. And then I also think that you know,
Speaker 1: time of day of when you're when you're using these
Speaker 1: apps is very important given the queuing dynamics. And I
Speaker 1: also I also think people should try out multiple apps
Speaker 1: and figure out which ones they like, so you know,
Speaker 1: for example, okay Cube, it provides a lot more information
Speaker 1: about users. You're getting several pages of text about somebody
Speaker 1: and you can respond, you can write something in any
Speaker 1: case you actually care, and it's a lot slower of
Speaker 1: a dynamic. Tender is a very quick lottery type dynamic
Speaker 1: that really and like I think, unless you're like an
Speaker 1: eight or above, I don't know why you're on tender personally,
Speaker 1: You're just you have no shot TINGE has a different dynamic,
Speaker 1: J swipe, different dynamic, you know, E harmony, things like that,
Speaker 1: and some of these are really optimized for long term relationships,
Speaker 1: and some of these are optimized to make you swipe,
Speaker 1: And so I think you need to, like, you can't
Speaker 1: judge the entire category by just doing one, and I
Speaker 1: would just you know, encourage people to experiment with a
Speaker 1: lot of them if if that's what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: because they're very very different experiences app to app. Well,
Speaker 1: this has been obviously some very useful insight into dating
Speaker 1: and how to produce Alpha book. But we can't end
Speaker 1: without talking at least a little bit about how you're
Speaker 1: actually using your research. I mean, there's only so many
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there's publicly traded online dating companies, but
Speaker 1: not many like Matches one of them. What big picture,
Speaker 1: this is research that you've done as part of your
Speaker 1: fund and you talk about investing in dynamics that are
Speaker 1: going to change the world over the next five to
Speaker 1: ten years. So as you continue to build on this research,
Speaker 1: where are the areas that people might look to see
Speaker 1: the ramifications of the change in dating or mating habits
Speaker 1: show up in the world of in the investable universe.
Speaker 1: So obviously there's the publicly traded dating companies and you
Speaker 1: know full disclosure we're long one of them. It's not
Speaker 1: hard to guess which one. But I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that really drew me into this subject to
Speaker 1: dig into it deeper, and we're gonna be putting out
Speaker 1: more research on this is household formation as a concept
Speaker 1: has been a major driver of economic spending, you know,
Speaker 1: purchasing a house, having kids, buying all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: this is changing that dynamic. It's not eliminating it, but
Speaker 1: it's changing it. And one of the things you've seen
Speaker 1: in the last few year is that you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people comment on online all the time, is okay,
Speaker 1: why are people getting married at different ages? And a
Speaker 1: lot of people have jumped straight to oh, well, it's
Speaker 1: just economic uncertainty, And no doubt it is one of
Speaker 1: the variables in that equation is is economic uncertainty. But
Speaker 1: I think online dating is actually very underappreciated factors. So
Speaker 1: it might be a one percent waiting, but people might
Speaker 1: have it in one percent waiting, but I think it's
Speaker 1: probably more like a twenty or waiting because I think
Speaker 1: when people get in a position where they're looking to
Speaker 1: get married, that priorities reshift a lot. So I think
Speaker 1: adding online dating in with what the income distribution the
Speaker 1: United States really looks like, particularly among young people, and
Speaker 1: particularly around housing prices and certain geographies is a very
Speaker 1: very important explanatory variable. And so we're very focused on
Speaker 1: another secular theme that we're very focused on. It will
Speaker 1: probably be one of our next papers. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it will be the first one or you know,
Speaker 1: but it really coming out in the near future is
Speaker 1: around affordable housing. There's a massive structural shortage of affordable
Speaker 1: housing in the United States, and you could argue it's
Speaker 1: ten to thirty million people, and you could argue that
Speaker 1: it's growing. That shortage is growing at twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: percent a year, and if that isn't solved in the
Speaker 1: next five years, it's the only issue in every election.
Speaker 1: And I'm baffled that this is not a bigger discussion.
Speaker 1: So we think looking at the affordable housing shortage in
Speaker 1: conjunction with people getting married later and also is going
Speaker 1: to be a huge huge issue in terms of Okay,
Speaker 1: how do families actually form, and then how many kids
Speaker 1: are people having and what does that do to the
Speaker 1: demographic kalens the United States, especially with our immigration policy
Speaker 1: being fairly restrictive, right Now in addition to that, I think,
Speaker 1: as I said, it is an instagrammification of dating. And
Speaker 1: so you're seeing massive shifts and consumer trends. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys have noticed this, but there's
Speaker 1: a huge boom and male cosmetics. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: like just makeup. I mean there's a makeup brand I
Speaker 1: was told about that's for men. It's called war Paint,
Speaker 1: which I don't know an think about it beyond that,
Speaker 1: but I think that's amazing branding. But you're seeing like
Speaker 1: all these you know, I think they begin with beards.
Speaker 1: There's been all these beard oils and waxes, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's some company called Manscape is selling a male hair
Speaker 1: trimmer and they have these hilarious ads. And now there's
Speaker 1: the number of different male moisturizer brands. I was in
Speaker 1: a target yesterday. There was an entire aisle of just
Speaker 1: male skincare stuff. And to see that in a target
Speaker 1: and risk in Virginia five or ten years ago is
Speaker 1: completely unthinkable. I mean, it's ridiculous. And so I think
Speaker 1: you're staying huge trends in particularly the startup market in
Speaker 1: CPGs based off of people needing to look better on
Speaker 1: camera to find somebody, and I think it's changing everything else.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the other things that's not
Speaker 1: appreciated is, you know, when you look at something like
Speaker 1: match Group, you know, there's an argument you made that
Speaker 1: they have a dominant position in that market. They just
Speaker 1: did a partnership with Open Table, and so what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're going to partner with Open Table and
Speaker 1: they're gonna place dates at restaurants. The margin that a
Speaker 1: restaurant earns from somebody who is just going in and
Speaker 1: buying a few drinks is astronomical compared to any other
Speaker 1: type of customer they have, so they can actually pay
Speaker 1: quite a bit for that. So what I'm also interested
Speaker 1: to see, Okay, what other types of business models come
Speaker 1: out of online dating. Did they start selling these cosmetics directly?
Speaker 1: They start selling seats at bars, they start selling event tickets.
Speaker 1: Did they start doing them your curated thing. One of
Speaker 1: the questions that I had that I looked at a
Speaker 1: lot when I was thinking about starting one was why
Speaker 1: is there not an app that kind of continues to
Speaker 1: work with you as you date. Why don't they Because
Speaker 1: they'll they'll do a promotion and say Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: five dollars off movie tickets or something. But why are
Speaker 1: they not continuing to provide data date ideas? Why is
Speaker 1: it not you know, the wine and painting thing, or
Speaker 1: you know, go to Trapez on the West Side and
Speaker 1: you or or something like that. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways that products will be marketed through these
Speaker 1: online dating platforms. So the online dating platforms are going
Speaker 1: to change consumer demands. It's going to change how houseful
Speaker 1: information is working. I think people are gonna start to
Speaker 1: route a lot of products through online dating because it's
Speaker 1: becoming a central nexus. And I think people below you know, thirty,
Speaker 1: I think more of them are using Tender and things
Speaker 1: like that on a daily basis and are using Facebook.
Speaker 1: The opportunity to sell through there is huge, and so
Speaker 1: it's gonna be this kind of nexus point between all
Speaker 1: these big drivers. And maybe it's not that big of
Speaker 1: a dollar category right now, but I think when you
Speaker 1: think about it demographically going forward, particularly if you assume
Speaker 1: that you know, people are not going to stop online
Speaker 1: dating as they get older, if they're single again or
Speaker 1: remain single, And that's what we're saying is they're seeing
Speaker 1: older in order cohorts get online dating. So if you
Speaker 1: think that this is gonna be the way people date
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, and I do, then this is
Speaker 1: going to be a massively important area to watch because
Speaker 1: it's gonna give you leading indicators on household formation, it's
Speaker 1: going to give you leading indicators on consumer brands. It's
Speaker 1: gonna give you leading indicators on you know, what's cool
Speaker 1: what's not cool. I mean you can see this on
Speaker 1: Instagram all the time. People on Instagram are showing off
Speaker 1: what they think are cool products, are cool things to do,
Speaker 1: or this that or whatever. But online dating is a
Speaker 1: super condensed version of that. You're not putting a picture
Speaker 1: of yourself or content of yourself on an online dating
Speaker 1: platform unless you think that is attractive to people. So
Speaker 1: it's very very interesting the data and the insights that
Speaker 1: can come out of this, and I think it has
Speaker 1: huge implications for most of not all sectors. And it's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite macro indicators actually looking at what's
Speaker 1: going on in this dating market, not on a short
Speaker 1: term basis, but I mean on a long term agrift
Speaker 1: demographic basis. And I think it's also going to completely
Speaker 1: reshape the entire societies in more conservative areas of the world,
Speaker 1: where women are going to be able to step out
Speaker 1: from behind a patriarchal society and have agency around their sexuality,
Speaker 1: agency around their dating, agency around their marriage. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen all at once, and it's not
Speaker 1: going to allow them to immediately snap the fingers and
Speaker 1: be all good, but it's going to have this net
Speaker 1: effect of starting a ripple process. It's just not going
Speaker 1: to stop. And so I think that what's the biggest
Speaker 1: point about online dating this interesting to me is what
Speaker 1: is it going to do to emerging markets? And so
Speaker 1: a lot of the big these emerging markets right now
Speaker 1: is basically, other than plumbing, which is a huge issue,
Speaker 1: smartphones are having this completely revolutionary idea. A lot of
Speaker 1: people look at protests and things like that and they say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these protests are happening because the people are tired of
Speaker 1: the corruption, and you know, I think they've been tired
Speaker 1: of the coruption for a long time. The reason they're
Speaker 1: protesting is they can coordinate, so they have smartphones. So
Speaker 1: smartphones this vector that's changing every country in the world,
Speaker 1: in the US as well, but not as much as
Speaker 1: it's changing other countries. And I think that the specific
Speaker 1: subvector within smartphones that's mattering the most emerging markets is
Speaker 1: actually online dating, because it's going to unlock the value
Speaker 1: and the agency and all the power of all the women,
Speaker 1: which is half the damn population, and it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be it's gonna be a much bigger issue. This is
Speaker 1: not about people looking go out get laid at the bar.
Speaker 1: This is a huge deal. Dan McMurtry, that was great.
Speaker 1: Really enjoyed that conversation so much richer and thought provoking
Speaker 1: than I had previously thought about the subject, which I
Speaker 1: guess is kind of the whole reason you got into this.
Speaker 1: But really appreciate you joining us. Thank you guys so much,
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Happy to come on anytime. Thanks Dan.
Speaker 1: Thanks Dan. That was great. Tracy. That really was, as
Speaker 1: I said at the end, sort of far more interesting
Speaker 1: in terms of the ramifications and follow on effects of
Speaker 1: online dating than I had ever really thought about before.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but it kind of has
Speaker 1: me thinking about what my Tinder, my hypothetical Tinder profile
Speaker 1: would actually look like. And I think, based on Dan's
Speaker 1: observations and his dating advice, I would have to put
Speaker 1: something about like I'm really good at delayed gratifications skills,
Speaker 1: like that's what he might. Oh wait, that actually sounds
Speaker 1: really bad. No. I think the idea is to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that you have to pursuit right. Oh yes, that's right,
Speaker 1: demonstrates that that attracts people who have delayed gratifications. So
Speaker 1: the other thing that comes through from it is just
Speaker 1: he mentioned the gamification of the entire dating strategy, which
Speaker 1: is why, like they say, for guys on Tinder, you're
Speaker 1: just supposed to swipe right constantly just to increase your
Speaker 1: chances of getting a match. I didn't realize that the
Speaker 1: time at which the time of day at which you
Speaker 1: do it actually matters as well. That I was wondering
Speaker 1: about that too, because maybe that would be my one
Speaker 1: edge because I always get up at four am, So
Speaker 1: I was thinking like, well, if I were getting up
Speaker 1: at four am, I wonder if that would help me.
Speaker 1: Like in the queue, you also have to wonder what
Speaker 1: kind of people you're matching with it four am, I
Speaker 1: can only imagine. But on his areous note, I mean
Speaker 1: this notion that our economic models aren't really taking to
Speaker 1: taking into account. What is a sweeping change to the
Speaker 1: way society works. I think is a really interesting one,
Speaker 1: and Dan made a very very good case for why
Speaker 1: it matters in the broader economy and in the broader
Speaker 1: consumer market as well. Yeah. Absolutely people should read the
Speaker 1: paper and follow him. Yeah, for sure. The paper is
Speaker 1: highly amusing. As mentioned earlier, this has been another edition
Speaker 1: of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: Why Isn't All? You could follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: the Stalwart and you should definitely follow our guest today,
Speaker 1: Dan McMurtry. He's at super Mugatu on Twitter. He's really
Speaker 1: great because actually for a long time he was tseudonymous
Speaker 1: and then at the time that he unveiled his dating paper,
Speaker 1: he revealed his name to the public. Everyone should go
Speaker 1: check it out. You could find links to the paper
Speaker 1: or is there and all the other insights, all of
Speaker 1: which are worth following. Be sure to follow our producer
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson, and
Speaker 1: follow all of the Bloomberg podcast on Twitter at podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.