A popular dating AI has taken over the top ten prestigious schools in the United States. A Chinese computer genius led a team to hand-roll the Date Drop in just three weeks, and received a crazy amount of 15 million in financing. Today, more than 5,000 Stanford “single academic masters” are using it.Stanford's 5,000 "single academics" are being collectively "matched" by AI... No one expected that a phenomenal dating platform——Date Drop is completely popular in the Ivy League!
Last September,Stanford Chinese genius Henry Weng joins forces with Madhav Prakash, took out this "artifact for getting out of singles".
With its unique matching logic, it detonated the entire campus in a very short period of time.
Stanford Residential Assistant Ben Rosenfeld said bluntly, "It is no exaggeration to say that this freshman class is obsessed with Date Drop."
Statistics show thatThe success rate of date drop conversion is more than 10 times that of Tinder.
To this end, Henry Weng established a "Relationship Company" and also obtained top venture capitalMulti-million dollar seed round financing.
This Chinese genius born in the 2000s can be called a sure winner in life.
God-level dating AI is on the rise
5,000 top academics “go crazy”
Speaking of which, why is Date Drop so popular among top academics?
The core logic lies in its hard-core matching mechanism: every week, a person will be "airdropped" to people.
This isn’t casting a blind net; the algorithm behind Date Drop builds a sophisticatedA model based on "matching theory".
Portal: https://trydatedrop.com/
at present,Date Drop is open to the top ten universities in the United States, including Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Yale University, UCLA, etc.
There are three main points in the official website introduction to the specific operation of this platform:
Introduce yourself:Talk about your core values, interests, and what you value;
Participate in weekly matches:Confirm your participation before the weekly deadline and matches will be sent with a reason to call.
Go on a date:Provide the other party's email address.
The rest is up to people to do what they do - meet offline, have a cup of coffee, or go out for a walk together.
In addition to regular matching, the platform has also developed“Play Cupid”, allowing students to bring together friends around them to "group CP".
besides"Shoot Your Shot", if the intention lists filled out secretly by both parties overlap, the system will directly declare the match successful.
In the initial first round of testing, 20 pairs of "two-way" crushes have been cultivated through this function.
66 levels of "soul" torture, the real person is revealed every Tuesday
Different from Tinder and Hinge's simple "swipe left and right", Date Drop directly digs into the user's characteristics based on matching theory.
After the first registration is completed, you must answer first"In-depth questionnaire" with 66 dimensions, including one’s own values, lifestyle, political opinions, etc.
Some of the questions are as follows -
· Do you have any age, height or race preference?
· Are having children essential to a fulfilling life?
· Not using social media at all is a plus?
· Think about a date or outing that you particularly enjoyed. What made it so special?
· My five core values (choices): adventure, ambition, courage, creativity, curiosity...
These responses are fed into an algorithm that pairs like-minded students together.
Moreover, the algorithm not only processes text information, but also introduces voice data analysis and information from real dating feedback, constantly iterating itself.
The most important thing is here,Matching results will be announced every Tuesday at 9pm!
Whenever this day comes, everything seems to have pressed the pause button.
A large number of students gathered in the dormitories and libraries and held their breath, waiting for the "right person" selected by the algorithm for them.
Those lucky ones who are satisfied will meet at the "dating mecca" On Call Café - as long as they show up with their first match this semester, they will get a free drink.
Since going online last fall, among Stanford’s approximately 7,000 undergraduates,More than 5,000 people have become Date Drop fans.
This whirlwind has now swept through ten Ivy League schools including Columbia, Princeton, and MIT.And successfully obtained US$2.1 million (approximately 15 million) in angel round financing.
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Date Drop is popular among top schools in the United States. The underlying logic behind the popularity is actually very simple.
This generation of college students is falling into a strange social circle——
They cringe in real-life conversations, and are exhausted by the endless mechanical sliding of social software.
Henry Weng, a Chinese computer genius at Stanford, has a keen insight into this deep social loneliness.
What’s amazing is that in just three weeks, he came up with this AI dating platform that has become a collective obsession among aesthetic tycoons across the world.
Behind such terrifying execution is Henry Weng’s academic background, which can be called a “perfect template”.
Henry received a bachelor's degree in computational and economic engineering from Stanford University. He mainly studies human behavior, "matching algorithms" and incentive mechanisms at the intersection of computers and economics.
Immediately afterwards, he studied for a master's degree in computer science at the same school.
Henry's personal work resume is also very rich.
He was responsible for the development of AI agent tools at LangChain, and also co-founded Hazel (PearX W23), which specializes in creating AI workflows for real estate agents.
Until last year, riding on the popularity of Date Drop, Henry Weng founded The Relationship Company.
His goal is simple;Helping one billion people around the world connect with the most important people in their lives.
To build bridges for one billion people
In the interview, he said, “At first I just wanted to build a gadget on campus, but unexpectedly, people from other universities also asked for access.”
Supporting this expansion requires professional resource allocation, so "relationship companies" were born.
The long-term vision is to drive all meaningful connections: whether it’s friendships, professional connections, community or events
In the beginning, Henry also found a golden partner to help everyone use Date Drop.
Madhav Abraham-Prakash, a junior at Stanford who manages the social life of the Stanford Student Union, brought it to campus.
The two joined forces to create a platform that is now popular on campus.
The sense of capital is also extremely keen, and some top venture capital tycoons have pursued investment, including Zynga founder and early Facebook investor Mark Pincus.
In addition, there is Andy Chen, a former partner of Coatue, and Elad Gil, an early investor in Airbnb, Stripe and Pinterest.
Unlike other apps, the Date Drop model focuses more on establishing “long-term connections.” 95% of users said that they came here for a serious relationship.
Henry Weng said that there are two core elements at work here.
First, the questionnaire must be in-depth enough to paint a true picture of a person.
This is achieved through set questions, open-ended responses, voice conversations, and other data provided by the user.
The next challenge is to predict “fit”.
Because Date Drop not only matches people but also helps them plan dates, the team has data on which matches actually work out in the real world.
In other words, its model is trained based on “real world” results.
Once these two parts are taken care of, the actual matching is just the most basic operations found in the matching theory literature.
So far, in addition to Henry, Relationship Company has 2 full-time employees and 12 students serving as campus ambassadors.
Date Drop made me realize that there are so many interesting people in this world that you will never meet in your life at two o'clock every day.
This made me open up more to people I would never have interacted with in my life.
Today, Henry Weng has become a veritable “Algorithm Moon Elder”.
The first "heartbeat" was given to AI
Mila Wagner-Sanchez, a 19-year-old Stanford freshman, described in a BI report the true feelings that Date Drop brought to her.
Although she did not find the "Mr. Right", she experienced true happiness.
As a "novice" who has never used a dating app, Mila said she was amazed by the level of detail of Date Drop.
Mila's first matching experience was quite comical: the system matched her with her best friend.
The two simply treated the date as an ordinary meet-up and went to a cafe to receive free drinks exclusive to their Date Drop match.
Another time, the relationship ended in vain because the other party did not initiate contact.
She admitted that there were indeed several couples around her who got together through Date Drop, and decided to try again after the exam.
Sophomore Alena Zhang puts it bluntly——
At Stanford, many people put too much energy on other achievements other than social interaction, and things like relationships are naturally left behind.
It's usually very difficult for everyone to even take the initiative to talk to someone - let alone a romantic encounter..
In addition, Princeton freshman Pierre Du Plessis said that Date Drop is very useful on a campus where people don’t usually date people.
However, some people find that Date Drop may not completely solve the complex problem of dating in a place like Stanford.
Sophomore Gabriel Berger went on a date with his first match over a matcha latte in Palo Alto——
"We had a great time and talked for hours."
But then we discovered,The schedules of the two are completely in conflict with each other..
His date has to squeeze in time for dance rehearsals in a packed class schedule; while Berger has to do scientific research, take four hard-core courses, and serve as vice president of his fraternity.
On the campus of this top university with "two points and one line", Date Drop is more like a large-scale social experiment.
Its popularity, on the surface, is a victory for the algorithm, but in fact it is the extreme desire of contemporary young people for deep connections.
In this "cyber blind date" started by 66 soul tortures, AI became a bridge, giving some people the courage to break the social deadlock.
The algorithm is responsible for the encounter, and the remaining romance must eventually be returned to humans.