Hey everyone!
This is a tiny project I put together over the weekend. Serendipity sends you exactly one email every month, introducing you to another awesome person, randomly selected.
I love monthly products, because it's something nice to look forward to, and the idea of a surprise is always nice. I think it'd be fun to see what comes out of it in a few months, and it's pretty exciting to think that anything could, given the serendipity! 😄
@sharefloapp@manasvinik The easy part is to ensure that there are no fake accounts, and that everyone who signs up is "real". The difficult part is to have any set criteria. So it might get a bit subjective, and I'm not sure there's any way to keep that out, but I really want to make sure that everybody adds value -- ensuring that is what will make the random matches work. Thoughts on this welcome. :)
@manasvinik great idea! Curious what gift I will get in my email box. Serendipity at scale! Love it! Can you please share the 'results' here on this page? Like successful matches and stuff. (curious because I'm building something similar hihi)
@milann@manasvinik Milan, thank you! :) Absolutely, I'm sure there will be amazing stories and I'm just waiting to post them :) I just downloaded Wildcard -- the design is lovely.
Love the idea of serendipity in a digital context. creative! @manasvinik will there be a way for people to respond back with feedback (e.g. this person was great or this person was not who they said they were)?
PS This inspired me to start a new collection called female builders.
Hey, really nice idea! What is the screening process like? Do you have any sort of email protection, like are the email address hidden through Serendipity, or are they just sent directly to each recipient?
@ybeloc Thanks Coleby!
The screening process ensures a certain quality and also to make sure there are no fake/anonymous sign ups. Emails are sent directly to both the people getting introduced, for two reasons -- I'd like Serendipity to just be a way people meet, I don't want to keep anyone tied down to a platform and try to "own" the relationship by masking email addresses, if that makes sense. So when the intro is over, Serendipity's role there is over (until next month and a new intro). And second, right now Serendipity is just a minimal email first MVP. 😄
Is email protection something there's a lot of concern about? It's so cool to be able to get feedback and understand what people are thinking -- thanks so much for the question! 😄
@manasvinik No worries!
I'm not sure to be honest, I mean, I guess I might be a little worried, but then again my email is only going to 1 person a month and you do have a screening process which makes me feel somewhat more comfortable. Then again, there is always someone who spoils the fun for everyone! Maybe it is something you could ask users or potential users about? possibly a premium feature ;)
My 2 cents:
This is an evangelists wet dream. Maybe a saleperson's too. I love how simple this idea is. Starting simple is always smart. If this takes off, it could go in so many different directions. Lot of opportunity here. If it doesn't, you spent minimal time putting it out there.
I would say there's a few things that probably should be added sooner, rather than later. First, and most importantly, is location. This will obviously be more useful when the pool is bigger, but starting with a "where are you located" now, just to prepare for the future, is probably a smart move. You don't need to use the location, but by not asking on sign up, you need convert the user later on. Very tough to do. You ask for personal website/linkedin, and you note that each signup is reviewed by hand. Maybe you're grabbing it manually? Even if you are, manual review can't last forever. Second is language. I think most would agree that if there were a world's language, it would be English. But it's obviously not everyone's first choice. I could see an option for choosing language X, over English, when possible. Third and last thing (I can think of right now), I would really consider going straight Twitter and/or Linkedin login. It's going to help you gather important info, and it will provide some proof, when dealing out the introductions. For instance, right now I could pose as anyone. That's dangerous, but solvable.
Good luck with this. I'm going to sign up. Thanks
@alternate1985 Nick, thanks for this. All very good points, I especially agree with #1 and #3. It'd have made things a lot easier to get location, even if we weren't going to use it, at the time of sign up. But then again, to introduce it as a feature, to ask who'd be interested in a location based match, the interface is going to have to be more email communication. So the manual interaction to convert the user, while it's tough as you say, seems to me unavoidable at this point -- what do you think? Unless I shift away from the email-as-UI model and move towards a standalone platform, in which case #3 becomes a lot easier as well. But that's a bit far in the future for now!
I'd love to hear any other thoughts you have! Thanks a lot for sharing. :)
@manasvinik Hey! Well, there might be a way to finagle it, with your current setup. Are you in the US, if yes, then ask for the state. If no, then ask them to select the country from a dropdown, or type it in. Then you can keep track of it by hand, until you see trends. Then switch to a "are you located in one of these countries A) US, B)UK, etc" and use the answer to ask a more refined question. I assume you can do that with this service? Ask different questions, based on answers? But in general, to get some exact location, you're correct, you're going to need to go custom, which of course definitely works better with twitter/linkedin logins. Thanks
Congrats @Manasvinik! Love when people are thinking about this space. We've been working on this problem for the past 6 months or so. (https://www.producthunt.com/tech...) Happy to share insights and would love to grab coffee to chat more if you're interested.
Some interesting things we've found:
- The hardest part is getting people to a real life meeting. We've had to develop lots of followup logic to get this to happen.
- Once people go on their first meeting, they continue to go. We're seeing 90+% second meetings and 80+% 30 day retention.
- Locations matter alot. If someone can't get there in 5-10min they probably won't go. Also there's a big difference between times (9am, 10am, 2pm, etc)
- We found that match quality was also really important. Once matched, if the person didn't see much value in meeting the person, no real life interaction (or any interaction) happens. Usually a "soft reject" happens by the person not interested just rescheduling indefinitely.
@zealoustiger Brian, Weave looks cool! Thanks for those insights, they're very interesting. Does Weave concentrate on location based meet ups? I'd love to talk more. :)
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