Hi Ula, thanks for this, would you be interested to do a chat so we could talk through some of your ideas in more detail/more efficiently? Please shoot me a quick message at [email protected] if so.

A couple quick thoughts and additions below:
 

• We decided to write this post because people often ask us what we've learned / what tips we have about dating, so that's why we went with this framing this time vs. making a case for an altruistic dating service.
• For the figures we share: this data is self-reported outcomes from clients, so there is likely bias in that as you mention.  Even given that bias, we think it's valuable to track and share this data as a way of understanding how Settled works.  We've discussed internally that it would be great to run a study with a control group or more extensive surveying, but we're a tiny team with limited resources, so that's not in the cards for now.
• You asked about how we protect match quality against the pressure to show quick results and win more clients.  We don't have the ability, resources, or reason to believe that we could optimize for a "short term success" over a "long term success" even if we wanted to (which we don't).  We don't track outcomes beyond six months for now because we are a new service, so we don't have many clients for whom we could measure outcomes beyond six months yet.
• The potential mixed incentive that we originally thought was more relevant was: if a client gets to the ideal outcome (long term relationship), they lose the need for our service. In practice, we've found that we're still incentivized towards good outcomes because: 1) if a client has a bad experience, they will churn anyway, and 2) one of our top client acquisition channels is referrals/word of mouth, and this won't happen if people have bad experiences.
• We think the bar for "find the most optimal dating structure and incentives" is very high.  We think the bar for "improve dating experience and outcomes beyond what's offered by the apps today" is much lower. We're excited to see more alternatives to starndard dating apps like those we listed above and some of your ideas, and we're happy to share learnings with others building/considering building in the space.

Thank you! It's not from just our introductions. We always encourage people to date outside of Settled as well as going on our dates. We help them with profile feedback and coaching. Therefore it's the combination of the Settled dates + the intentionality in dating that we think gets us to this number!