By night, Taly works to build Blink, a new virtual blind speed dating app inspired by a revelatory experience at a blackout restaurant eight years ago. Making connections with strangers based on conversation alone, free of looks-driven assumptions, sparked the thought: would people date a wider variety of people and find more satisfying relationships if they were able to make an emotional connection with someone before swiping left? In 2020, she finally began turning the vision into reality and hopes to change online dating’s looks-first paradigm and, one day, move the concept beyond the dating world.
By day, Taly works at an AI-powered legal tech company as a Product Manager, having previously worked as a lawyer at a NYC law firm and as a legal operations professional at Netflix and Datadog. Taly earned her Bachelor’s degree from New York University in 2011 and her Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School in 2015.
When not working, Taly enjoys smothering her two dogs with love, traveling and exploring big cities and national parks, and using her creative skills in the kitchen to conjure up amazing meals using random leftover ingredients, “chopped” style, while listening to a podcast.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Blink all about?
Blink’s objective is to build a dating space where a person’s personality, values, sense of humor, passions, and quirks are what set them apart — not their looks, name, or fashion choices. We believe that the “one” might not be the person you’re immediately or most attracted to and that physical attraction grows as connections flourish.
Unlike other dating apps, where users eliminate prospective partners based on superficial snap judgements, Blink allows members to move beyond a looks-first approach to meeting potential partners. Blink does this through a two part matching process consisting of a Blink Date (10 minute virtual blind speed date) and a Glance (reviewing nameless & profile-less photos). Blink schedules members for Blink Dates, after which each member evaluates the date to let us know how it went. Since we know love isn’t totally blind and mutual physical attraction plays a role in dating, our Glance feature lets members identify people they might be physically compatible with. We only match people based on mutual positive feedback from both the Blink Date and Glance.
Blink was built for people looking to make real connections and build meaningful relationships. In an industry dominated by superficiality, Blink offers something fresh and new.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
As a first-generation American, I grew up not being afraid of a challenge. After graduating from law school, I started working at a law firm, but quickly found myself craving a more dynamic and innovative environment. In 2017, I left the stable career path that lay ahead of me as an attorney for a career in legal operations. Over the years in legal operations, I grew passionate about product development and eventually transitioned to work as a Product Manager at a legal tech company.
In my spare time, I’m constantly working on personal projects. In March 2020, I began working on Blink, a virtual blind speed dating app. It was a long time coming – I’ve had the idea for Blink since 2012, when I ate at a blackout restaurant and befriended a couple I dined with. It was incredible to realize how much more open and vulnerable we were willing to be while we were just voices in the dark. There’s so much power in connecting with someone when we aren’t subconsciously making conclusions about who they are based on what they look like… or worrying about what they might be thinking about us based on what we look like.
When I first envisioned Blink in February 2020, I planned to host live speed dating events where participants couldn’t see the other party during the dates and physical attraction would be accounted for via rating by email after the event. Come March, COVID-19 hit and everyone was working from home, so I pivoted to virtual blind speed dating… and the rest evolved from there!
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
Right now, Blink is launching with a small beta group in Los Angeles. Our goal for expansion is currently geographically focused, so we plan to next open up to all of LA county, then Southern California, and then major cities across the country. We are also excited to expand into locations overseas, but will start with the US market.
For our brand, we’re looking forward to exploring different verticals in the future. The goal is a less biased world, and that’s all I’ll say on that… for now.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
Getting Blink off the ground as a non-technical founder with a limited budget is challenging. As we couldn’t build the app on our own, we had to invest the majority of our budget in app development. Now, as we work to turn to user acquisition, we have a much smaller budget to work with. It’s been our perennial challenge – we need users in order to raise more money (as we need to spend money marketing), but we need to already have users to prove out our concept in order to raise money.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
Don’t forget to Google your company name before you buy your domain or set up your corporate structure. We failed to do that with Blink! While we knew that other businesses used the name as well (Blink Fitness, Blink home security, etc.) and didn’t mind sharing the name with companies in other industries, we didn’t think to check whether there were other Blink dating companies. Months after forming our LLC, purchasing our domain, creating social media accounts, and designing our logo, we discovered that there were at least two other, now-defunct dating apps called Blink. Needless to say, we felt pretty silly for not having checked for other Blink dating apps before running full steam ahead. Lesson learned for next time: a simple Google search can go a long way!
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
There are millions of people who use dating apps and who-knows-how-many dating apps out there for them to use. We focus on attracting folks who are looking to make real connections and build meaningful relationships. Our target customers are tired of swipe culture and games and are ready to take the time to connect on a deeper level, understanding that judging someone off of a curated set of photos eliminates a huge pool of potentially great matches.
Realistically, Blink isn’t the best option for everyone looking for love – the dating pool has plenty of people who swipe-culture works well for. But there are plenty of people who are seeking something fresh and new, too, and we invite them to try Blink and flip the script on looks-first dating culture.
What are three resources you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
I’ve held onto learnings from Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett as I’ve navigated multiple career changes and my path to entrepreneurship. Through prompts, exercises, and anecdotes, it helped me hone in on how to identify professional interests, reframe how I thought about finding work I enjoyed, and embrace ambiguity in the interest of designing a life I wanted.
Beyond that, I love listening to podcasts about entrepreneurship. One podcast, in particular, has been especially inspirational – How I Built This, a “podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and their stories about the movements they built.” Over the years, I’ve had so many ideas I’ve wanted to work on and so many businesses I’ve wanted to start… but in many cases, fear of investing my time, energy, and money into a venture that might fail stopped me from taking the leap. Listening to How I Built This and hearing the stories of successful entrepreneurs reminds me that, even for the most successful people, success came after failure… and that oftentimes, the failure begets success down the line. Whether it’s an episode about a female founder who’s story somehow mirrors my own or the story of a founder who struggled for years before succeeding, each episode reminds me that success means trying, learning, iterating, and trying again.
Finally, I would recommend trying to identify and tap into relevant professional and industry networks. I’ve been so amazed by and thankful for people’s willingness to share their time and wisdom. Some of the most informative conversations I’ve had were with people I met through slack workspaces (in my case, Friends of Lenny’s) and online forums (elpha is a great forum for female founders).
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
I wish I trusted my gut from day one. As a first time, female founder, I feel like I was primed to question myself and my decisions. Early on, I found myself doing things that didn’t feel right just because I thought I had to in order to gain legitimacy. I’ve since learned that my gut is usually right. If something feels wrong, it’s probably because it is. And that’s ok – mistakes and misdirection are something we can pivot from and learn from.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
As a startup dating app, we’re primarily focused on building our membership and getting word out about Blink to prospective audiences. As a self-funded startup, we embrace a bootstrapping mindset. Operationally, we’ve prioritized designing and developing the app since we know the bar is so high for the consumer market, meaning most of our financial resources are allocated to technical development. We employ low-cost and earned marketing strategies since these are areas we are able to stretch the budget, put in our own elbow grease, and still have impact. While the app was in development, we focused on building our waitlist, engaging with future members, and optimizing SEO.
So much marketing advice encourages founders to spend money with ad campaigns. We tried this tactic, but were turned away from most of our desired channels given restrictions on marketing in the dating space and the inability to obtain necessary advertising approvals pre-app-launch, which meant most startup advice for how to generate buzz and gain an audience did not apply to us. We focused on sharing blog posts, building our email list, engaging with relationship and dating coaches on social media, and finding podcasts that tap into communities we’re looking to engage with.
Now that we’re nearing our beta launch, we’re being creative with how we can connect with potential users, including hosting virtual events for local groups and creating content that people can interact and engage with.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
With $1000, I would set up a web-based, manually-managed version of Blink. People would submit a simple Google form with their basic information (name, age, location, availability, etc.) to sign up for virtual blind speed dates. We would play matchmaker between our members and set them up for virtual blind speed dates online. After the dates, we’d ask for their feedback and gather input on the type of product they’d be interested in utilizing long term. With $1,000 (and a lot of time to coordinate and market!), we could likely run hundreds of these dates before planning out the MVP and starting development on our own product.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Building a successful company is hard and wrapping your arms around how to actually start one is the first hurdle. When it comes to turning ideas into reality, the process is so overwhelming that we can become paralyzed and simply stop. For anyone who finds themselves in this situation, jot down everything you need to do. Once you have the list, tackle it item by item. As you dive in and start crossing tasks off, more items will get added… until one day you realize you’ve crossed off all the original items, at which point you should celebrate completing the initial stage of starting your business!
What is your favorite quote?
Leaving legal practice and starting a new career was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done. One quote in particular resonated with me then and continues to hold meaning for me since – “It feels good to be lost in the right direction.”
When I first decided to leave legal practice, I had no idea what I wanted to do instead – I didn’t know what role, what industry, or even what city I wanted to land in… but I knew I was headed in the right direction just by leaving. After spending so many years working towards the singular goal of becoming a lawyer, for the first time in my life, I had no idea what was next. And while that could have been overwhelming, something about the uncertainty was actually incredibly liberating because it meant the possibilities were endless.
The quote still resonates with me now, as I develop an app and build a company for the first time. Sometimes I feel confused (talking about backend architectures), sometimes I feel lost (trying to figure anything related to taxes), and sometimes I feel like a complete and total imposter… but I know I’m headed in the right direction by investing my time and energy into a project that helps people move past stereotyping based on appearances and develop real connections.
How can we get in touch with you?
You can visit my company website Blink, find me on social media via Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also email contact@theblinkdate.com.
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