Latest / Women Disrupting Tech / How a Female Founder Builds Real Human Connection Beyond the Swipe with Marsha Goei | Ep. 149

Transcript

How a Female Founder Builds Real Human Connection Beyond the Swipe with Marsha Goei | Ep. 149 · Women Disrupting Tech

• 0:00
  But there's not really any good conversation status there.
• 0:03
  And then often people chat for weeks.
• 0:06
  They build up all of these expectations in their head.
• 0:10
  And then either you get ghosted at some point, so people just
• 0:13
  stop responding because they found other matches that they
• 0:16
  had a conversation with. Or you meet in real life after
• 0:19
  two weeks of chatting. And then you see that the
• 0:23
  expectations that you build up in your head are different in
• 0:25
  real life. So, so love swiping a lot of
• 0:29
  chatting, rarely meeting people and if you meet them maybe
• 0:31
  sometimes within 5 seconds, you'll already know that it's
• 0:33
  not a match. So for Breeze, we wanted to make
• 0:36
  a dating app that's I don't know if efficient is the word because
• 0:39
  I don't necessarily think that dating should be efficient, but
• 0:41
  the process from putting yourself out there on a dating
• 0:45
  app and meeting someone in real life, I think that process
• 0:48
  should be more efficient and more human.
• 1:06
  Hey, welcome back to Women Disrupting Tech, and thank you
• 1:09
  for tuning in to episode 149. I'm your host Tier Kanupkas.
• 1:15
  And this is the podcast that closes the funding gap in
• 1:17
  venture capital by amplifying the stories of female founders
• 1:21
  and their investors. If you've ever used the dating
• 1:25
  app, you probably recognize this experience.
• 1:29
  Endless swiping, endless chatting.
• 1:31
  And if it ever gets to a date, chances over real match are same
• 1:36
  to none. While still in university,
• 1:39
  Marcia Hui and her team at Greece decided to change this.
• 1:43
  They built an app that skips the chat and sends you straight on
• 1:47
  your first date. In this episode, Marsha is my
• 1:50
  guest to share what she learned while building something deeply
• 1:53
  human in a system that rewards the opposite.
• 1:56
  We learn how building with a team of seven requires radical
• 2:00
  vulnerability, how you can test the dating app without writing a
• 2:04
  single line of code, and how staying close to yourself helps
• 2:09
  to prevent misalignment and burnout.
• 2:12
  You'll also hear how Breeze discovered who actually pays for
• 2:15
  their services. Spoiler, it's not who they
• 2:19
  expected it to be. So when you're ready for a
• 2:21
  beautiful conversation about what it takes to build for human
• 2:25
  connection instead of swipes, here's my conversation with
• 2:28
  Marcia Hui. Marcia Hui, good morning.
• 2:31
  Hi, good morning. Good to have you on women
• 2:33
  disrupting tech. It's in order to have you.
• 2:35
  Let's start with some background.
• 2:37
  You're the head of brands at Resocial.
• 2:41
  How did you get there? We started Breeze while I was
• 2:45
  still in university. So as students, and this is 2019
• 2:49
  we're talking about, Yeah, we were all master students
• 2:54
  working. Yeah, some, some extracurricular
• 2:58
  activities and extra studies. And at one point we came
• 3:01
  together and said let's give entrepreneurship a try.
• 3:04
  And seven years later, here we are.
• 3:07
  OK, cool. So what?
• 3:09
  What made entrepreneurship A viable option for you?
• 3:13
  Honestly, for me, it was never something that I dreamt about.
• 3:17
  I was studying industrial design engineering at a time and in
• 3:21
  during those studies you're often prompted or, or yeah, you
• 3:28
  have to start making products and think about problems in the
• 3:31
  world that you want to solve. And that is very much in line
• 3:33
  with entrepreneurship. But I didn't really see it as a
• 3:35
  viable option at the time because I never really had any
• 3:39
  role models in that regards or saw myself as an entrepreneur.
• 3:44
  So I was very lucky to have met a couple of friends during my
• 3:48
  studies who were really eager to see if the founder life was
• 3:52
  something for them and they asked me to join and that's how
• 3:55
  I ended up there. Ah OK, so you were asked by by
• 3:59
  friends before you started working for Breeze.
• 4:04
  You also briefly worked As for AVC firm as an analyst.
• 4:09
  That wasn't like inspiration for you to to start founding a
• 4:15
  startup. No, I'd say this was actually
• 4:18
  the other way around. So we decided that we wanted to
• 4:21
  give entrepreneurship a try. And then we were contacted by
• 4:26
  this organization through the sort of entrepreneurship
• 4:30
  organization in Delves, which where we were sitting at the
• 4:33
  time, and they were looking for students to sort of join their
• 4:37
  program that sort of trains you to become AVC analyst.
• 4:43
  And so we knew nothing about the industry at the time and we
• 4:46
  thought this would be a good learning opportunity.
• 4:49
  So it was actually the other way route.
• 4:50
  We wanted to do entrepreneurship and that's why we sort of took
• 4:54
  an interest in the the finance side of things.
• 4:57
  OK, so did it help? Does it help?
• 5:02
  Definitely during fundraising, the things we learned there is
• 5:05
  definitely like what does a pitch deck need to look like?
• 5:08
  What do feces look for in founding teams, in products, in
• 5:13
  in market opportunities? So in that sense, it definitely
• 5:17
  helped us raise. I don't think it necessarily
• 5:22
  makes you a better founder or that it's like a very mandatory
• 5:26
  experience you have to have definitely.
• 5:28
  OK, OK, cool. So with Priest, you're building
• 5:32
  a dating app. Maybe start by saying what what
• 5:40
  prompted you to build a dating app?
• 5:43
  Because there's quite a few of them.
• 5:46
  Yeah, it's also that exactly. It's not as if we grew up
• 5:50
  wanting to build a dating app. I think this is again,
• 5:54
  something. So when we started as students,
• 5:57
  people were telling us like, don't think about solutions yet,
• 6:00
  definitely think about problems. And being students, we were
• 6:03
  thinking about problems that we had in our own lives.
• 6:06
  And then of course, dating was one of the things that came up.
• 6:10
  We knew many people and maybe, yeah, the founding team as well.
• 6:14
  Eager is maybe a big bird, but we were looking to get to find
• 6:17
  more days to meet people. And there were all these dating
• 6:21
  apps, but they didn't really help you get to that goal of
• 6:25
  actually meeting people in real life.
• 6:27
  So we thought, yeah, this is something that definitely could
• 6:31
  use a product that that works better for this.
• 6:33
  And that's when we started researching the problem mostly.
• 6:36
  And then eventually we started building Breeze.
• 6:39
  Yeah, so a couple of things I want to unpack here. 1 is dating
• 6:46
  apps as they were then and I think now as well, are not
• 6:51
  geared towards actually meeting people.
• 6:54
  How is Breeze different? Yes so before diving into
• 6:59
  Breeze, I think it's nice to explain for the people who don't
• 7:02
  know how all of these other dating apps generally work.
• 7:06
  Generally it's a lot of profiles, endless amounts of
• 7:10
  profiles that you can swipe through and then within a split
• 7:12
  second you can decide if you want to like or dislike someone
• 7:16
  and if you like someone and the other person likes you as well.
• 7:19
  Then there's a match. And then a chat box opens and
• 7:22
  it's up to you, the users to sort of start a conversation and
• 7:26
  eventually maybe meet in real life.
• 7:29
  What you see in in practice is that a lot of people start
• 7:34
  swiping mostly out of boredom, out of a certain wanting to be
• 7:37
  entertained or wanting to get some validation on the market to
• 7:42
  see how many likes they are getting, stuff like that.
• 7:45
  And then once the chat opens, many chats, just many matches go
• 7:50
  sort of unanswered. So people don't even start a
• 7:52
  conversation. And when you do, it's very
• 7:55
  difficult to sort of make a connection because you haven't
• 7:58
  met each other, you don't know anything about each other.
• 8:00
  So you're just starting start asking how your day was, but
• 8:04
  there's not really any good conversations started there.
• 8:07
  And then often people chat for weeks.
• 8:12
  They build up all of these expectations in their head, and
• 8:15
  then either you get ghosted at some point so people just stop
• 8:19
  responding because they found other matches that they had a
• 8:21
  conversation with. Or you meet in real life after
• 8:25
  two weeks of chatting. And then you see that the
• 8:28
  expectations that you build up in your head are different in
• 8:32
  real life. So it's a lot of swiping, a lot
• 8:35
  of chatting, rarely meeting people, and if you meet them
• 8:38
  maybe sometimes within 5 seconds, you'll already know
• 8:40
  that it's not a match. So for Breeze, we wanted to make
• 8:44
  a dating app that's, I don't know if efficient is the word
• 8:46
  because I don't necessarily think that dating should be
• 8:48
  efficient, but the process from putting yourself out there on a
• 8:53
  dating app and meeting someone in real life, I think that
• 8:55
  process should be more efficient and more human.
• 8:58
  So how it works at Breeze is that you only get a selected
• 9:01
  amount of profiles each day. So there's an algorithm picking
• 9:05
  profiles for you that we send you at 7:00 PM.
• 9:09
  You look at those profiles, if you have a match, then you
• 9:12
  cannot chat. Instead, you directly fill out a
• 9:14
  date picker and we then organize the first date for you at
• 9:18
  partnered restaurants and bars. So it's a you go straight to
• 9:22
  dating in real life, see if there's a click.
• 9:24
  And if it's not, then you didn't spend weeks investing in this
• 9:29
  potential match, but you just know immediately.
• 9:32
  And it's also a safer way to date this way.
• 9:35
  Yeah. So, so talk to me about the
• 9:38
  safety then, because it's sort of sitting behind the screen and
• 9:44
  swiping sort of I can imagine feels really safe for people
• 9:49
  because there's no obligation to do anything.
• 9:52
  So how do you, I guess my question is how do you ensure
• 9:56
  that people have the commitment to also actually go to that date
• 10:01
  and spend that time with the other person?
• 10:05
  Yeah, there's many features that we have in place to make sure
• 10:08
  that indeed you end up meeting each other in real life and that
• 10:13
  you feel safe during that process.
• 10:15
  So I'd say one of the biggest safety features within quotation
• 10:21
  marks that we have is the fact that we organize first aid for
• 10:24
  you at partners venues. So there's bar staff there that
• 10:28
  is aware that you're on a first date and then we can keep an eye
• 10:31
  out on you. We've heard many stories of
• 10:33
  people who said that they felt very comfortable because once
• 10:36
  someone went to the toilet, then the bar staff came up and asked
• 10:38
  like, oh, how are you doing? Do you need some help or are you
• 10:41
  OK? So that's definitely a very,
• 10:44
  yeah, that's definitely a safety net in real life.
• 10:48
  Other things that we can do is because we know that the date
• 10:50
  happened, we can ask you afterwards, how was this person?
• 10:54
  Did they behave correctly? Were they similar to their
• 10:56
  profile? And if people say yes, then we
• 11:00
  can sort of give people a check mark, an extra check mark on
• 11:03
  their profile that indicates, hey, someone else from the
• 11:06
  Greece community met this person and said that they were OK.
• 11:10
  So these are all things that other dating apps cannot do
• 11:12
  because they don't own the date itself as well.
• 11:15
  They just stop at the at the chatting.
• 11:19
  And then also in terms of making sure that people get to the
• 11:23
  date, we have a whole system in place to make sure that if
• 11:27
  people, for instance, cancel or don't respond to a match, that
• 11:29
  they get a penalty to ensure that the community and a culture
• 11:34
  stays intentional. So we also have the feature that
• 11:39
  if you have a match and we ask you to fill out the date picker
• 11:43
  and pay for the day beforehand, if you haven't done those,
• 11:48
  haven't gone through those steps with your current match, then
• 11:51
  it's not possible for you to answer other profiles.
• 11:54
  Because what you otherwise see is that people start liking
• 11:57
  people, they start to sort of collect matches, but never
• 11:59
  follow through on them. So we want you to follow through
• 12:03
  on your current matches and only then you can sort of look who
• 12:06
  else is out there. So actually you so you re
• 12:11
  engineer to process search that a you go to the date first and
• 12:15
  don't waste time on that list chatting and B, you actually
• 12:20
  have a keratin stick system in place that makes sure that
• 12:24
  people a get rewarded for showing good behavior.
• 12:27
  So actually going on the date and behaving nicely and get
• 12:31
  penalized for let's say not behaving nicely and and we're
• 12:39
  ghosting people. Exactly.
• 12:42
  Yeah. And it sometimes feels a little
• 12:45
  like, do we need all these rules and and things in place for
• 12:49
  people to meet each other? But I think what the other
• 12:54
  dating apps have shown is that this whole online mating dance
• 13:00
  that that's how you can call it, is so new to people and to us as
• 13:06
  as humans with technology, that's sort of all the rules
• 13:11
  that we have in real life don't apply anymore.
• 13:13
  Suddenly it's OK to in the middle of a conversation, go
• 13:16
  someone or to send a picture unsolicited to someone.
• 13:20
  So it's sort of was the rules of the jungle applied to to all the
• 13:27
  other dating apps. And I think it's good to sort of
• 13:29
  say as a new dating app like, hey, this is not how we treat
• 13:32
  each other. We want to treat each other
• 13:34
  online still as human beings, so there are certain, yeah,
• 13:38
  expectations in place. Yeah, cool.
• 13:42
  You also I read somewhere or heard somewhere that you had a
• 13:46
  very interesting way of validating the whole concept
• 13:49
  behind it because that's let's let's tease it a bit.
• 13:54
  There was no technology involved there.
• 13:57
  Yeah, that's very true. Good research.
• 14:01
  So we were students at the time and we didn't have any resources
• 14:04
  and we really didn't know how to build an app.
• 14:07
  So we read this book, The Lean Startup, which is well, of
• 14:12
  course, something like the Bible for a lot of founders.
• 14:15
  And there we learned that you don't necessarily have to start
• 14:19
  like developing an app to actually test if this concept
• 14:22
  would be something that people are interested in.
• 14:25
  So our most MVP product to test would be paper profiles of our
• 14:31
  friends. So we asked many of our friends
• 14:33
  to create a profile. We've printed it out with a
• 14:36
  couple of pictures and some information on them.
• 14:39
  And we would go around campus asking people if they would want
• 14:42
  to go on a date without chatting 1st.
• 14:45
  And if they said yes, we would show them the paper profiles and
• 14:48
  ask them, OK, who do you want to go on a date with?
• 14:50
  We'll arrange it, but you cannot chat beforehand.
• 14:54
  And that's how we organized our first dates on the first day of
• 14:57
  actually coming up with the concept for Breeze.
• 15:00
  How was the response on campus otherwise?
• 15:03
  Because that that sounds like a good start.
• 15:05
  People thought it was really weird that we came up to them
• 15:09
  and asked them about their dating life.
• 15:12
  Many people thought that you we were going to ask them on a
• 15:15
  date, which I get because it's so random.
• 15:20
  But I think especially as like young founders and, and early
• 15:23
  stage, you just have to get out there and don't be afraid to
• 15:27
  make a fool out of yourself or to bother people with your
• 15:32
  questions trying to understand a problem.
• 15:36
  But in general, people, once they understood our intentions
• 15:39
  that we were mostly doing research or trying to validate
• 15:42
  something, people were very open to talk about their love lives,
• 15:47
  talk about their dating lives and their desires in that
• 15:50
  regard. And the first responses were,
• 15:54
  well, do I really, Can I really not chat with this person?
• 15:58
  That's really scary. But in the end, we saw enough
• 16:01
  potential there, and enough people who were open to try it,
• 16:04
  that we started to iterate on the idea further.
• 16:08
  OK, so how did you get from that stage to building, actually
• 16:14
  building something? Actually building something.
• 16:17
  I mean, I'd argue that this is also building something.
• 16:19
  But if you're talking about actually building the app, I
• 16:22
  think it took maybe maybe seven months or more than half a year
• 16:27
  to actually start building the app.
• 16:29
  So we had a lot of months validate validating with very
• 16:34
  low code solutions. So once we went past the paper
• 16:40
  profile test, we started to send digital profiles.
• 16:44
  So people could make a profile in Google Forms, upload
• 16:48
  pictures, answer questions, and we would then WhatsApp people
• 16:53
  PDF profiles. Yeah, through WhatsApp and
• 16:56
  through WhatsApp they would answer us, OK, I like person A
• 17:00
  and I don't like person B. We would have this huge Excel
• 17:03
  where we would sort of analyze all these likes and dislikes and
• 17:08
  and and select new profiles to send to people manually.
• 17:12
  But once we saw that there was a mess, then we would what'sapp
• 17:14
  both people again like, hey, you have a match with this person.
• 17:17
  When can you make it for the dates?
• 17:19
  Friday 8:30 OK, we'll ask the other person.
• 17:22
  We would ask the other person and if they also could make it
• 17:25
  that we would make a reservation and tell them, OK 8:30 This
• 17:28
  Cafe, your match is going to be there.
• 17:29
  Have a good time. This was all super met.
• 17:33
  Yeah. Out of curiosity, how did you
• 17:36
  make the, the the bars interested in this?
• 17:39
  Because yes, they get paid, but it's.
• 17:42
  This was this was a whole second proposition that we had to test
• 17:48
  as well. So on one hand we were busy
• 17:49
  validating if if daters wanted this and on the other hand, the
• 17:53
  whole bar aspect was a safety aspect of the whole proposition.
• 17:57
  So this needed to be validated as well.
• 18:00
  We went by all the date spots in Delft just like walked in and
• 18:07
  asked if we could organize dates there.
• 18:09
  Many of these bar sets, well come back once you've organized
• 18:12
  50 dates and maybe we're interested.
• 18:14
  So we got a lot of no's. But there was one place who said
• 18:17
  OK, we can do this. And our idea at the time was
• 18:22
  that the business model would be at the partner side.
• 18:25
  So our idea was, OK, we're going to give you new clientele and in
• 18:31
  exchange we can sort of ask maybe 5 or 10% of the bill.
• 18:36
  This was very invalidated very quickly because we learned that
• 18:40
  bar owners, they don't want to have all this hassle of keeping
• 18:45
  track of all these, these tabs and stuff like that.
• 18:48
  So the first partner we had in Delft, they said, OK, we're
• 18:51
  going to give you €1.50, staggering amount of €1.50 per
• 18:55
  date. And we were quite happy with
• 18:58
  that at the time, Not because we knew that that would be a
• 19:01
  scalable solution, because if you only earn 150 per date, they
• 19:05
  need to organize a lot, a lot of dates to make some revenue.
• 19:10
  It becomes a volume game. Yes, and at the time maybe we
• 19:14
  dared to dream big, but we didn't dare to dream that big
• 19:17
  yet, I think. So it was mostly validation that
• 19:20
  there was at least someone willing to pay for something of
• 19:23
  this. But once we start to scale up,
• 19:27
  we also, so we were organizing maybe 5 to 10 days a day and
• 19:33
  then after each date we would ask the users like, hey, did you
• 19:37
  enjoy the date? Can we call you about your
• 19:39
  experience, stuff like that. That we noticed that people were
• 19:41
  super, super happy to give us feedback and tell them, tell us
• 19:45
  about their experience because they really enjoyed it.
• 19:48
  So at some point we asked them afterwards, like if this was
• 19:52
  worth something to you and this is an open payment request and
• 19:56
  you can just donate anything that you thought it was worth.
• 20:00
  And then we saw that people, if they had a nice day, they would
• 20:02
  donate 5 euros, €10 because they had a good experience.
• 20:07
  And that's when we realized, oh, the the business model is not on
• 20:10
  the partner side, it's actually on the user side.
• 20:14
  And then we could really skill this up.
• 20:16
  So users are currently paying. At the best between €7.50 to
• 20:21
  €12.50 for a date and this includes the first drink at the
• 20:26
  venue and on the bar side or on venue side.
• 20:31
  There's no exchange of money we give.
• 20:35
  You skipped. You skipped to 150 per guest.
• 20:38
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 20:39
  So that changed and it got on a lot easier to scale in that
• 20:44
  regard as well. For bars, we fill empty tables
• 20:48
  when they need it. So they can say like I want 5
• 20:52
  tables filled on Wednesday, but I don't need any tables filled
• 20:55
  on Friday evening, for instance. So we fill those tables and then
• 20:59
  they give the first drink in return.
• 21:03
  And that has been going very well.
• 21:05
  And it's it's proven to be a very scalable way to to grow the
• 21:08
  partner side as well. OK, cool.
• 21:11
  So you studied industrial design engineering.
• 21:16
  How does that influence how you look at the design of an app in
• 21:20
  in terms of functionality and in terms of of or maybe also UXUI?
• 21:26
  I think the philosophy of the industrial design engineering
• 21:31
  faculty in Delft at least, is that it's a very human centered
• 21:35
  approach. So it's form follows function,
• 21:40
  sort of the, the function of the, the product should be
• 21:43
  central and how people are interacting with it and the form
• 21:47
  of it sort of flows out of that. And I think that's also really
• 21:50
  how we designed Breeze. We did so many hours and hours
• 21:56
  of user testing, user interviewing, really
• 21:59
  understanding what because dating is such a, it's such a
• 22:05
  soft contextual experience. You know, dating is not
• 22:10
  something practical like buying groceries or going from A to B.
• 22:14
  This is a very personal experience.
• 22:18
  So really understanding this from a user point of view and
• 22:22
  and building and tailoring the products around that.
• 22:25
  I think that's very much in line with everything I learned to
• 22:28
  Delft. OK, So in that sense also your
• 22:32
  education then did help because one could be tempted to think
• 22:37
  like, hey, you're combining tech with something that is indeed
• 22:41
  highly contextual. Yeah, I think because currently
• 22:45
  I'm head of brand, but I used to be head of products for the
• 22:47
  first, I'd say 4-5 years of building brains.
• 22:53
  And I think I am one of the only ones in the founding team who
• 22:59
  did something in line with what she sort of was educated for.
• 23:03
  Because I think for instance, our CFO, he was the front end
• 23:08
  developer for the first couple of years of the app.
• 23:11
  For instance, he was studying electrical engineering, then
• 23:15
  became the front end developer and is now doing all the legal
• 23:18
  and finance part of Greece so. Interesting shift to.
• 23:23
  Definitely. I think it's more than anything
• 23:27
  in a showcase of as founders, you have to be super flexible,
• 23:31
  eager to learn, filling gaps that are needed.
• 23:35
  And I think I was lucky in that regard that the thing that I
• 23:38
  wanted to do is the thing I could do at Breeze.
• 23:41
  Yeah. Before we go to your shift from
• 23:44
  head of brand or from head of product to head of brand, just
• 23:48
  want to finalize this bit with another question about the app.
• 23:53
  How do you measure if it's successful the date?
• 23:57
  So you do do some post, let me call it post date interview.
• 24:03
  Yes. So back in the day we actually
• 24:06
  did interview them, but now it's a post date feedback form.
• 24:10
  So indeed, we ask you, hey, you went on a date yesterday at this
• 24:13
  location with this person. First of all, what did you think
• 24:17
  about the match? And this is not Ray to the other
• 24:20
  person, but it's more what did you think about the match so
• 24:23
  that we can use that in our algorithm to match you better in
• 24:26
  the future if there's going to be other dates.
• 24:28
  Of course, we asked you if you want to exchange phone numbers
• 24:32
  because people have had no contact with each other.
• 24:36
  They've only sort of communicated indirectly with
• 24:40
  each other through the app. So it's also up to us to sort of
• 24:43
  ask them afterwards, do you want to exchange phone numbers?
• 24:45
  And if they both want to, we can do that through the app as well.
• 24:48
  This is also another safety feature because we learned that
• 24:51
  it's quite uncomfortable sometimes for people on the date
• 24:55
  itself to have to say that they don't want to exchange phone
• 24:58
  numbers because it can get quite confrontational.
• 25:02
  Yeah. So this is also safety that you
• 25:04
  do this afterwards in the comfort of your own home sort of
• 25:08
  and that you can think about it for a for a night.
• 25:11
  Yeah. Do you actually prompt people
• 25:13
  not to exchange phone numbers on the first date at all?
• 25:17
  Just just tell them, hey, stay, don't do that yet, We'll ask.
• 25:22
  People, we'll tell them. We'll tell them that the
• 25:24
  possibility exists to do it afterwards.
• 25:29
  Because also I do think that there is, I don't want to sort
• 25:33
  of direct the entire Breeze date, you know, because we
• 25:36
  already direct quite a lot. And I still hope that there is
• 25:40
  some room for like human magic connection.
• 25:46
  Happening in real life. Spontaneity, exactly something
• 25:49
  that would sort of organically happen as well.
• 25:53
  So we don't necessarily say you cannot do this, but we do
• 25:55
  definitely say like this is an option to do afterwards.
• 25:59
  So feel free to to to make it yet.
• 26:03
  It's also safe because if people then forget for whatever reason
• 26:09
  to to ask, which happened to me once almost and.
• 26:16
  They're now your partners too, or no?
• 26:18
  Sorry. Was this with your current
• 26:20
  partner? No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 26:22
  Was was it actually in a bar? I just met this this girl and I
• 26:30
  was just like so head over heels that I forgot to ask her phone
• 26:33
  number. Fortunately, a friend of mine
• 26:36
  did ask her phone number. So for you.
• 26:39
  Or for themselves. No, no, no for me.
• 26:42
  Actually, yeah. No, no, I was really like really
• 26:45
  nice, nice of him to to do that. So so that happens as well.
• 26:50
  But then it's a sort of also a very nice fall back to have
• 26:53
  like, oh, Oh yeah, I can also ask and for the phone number
• 26:57
  because back then we didn't have the technology.
• 27:00
  It was still paper writing. Different times.
• 27:05
  Yeah, that's a nice story. Yeah.
• 27:09
  Yeah, sorry. We got off track, but success
• 27:12
  rates indeed we asked you for the match on to exchange phone
• 27:16
  numbers. What did you think about the
• 27:17
  location? Because there's also a whole
• 27:20
  location picking algorithm that we can sort of learn for.
• 27:24
  And what we see is that around 75% of matches want to exchange
• 27:28
  phone, exchange phone numbers afterwards.
• 27:30
  So if that means that they are going on a second date, not
• 27:34
  necessarily, but I think it's quite a good proxy to sort of,
• 27:38
  yeah, it indicates that people generally have a good time on a
• 27:41
  first date. Yeah, it it wasn't a bad match
• 27:44
  because otherwise you wouldn't exchange phone numbers.
• 27:46
  Exactly. So 75% is, I think it's pretty
• 27:50
  good. Yeah, I think you also have you
• 27:53
  had your first baby at some point?
• 27:56
  Yeah, this is the most fun about working in a dating industry, of
• 27:59
  course, is the success stories. Yeah, so we often get cards in
• 28:07
  the in the mail or DMS or emails from happy Breeze couples
• 28:12
  showing us that they went on their anniversary trip or that
• 28:16
  they went back to the their first Breeze date location on
• 28:19
  their one year anniversary, that they bought houses, that they
• 28:22
  moved in together. And indeed, sometimes we get
• 28:25
  baby photos of Breeze babies and that's then you really realize
• 28:30
  that you are making a lot of impact on people's lives and
• 28:33
  that's super cool to see. Yeah, I can imagine.
• 28:37
  So let's talk about your story. A couple of things I want to
• 28:42
  pick up on. One is, and this is one of the
• 28:45
  reasons you were on my People to be interviewed list for a very
• 28:49
  long time. I heard you say that you founded
• 28:54
  Bri social with six guys and that you actually, because you
• 28:59
  were the only woman on the team, they actually tried to have
• 29:05
  older women or female students join, but that didn't work.
• 29:10
  How was the journey for you? A, how was it to be the only
• 29:14
  woman in a, in a team when you're building a dating app,
• 29:18
  which is usually sort of not necessarily just a male
• 29:24
  dominated domain? And the second question is, so
• 29:29
  how, how did that go in terms of of getting a second female
• 29:34
  founder on board? Because I don't think it
• 29:37
  happened ultimately, but how was that for you?
• 29:43
  I would say at times a very lonely experience.
• 29:47
  So as you said, we founded Breeze with seven Co founders,
• 29:50
  out of which I'm the only female.
• 29:51
  And in general 7 is already a very unusual large group of Co
• 29:56
  founders. It's a big team, but as students
• 30:01
  we sort of didn't know what was usual and you're used to sort of
• 30:04
  bigger groups in which you make projects.
• 30:07
  So it felt quite natural to us. And indeed, at that time we
• 30:12
  wanted to look for other female students to join as well.
• 30:18
  Many of the friends or acquaintances I had at the time,
• 30:20
  they all said like, no, I don't think this is something for me.
• 30:24
  No, I'd rather do an internship at a company.
• 30:28
  So there's there was quite some hesitance there to join, which I
• 30:32
  could relate to because I also, as I said earlier, didn't see
• 30:36
  myself as an, as an entrepreneur.
• 30:38
  Was that about being an entrepreneur or was that about
• 30:42
  also about being in a room with safe skies?
• 30:47
  For me personally, I think it really was about not seeing
• 30:50
  myself as an entrepreneur. But part of not seeing myself as
• 30:56
  an entrepreneur is definitely because you don't see yourself
• 30:58
  reflected in the the founder stories that you see online.
• 31:04
  And maybe similarly, like if you go to to us like one of those
• 31:08
  students entrepreneurship events, there were always own
• 31:15
  almost only guys there. And it can sometimes feel not as
• 31:20
  welcoming or maybe not as homey as maybe other my guy Co
• 31:26
  founders would feel in the beginning.
• 31:29
  So there were quite a lot of doubts for me, but also I think
• 31:34
  because we were so young and because it definitely felt like,
• 31:37
  oh, this is something we're going to try for half a year and
• 31:40
  after that I'm just going to graduate and do a normal, have a
• 31:44
  normal job. Go back to normal life.
• 31:47
  Exactly. It didn't feel like it was going
• 31:49
  to be such a big decision for the rest of my life because if
• 31:53
  it if I had known at the time what would come out of it, I
• 31:57
  also definitely think I would have doubt it more and maybe not
• 32:02
  even do it, But because we were so sort of annoying, I think it
• 32:11
  was just more just dive into it and don't think about it too
• 32:15
  much. But that's definitely, I think
• 32:17
  for people who have to decide later in life when they have
• 32:22
  more personal responsibilities or, or financial burdens, I
• 32:28
  think it's a lot harder to be able to make the decision,
• 32:31
  especially for women, if there are, yeah, other sides of your
• 32:38
  life that sort of As for other things.
• 32:40
  So, yeah, I had the luck to be able to to choose this quite
• 32:45
  natively at a young age. Yeah.
• 32:50
  And then there's the, the part where we start to get more
• 32:53
  serious and, and we started to sort of finalize like or, or or
• 33:01
  like decide on our culture and our way of working.
• 33:05
  And then the differences between me and my milk Co founder
• 33:10
  sometimes shone through or, or gotten more apparent.
• 33:16
  That's something like we would have quite intense discussions
• 33:22
  for instance, like early stage, you just have to talk through
• 33:25
  everything and anything, whether it's decisions on the product
• 33:30
  side or on the business side or decisions on like, I don't know,
• 33:35
  statutor like your all the legal documents and stuff, exactly
• 33:40
  those types of things. We would have endless
• 33:42
  discussions on this and they would just sort of go into it
• 33:47
  with a yeah, with a how do you say this?
• 33:50
  Extract Bane. Yeah, yeah.
• 33:52
  OK. So yeah.
• 33:53
  They were just going very hard. Head first.
• 33:56
  Into the discussion and and I totally like shut down because
• 34:00
  of that and wouldn't really make a point anymore.
• 34:04
  And so at some point, for instance, we really had to make
• 34:07
  this decision like OK, once when we are going to have a meeting
• 34:13
  on, on deciding on something important and we lay out out all
• 34:17
  the information in the middle and then we go one by one in a
• 34:20
  round without any interruptions or without any responses.
• 34:24
  We each get to say our part. Institutionalizing those types
• 34:28
  of things really helped for me. Yeah, how, how did you manage to
• 34:34
  build that in? Because if like they go in at
• 34:39
  first, I can understand that you're like, oh, maybe stay out
• 34:44
  of the discussion for for now. But how did you get back into
• 34:48
  the discussion in the way that in a way that you were managed
• 34:53
  to make that change to like, OK, we need to change the system or
• 34:58
  the the, yeah, the system. For.
• 35:01
  Having the disease. I think in that regard, I was
• 35:06
  very lucky with my Co founders because they were also always
• 35:12
  very keen on like personal development and and sharing
• 35:16
  feedback. So we'd have these monthly
• 35:20
  feedback sessions where we would with the seven of us all give
• 35:25
  feedback on each other and, and open up about things that we
• 35:28
  were struggling with. And this was also a very an
• 35:32
  intuitive thing for me in the beginning because I also thought
• 35:35
  like, I had some trouble being vulnerable with them because I
• 35:39
  thought they are so strong and smart and like so good at all
• 35:43
  these things and they know what they're doing.
• 35:45
  And I, I'm not. So I, I'm going to pretend like
• 35:48
  I know what I'm doing as well. But I really learned from them
• 35:52
  that it's good to be vulnerable and to open up on those things.
• 35:56
  So whenever I experience these, yeah, hardships is a big word,
• 36:04
  but whenever I experienced these things, then we would open up
• 36:07
  about it, we would talk about it, and then we would together
• 36:10
  come up with solutions like this.
• 36:11
  And this took so much time and energy from all of us in the
• 36:17
  beginning. Every month we would do this for
• 36:19
  an entire day. But I really think that this was
• 36:23
  a great investment in the team and in how we operate.
• 36:28
  And this is one of the big reasons why we made it work with
• 36:32
  seven people because I think especially investor investors in
• 36:36
  the early days, they were like 7 founders.
• 36:38
  We're never going to invest in it because it will never work.
• 36:41
  It's 7 captains on a ship. But because we invested so much
• 36:45
  in each other and understand each other and trying to build
• 36:48
  systems to to work with each other's strengths and
• 36:51
  weaknesses, we were able to make it work.
• 36:54
  Yeah. And also be open to each
• 36:56
  other's, let's say feedback because that's quite that also
• 37:01
  takes a bit of vulnerability from from the other side.
• 37:06
  Definitely. I think everybody looking back,
• 37:10
  everybody had one point, like one of those feedback sessions
• 37:14
  where they totally broke down and sort of laid everything on
• 37:18
  the table about their childhood, about their experience growing
• 37:21
  up and all the things that sort of made them into who they are
• 37:25
  today. And where certain like traumas
• 37:27
  came from or where certain responses or personality traits
• 37:31
  came from. And being able to do that and
• 37:35
  really learn each other that deeply and, and knowing that
• 37:41
  your Co founders are OK with that and, and, and embracing
• 37:45
  that part of you. I think that was super powerful.
• 37:47
  Yeah. Is that also part of of dating
• 37:53
  in a sense that you actually have the the give each other the
• 37:58
  space to to open up about I think.
• 38:02
  It's definitely it's. I don't know if it's needed on
• 38:06
  the first date necessarily. No, but maybe not but.
• 38:10
  Over time, definitely. I think that's what they often
• 38:14
  say right? Choosing a Co founder is like
• 38:16
  choosing like your your partner. I think those relationships are
• 38:22
  quite similar. You spend so much time together
• 38:25
  so much, so many highs and lows, really embracing that side of
• 38:28
  each other as well. I think that's definitely
• 38:30
  healthy for a romantic relationship as well.
• 38:33
  Yeah. So when we talked before you
• 38:35
  talked about shift you had made in, in terms of culture from
• 38:42
  being a quote UN quote family to being a quote, UN quote team.
• 38:48
  What what triggered that? Was that also one of the
• 38:51
  outcomes of the of the of the feedback sessions?
• 38:56
  I wish it had been because I think it took us quite some
• 39:00
  years to eventually make this shift because we're now talking
• 39:06
  about maybe this happened a year, year and a half ago that
• 39:10
  we really did a lot of workshops and trainings around management
• 39:14
  styles and what we can do better as managers.
• 39:19
  And to sketch the context. Like we were all in our early
• 39:21
  20s when we started Breeze. We had never worked a regular
• 39:25
  job, so we didn't really know about company culture and about
• 39:30
  management styles. We just had a crazy drive
• 39:36
  ourselves to work really hard and make this work and for a
• 39:39
  long time with the seven of us, it came from this inherent or
• 39:45
  how do you say this? Intrinsic.
• 39:47
  Intrinsic motivation to to do it this way.
• 39:50
  Then once you start growing the team there, we would have
• 39:55
  similar expectations over team members, similar as to what we
• 40:00
  expected from each other. And some people really lived up
• 40:03
  to that because they were also very eager and felt the mission
• 40:06
  and wanted to grow breeze, and others felt that less because
• 40:10
  they just. Wanted to like have a job and,
• 40:15
  and, and live their life, you know, so we did really realise
• 40:19
  that we can't expect everyone to be on the same level of
• 40:25
  motivation or commitment as us. And if you don't, if you're not
• 40:34
  specific or make these expectations apparent, then
• 40:39
  there's going to be quite some friction between the employees
• 40:42
  who do feel this and the employees who don't and the
• 40:46
  founders who feel like it should be that way.
• 40:52
  So that was. A big lurker for us, yeah.
• 40:55
  So what does it? What's the key difference
• 40:58
  between being that family and being a team?
• 41:03
  I think for the family, for family, there's something
• 41:08
  unconditional about it and I think there is less.
• 41:15
  So a team is very result oriented.
• 41:17
  A-Team wants to win something like a like a like a sports
• 41:21
  team. They want to win the the World
• 41:23
  Cup, you know, and for us, at some point, we realized that we
• 41:31
  also really want to win the World Cup of dating.
• 41:33
  So you have the Tinders and the Hinges and the Bumbles of this
• 41:38
  world. And we see the damage that they
• 41:41
  are doing to, to people's experiences, to people's self
• 41:48
  worth and to yeah, online culture.
• 41:51
  And we really do want to prove that a, you can become big with
• 41:58
  an honest business model as well as with a product that is
• 42:02
  actually good for humans. So we sort of eventually dare to
• 42:07
  sort of speak out this this, this goal that we had.
• 42:13
  And if that's really the goal, then you really need to arrange
• 42:16
  your team in a way that you have all the people in place to
• 42:19
  actually win this competition. And you can't do that with a
• 42:23
  family that's more about, I don't know, connection with each
• 42:27
  other and, and, and making everybody feel at home.
• 42:31
  And it's now it feels like we, we don't care about our
• 42:35
  teammates, which really is not the case because I still think
• 42:37
  there's a lot of room and, and eye for the individual.
• 42:43
  But it's all with the goal in mind that we want to win.
• 42:48
  And I think that's a big shift. Yeah, yeah, it becomes a bit
• 42:52
  more, let's say looking at utility someone, someone has a,
• 42:58
  is, is good in a certain capacity and or functions really
• 43:05
  well in a certain capacity and doesn't function in another
• 43:08
  capacity. So has it also changed your
• 43:12
  hiring process then? Definitely, we have gotten way
• 43:17
  more strict in our hiring process to really make sure that
• 43:21
  we have the right people in the right places in the team.
• 43:24
  We've had people shift roles because there were gaps that
• 43:29
  needed to be filled. And the, the, the downside of
• 43:33
  this is of course that we had to also sometimes say goodbye to
• 43:37
  people who didn't fit the team composition at the time anymore.
• 43:42
  And something that we really learned throughout this process
• 43:44
  is if you make these expectations really clear from
• 43:47
  the beginning, and then you are able to have open conversations
• 43:51
  around this, which might sometimes be there's friction
• 43:56
  and, and, and it's not fun because you want from a human
• 44:00
  level, you want to always keep everyone within the team and
• 44:04
  make sure that everyone sort of can stay forever because we're
• 44:07
  having such a good time. But sometimes it had has meant
• 44:12
  that we had to make tougher calls on this, which I think are
• 44:17
  good for the company and eventually are also good for the
• 44:19
  people themselves because they want to be in a position where
• 44:21
  they can perform their best. And if that's not here right
• 44:25
  now, then yeah, I don't think it's, it's useful to stay, you
• 44:29
  know. No true.
• 44:32
  Any tips on how to to do this? How this how to scout if people
• 44:38
  are doing what they're good at, but also what they're supposed
• 44:43
  to do from a from a team perspective and from a company
• 44:46
  perspective. Yeah.
• 44:47
  We've had to install many of these systems again to keep an
• 44:52
  eye out because you can say like, oh, just managers need to
• 44:56
  be cautious of this and then leave it at that.
• 44:59
  But then it's never going to be sort of materialized into
• 45:02
  something. So now we have these systems in
• 45:04
  place at every quarter. You have to sort of fill out the
• 45:07
  survey. You're going to have a talk with
• 45:09
  your confidential councillor every month and you have a talk
• 45:11
  with your manager every quarter where you really go deep into
• 45:15
  how are you feeling? How are you feeling about the
• 45:17
  work pressure? How are you feeling about the
• 45:19
  things that you're doing? Are you enjoying it?
• 45:22
  So really make space for these honest conversations.
• 45:28
  How do you keep that honest? Because at some point people
• 45:31
  have sort of an incentive because they want to stay on.
• 45:37
  They have a sort of incentive to maybe downplay work pressure, or
• 45:43
  maybe think for themselves or rationalize certain things for
• 45:49
  themselves. Yeah.
• 45:51
  So we have a confidential counsellor who has a sort of
• 45:56
  system in place where they ask certain things that are good
• 46:02
  indicators of how someone is doing mentally, for instance.
• 46:05
  So every month we track like how did you sleep this week?
• 46:11
  So these are things that are not going to be something that you
• 46:15
  want to lie about necessarily to sort of save your, to save your
• 46:20
  position in a way. But it's just actually asking
• 46:23
  you like, how did you sleep? And if you sleep really bad for
• 46:26
  a couple of weeks at a time, then it's it's an indicator for
• 46:29
  something and then it's time for to have that conversation.
• 46:34
  So you sort of take indirect proxies that can that can enable
• 46:40
  you to say, hey, something is cooking that.
• 46:43
  Needs to be and I do think that we have had examples of
• 46:49
  colleagues that were unhappy at certain places and then we were
• 46:53
  able to make changes so that they yeah that they they could
• 46:57
  thrive again. I think those types of examples
• 47:00
  also show other team members that we really can take like we
• 47:05
  we want to take care of it like we want to take care of you and
• 47:08
  make sure that you are happy. So I hope that those types of
• 47:12
  yeah, that also showcases it. But I think also what we also do
• 47:15
  a lot is that every team has like every quarter, you eat at
• 47:23
  your manager's place, they cook, and then there's like a big sort
• 47:26
  of round of feedback, kind of like what we used to do with the
• 47:28
  founders. But then we're in your, your
• 47:29
  smaller teams and managers are also very much encouraged to be
• 47:35
  very open and vulnerable there as well.
• 47:36
  And I think that's also setting the stage in a way to show that
• 47:43
  that is OK. But yeah, it's definitely not
• 47:46
  perfect. And so there's always room for
• 47:48
  improvement here, but we're trying to continuously learn on
• 47:51
  this and it's radar processing systems that way.
• 47:55
  Yeah. So I want to shift gears a bit
• 47:59
  to your shift from being the head of product to being the
• 48:04
  head of brands. You told me before when we
• 48:10
  chatted before you told me that you found out over time that you
• 48:14
  struggled to fit in with the other founders because of the
• 48:20
  RV, not only because they were doing going in head first into
• 48:24
  discussions, but also because of their, let's say, analytical,
• 48:28
  pragmatic way of working. How did that sort of influence
• 48:36
  how you perform? I think for a long time I tried
• 48:41
  to assimilate in a way. So for instance, Breeze is a
• 48:46
  very data-driven company because we have so many like analytical
• 48:50
  founders. And so every time I wanted to
• 48:54
  make a call on the product side, I had to sort of back these
• 48:58
  decisions up with data or proof. And that was something that was
• 49:04
  very unnatural to me because I, and now it feels as if I want to
• 49:10
  say like, yeah, just trust my gut feeling and, and, and make
• 49:14
  decision on that. And, and they should be OK with
• 49:16
  it too. And that's not necessarily what
• 49:18
  I want to say. But I because I do think that
• 49:22
  sometimes user experience, it's not a science, it's a feeling
• 49:27
  and it's an understanding of humans and sort of having an
• 49:30
  intuition to make decisions based on that, which cannot
• 49:34
  always be sort of rooted in data.
• 49:37
  So sometimes I struggled wanting to make calls on the product
• 49:41
  side and they wanted to have long discussions on certain sort
• 49:45
  of AB tests that we did to try to validate it.
• 49:48
  And I think over time I struggled with that, but also
• 49:54
  struggled with the role that I grew into as the head of product
• 49:59
  with product being at the time the biggest team within Breeze
• 50:04
  and, and having the developers and the designers in there.
• 50:08
  And this manager role also didn't really fit me because it
• 50:13
  had a lot of, it required a lot of structure and process like
• 50:21
  designing processes, while I wanted to design like a good
• 50:26
  dating experience, you know, So I realized that I was really
• 50:32
  good at the zero to one in the product team.
• 50:34
  So there's nothing OK, build a product that people want to use.
• 50:40
  But then when it came to scaling from one to 100 in terms of
• 50:44
  processes within the product team, but also in terms of the
• 50:47
  actual product, it was something that wasn't something for me.
• 50:52
  And I spent too long stretching myself into this shape that
• 50:57
  didn't fit me. And that's when I also, as I
• 50:59
  told you before, I, I struggled with the burnouts for, for quite
• 51:04
  some time. And that's also indeed why I
• 51:08
  stepped away from the products team when I came back and, and
• 51:12
  moved to a different team. And it's been a very interesting
• 51:19
  process as well. And it was very tough at the
• 51:23
  time, of course, but after like looking back, I'm really happy
• 51:26
  that it's happened because I can definitely say that I'm more
• 51:29
  happy at the place where I'm now.
• 51:32
  And and it also taught me a lot about what I want in my career
• 51:37
  and what rules do or don't fit me.
• 51:40
  Yeah. So what was the first sign for
• 51:42
  you that you were going into a burnout?
• 51:45
  Like looking back, there were many signs because I had been
• 51:48
  quite unhappy and tired. For instance, I didn't sleep
• 51:51
  well for a long time with with work.
• 51:55
  I think if I had to really narrow it down to something that
• 52:01
  people should look out for, I think it's Sunday evening.
• 52:05
  You just had a weekend where you could do whatever you wanted to
• 52:09
  do and meet, see the people you wanted to see, and then you're
• 52:12
  energized again. But are you looking forward to
• 52:15
  Monday morning? And for a long time, I was never
• 52:19
  looking forward to Monday morning.
• 52:21
  Well, on paper, I had the dream job working at a super cool
• 52:26
  product in a role that really fit my, my, my interest with
• 52:31
  people that I really, really enjoyed working with on a super
• 52:34
  cool product that was doing super well.
• 52:35
  And it's your own company. So why are you not enjoying it?
• 52:40
  And it was because I was in this world that didn't fit me.
• 52:43
  But it took me too long to realize this.
• 52:46
  How long did it take you from the start to the to to getting
• 52:53
  back? Also, once I well once I fell
• 52:57
  into the burnout, I think it took me like half a year of 0
• 53:04
  work and then I slowly built my hours up again.
• 53:10
  So starting with like 2 days, two hours a week and then
• 53:13
  building it up and took me I think about a full year to
• 53:17
  really work. So from so 1 1/2 years to really
• 53:22
  build up to working full time again.
• 53:24
  And then actually being a founder, your full time is not
• 53:30
  necessarily 40 hours. So another half year to really
• 53:34
  like be at the same strength I was before I think.
• 53:39
  That took a long time, yes. To to to what extent did let's
• 53:43
  say the the shift from from family to team also contribute
• 53:50
  to to you feeling better now? So that shift was part of the
• 53:56
  things we've changed when I came back because we of course had a
• 54:00
  lot of talks around like, how did this happen?
• 54:04
  What can we improve to make sure that this doesn't happen again?
• 54:07
  And I think one of the insights we had is that if we don't make
• 54:12
  things explicit expectations, then individuals are very much
• 54:19
  left with their own bar of if they're doing good enough or
• 54:25
  their own insecurities about if they're doing good enough,
• 54:28
  enough. And for me, my personal bar is
• 54:33
  really high. So I always felt like I wasn't
• 54:36
  doing good enough. Well, now with these clearer
• 54:40
  expectations as also clearer reviews, whether you are
• 54:46
  reaching these expectations, I think it gave me a lot more
• 54:50
  clarity and also sanity in terms of knowing that I was doing what
• 54:59
  was being expected of me and not always having your personal
• 55:02
  feeling as if you're not doing good enough.
• 55:05
  Oh, OK, so one of the things that prompted you to get into
• 55:10
  burnout is, is also the the your own, let's say how, how you
• 55:18
  field your own performance. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:23
  And because my personal bar was maybe higher than the actual
• 55:28
  bar, I always felt like I wasn't doing good enough.
• 55:31
  And how this relates to the Family First esteem thing is
• 55:35
  that now that we perform like a like a sports team, we tell you
• 55:43
  what we expect from you and how you're doing in terms of these
• 55:45
  expectations. And I think it gives a lot of
• 55:50
  rest and clarity for people if they do reach these expectations
• 55:54
  that that they're doing well and they can sort of feel, feel
• 55:59
  satisfied with that. Yeah.
• 56:02
  And it's also clearer for people who can improve on some points
• 56:06
  that it's very clear to them what they should improve on or
• 56:09
  what they could improve on to meet these expectations.
• 56:12
  So clarity around this is very important.
• 56:17
  Yeah, clarity around roles and responsibilities, clarity
• 56:20
  around, OK, what level do we need you to perform on that kind
• 56:26
  of clarity also. Yeah, I can imagine it helps.
• 56:30
  It helps a lot in in staying sane.
• 56:33
  Let's let me put it that way. At least making sure OK I'm I'm
• 56:40
  doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
• 56:44
  Yeah, because otherwise people are filling this in with their
• 56:47
  own bars in mind or their own expectations.
• 56:52
  And and that's that's not an objective level, of course.
• 56:58
  No. But on the other hand, you do
• 57:01
  need people to sort of, especially in the early phase,
• 57:04
  you do need people to sort of fill in a lot of blanks for
• 57:10
  themselves. What do you mean?
• 57:13
  Well, there's one of the things I found out while working for
• 57:18
  startups is that it takes quite a bit of self initiative and
• 57:23
  entrepreneurship. Also because as as you said
• 57:29
  yourself and I've, I've seen it before with other founders, they
• 57:34
  don't have management experience necessarily.
• 57:37
  Some have, most don't. And then they sort of they just
• 57:43
  let you, yeah, basically figure out what you need to do.
• 57:51
  So that it's sort of an intrinsic, how do you say
• 57:55
  tension that that sort of, yes, you need to be clear, but
• 58:01
  especially if you have people working in jobs rather than
• 58:04
  being a founder, because I think those capacities, those
• 58:08
  identities are different. But yeah, there there are still
• 58:12
  a lot of sort of self self starter mentality needed in a
• 58:19
  sense. I think you're right.
• 58:21
  I think definitely the first ten team members or more or less
• 58:29
  this intrinsic or this, this personality trait or this, this
• 58:33
  level of entrepreneurship is very valuable because these
• 58:37
  roles are still very much undefined and you need to indeed
• 58:40
  take on a lot of different responsibilities for roles that
• 58:44
  might not even have a name. So indeed, early, early
• 58:49
  employees definitely need this. I do think we are now at a stage
• 58:53
  where it's around 3035 team members and, and it's, it's,
• 58:58
  it's seven years in the making. I do think we're at a phase now
• 59:01
  where it's clearer what roles we need and what types of people we
• 59:06
  need for those roles with what types of experiences.
• 59:10
  And so I do think right now we can be more specific there.
• 59:14
  But indeed, early years, you need those people and we, we
• 59:19
  were very lucky to have those people.
• 59:21
  OK, let's shift towards the end your venture backed.
• 59:26
  I was wondering how having investors has helped you on the
• 59:33
  on the journey in terms of maybe advice that you had or maybe
• 59:37
  building culture? Yeah, I would say especially our
• 59:43
  Angel investors have been very involved.
• 59:47
  So we had a great group of also very consumer tech focused
• 59:53
  angels or ex founders who helped us a lot in the beginning with
• 59:57
  setting up our marketing team, helping us with fundraising
• 1:00:02
  culture as well. So.
• 1:00:06
  It has always been very nice to have these people on speed dial
• 1:00:11
  and now also more institutional money.
• 1:00:14
  I think those types of organizations also really help
• 1:00:17
  you look at the business from a more strategic point of view,
• 1:00:21
  like what do you want to prove as a company in the coming
• 1:00:23
  years? So I think I hear a lot of
• 1:00:28
  founders sometimes complaining about their their investors.
• 1:00:34
  But we've had luck maybe. But also it has been going quite
• 1:00:38
  well with Bri. So there wasn't any need for
• 1:00:42
  investors to to be difficult. Yeah, to be to to jump in.
• 1:00:49
  So DQ sort of select those investors yourself or DQ where
• 1:00:57
  they coming to you because of the ecosystem that you're in,
• 1:01:01
  because I know that for instance, she has delved has
• 1:01:04
  quite a active community of angels around it.
• 1:01:09
  So eventually, I think most of our.
• 1:01:12
  Angels came, sort of we, we had gotten quite some PR at some
• 1:01:18
  point. We participated in Dragons Den
• 1:01:21
  and through those PR activities, some angels came to us and they
• 1:01:28
  brought friends or, or people they knew in AS Delft has
• 1:01:34
  definitely also helped us. Yeah, not only with their
• 1:01:39
  network, but also. So we were still studying when
• 1:01:44
  we when we founded Breeze and we had made this, we said to each
• 1:01:48
  other and we're going to give it half a year or a year.
• 1:01:52
  And these are the goals that we want to reach.
• 1:01:53
  And then we are going to apply to ES Delft, the accelerator
• 1:01:56
  program. And if we get in, then we can
• 1:01:58
  quit our studies and really go full time.
• 1:02:02
  And once we got into the accelerator program, it itself,
• 1:02:07
  it felt like, OK, there's a organization that we really
• 1:02:11
  trust and they believe in us, so it must be something real.
• 1:02:14
  We aren't just students with some big dreams, but we were
• 1:02:18
  actually on to something. So they really made us believe
• 1:02:21
  in the beginning. Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  Cool. I have a question for you.
• 1:02:25
  So I'm. Developing an AI funding coach
• 1:02:28
  that connects female founders with investors.
• 1:02:33
  From your perspective, in your experience especially, what is
• 1:02:38
  an essential part of that tool to make sure that I can truly
• 1:02:43
  empower female founders, I would say.
• 1:02:48
  I'd say making sure that you foster this community where you
• 1:02:56
  also allow investors and founders to give feedback to
• 1:02:59
  each other or sort of rate each other so that the quality of the
• 1:03:04
  people on your platform is your USBI think that's that's one of
• 1:03:10
  the most important things. Similarly to what we have done
• 1:03:13
  with our data is to make sure that the community is
• 1:03:17
  intentional and that everybody behaves following certain rules.
• 1:03:21
  I think for investors and founders, that's also going to
• 1:03:23
  be very important because there are investors out there and
• 1:03:27
  there are founders out there who've had bad experiences with
• 1:03:30
  each other and making a platform that also is transparent about
• 1:03:38
  that and there's room for that. I think that could be very
• 1:03:41
  powerful. Yeah, that's that's.
• 1:03:46
  I think it's the second thing, the second time I hear something
• 1:03:50
  about grading each other. And grading is not the right
• 1:03:55
  word here because you're you're not.
• 1:03:58
  But there needs to be some sort of evaluation.
• 1:04:01
  Because I, if I think of it, what I usually do, if I connect
• 1:04:06
  people, I always put the sentence below it says, Hey, let
• 1:04:09
  me know if this is a bad match. Because I then I at least tend
• 1:04:13
  to learn from, from the mistakes that I made.
• 1:04:18
  And maybe I should indeed have some sort of functionality
• 1:04:24
  around that. But also maybe the work with
• 1:04:28
  asking also, hey, how was your experience fundraising with each
• 1:04:32
  other? I think that would be super
• 1:04:35
  impactful. And that's also how we sort of
• 1:04:40
  already do this without the platform being there.
• 1:04:43
  So if for instance, I often get asked by other founders, like,
• 1:04:47
  hey, I see this VC visiting you, what's your experience with
• 1:04:51
  them? And then I vouch for them or I
• 1:04:53
  don't. In this case, we almost always
• 1:04:55
  vouch for the the people that backed us.
• 1:05:00
  And so if you have a similar feature where you can vouch for
• 1:05:04
  each other, I think that could be fair.
• 1:05:07
  Because also if you are looking for, for instance, angels, and
• 1:05:10
  there's this Angel who no one knows, no one vouched for, it's
• 1:05:16
  more difficult to accept. But you'd rather have an Angel
• 1:05:21
  that, you know, fellow founders vouched for than someone who
• 1:05:24
  didn't. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:05:26
  But then again, everyone starts its.
• 1:05:28
  Hero, that's definitely also part of it.
• 1:05:30
  So there are. Of course, similarly to to
• 1:05:34
  daters, we have daters who have been vouched for and daters who
• 1:05:37
  are new to the platform. And then we tell them these are
• 1:05:40
  new people. So it's not necessarily bad that
• 1:05:44
  they haven't been vouched for, they're just new and that's also
• 1:05:46
  fine. Yeah.
• 1:05:48
  OK, so I need also need to make the.
• 1:05:50
  Distinction between new investors and new founders so
• 1:05:54
  they can actually see from each other like oh, it's it's OK that
• 1:05:58
  they don't have a rating. A recommended feature, yes.
• 1:06:04
  Cool. Thank you very much, Marcia.
• 1:06:06
  Really also for the conversation, really enjoyed it.
• 1:06:11
  If people want to learn more about you and about breeze
• 1:06:14
  social, where would you like to send them?
• 1:06:16
  I would say for Breeze you can check out TikTok or.
• 1:06:19
  Instagram at breeze dot social and you can follow me on
• 1:06:23
  LinkedIn. So it's Marcia Hui MARSHAGOEI.
• 1:06:28
  OK. And we'll include those links in
• 1:06:30
  the show notes. Marcia Hui, thank you very much
• 1:06:34
  for an amazing conversation. Listeners, thank you very much
• 1:06:37
  for listening. And as always, until the next
• 1:06:41
  episode, keep being awesome. Well, that's it.
• 1:06:55
  Thank you for listening to episode 100.
• 1:06:57
  And 49 of women's disrupting Tech titled How female founder
• 1:07:02
  builds real human connection beyond the swipe with Marcia
• 1:07:05
  Hui. Marcia and I hope that you found
• 1:07:08
  our conversation as beautiful and inspiring as we intended it
• 1:07:11
  to be. And if you have any questions
• 1:07:13
  for Marcia, please leave them in the comments section on Spotify,
• 1:07:17
  YouTube and or Apple Podcasts. I do read all the comments and
• 1:07:22
  I'll make sure you get an answer.
• 1:07:24
  If you want to connect with Marsha and learn more about
• 1:07:27
  Breeze, including links to download the app, you can do so
• 1:07:31
  via the links in the show notes. As usual, you can find the show
• 1:07:35
  notes at Women Disrupting Tech dot Block and on my sub stack
• 1:07:39
  via the links in the caption. If you found this episode
• 1:07:42
  helpful, please take a moment to rate and review the show on
• 1:07:45
  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
• 1:07:48
  And if you don't follow us yet, please hit follow or subscribe
• 1:07:52
  so you never miss a future episode.
• 1:07:55
  Once again, thank you for listening.
• 1:07:57
  I hope to see you in the next episode, and until then, as
• 1:08:00
  always, keep being awesome.