Meet Taly Matiteyahu | Cofounder & CEO of Blink Date

We had the good fortune of connecting with Taly Matiteyahu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Taly, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The idea was born from a blackout dining experience years ago. I dined in complete darkness with total strangers and had an amazing conversation with them without having any idea what they looked like. After the dinner ended, I saw my dinner mates for the first time and realized that, had I seen them before the dinner, I would have assumed we wouldn’t have much in common. And I would have been wrong. The experience sparked the thought: would people be more open to meeting and getting to know one another if they didn’t know what the other people looked like first?

I started working on Blink in March 2020. With the rise of audio platforms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, the success of shows like Netflix’s Love is Blind, and the general desire for ways to make genuine human connections in the midst of a years-long pandemic that’s changed how we socialize, now is the time enable people to easily identify compatible partners from the comfort of their couches. As a final motivator to start my business in the midst of a crazy time, I recalled advice I’d once received from a law school professor: there’s never a good time to have a baby. And, well, a startup is like a baby — a lot of the time you have no idea what you’re doing, it keeps you up all night, and everyone will have an opinion on the right way to do something. Sometimes you just have to take the leap and trust you’ll either land on your feet or get up when you fall, so here’s to taking the leap!

What should our readers know about your business?
Modern dating sucks. People spend hours mindlessly swiping, enamored by the illusion of choice and convenience, struggling to make real connections. It’s hardly surprising – it’s easy to miss a great match when swiping on baseball card versions of people.

Blink, a voice-first speed dating app that helps people build relationships that last, offers daters a new and more effective way to assess compatibility on their journeys to find love. Using relationship psychology and real-time communication, Blink creates a space where a person’s personality, values, sense of humor, passions, and quirks are what set them apart by creating a two-part matching process including a Blink Date (10-minute, audio-only speed date) followed by a Glance (reviewing nameless & profile-less photos),

Beyond the app, we invite strangers to participate in a podcast version of our concept on Date in a Blink. We used the podcast to validate our concept, collect feedback, and create evergreen marketing materials. The data we gathered was incredible – we tracked sign-ups ($0.52 CPC for nearly 250 participants), how daters rated the voice-only experience as an effective online dating method (9/10), whether daters would want to continue voice-only dating (100%), and our match rate (6x higher than traditional dating apps).

The journey wasn’t (and isn’t) easy. Getting Blink off the ground as a non-technical, woman founder with a limited budget is challenging. From wireframing to creating marketing campaigns, fundraising preparation and pitching, finding a developer to developing a budget – being a startup founder and building something from the ground up while holding a day job requires A LOT of hustling and learning through doing.

While there were moments I thought I would fail, I’ve managed to push through with the help of my cofounder, partner, and an incredible network of colleagues and friends.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
In LA, there’s so much to do that you can easily jam pack a week and still have more to see! Assuming they’d already been to LA and done the touristy things, here’s what I’d plan for our week –

Day 1: Welcome to LAX, chill
Go to Ali’i Fish Company in El Segundo
Drive up Vista Del Mar
Grab tacos from El Chato, fried chicken sandwiches from Alta, and wine from Adams Wine Shop, then hang in the backyard

Day 2: Disney. It’s not just for kids!

Day 3: Downtown LA
Reservation at Manuela
Two Bit Circus
End the night at Bar EightyTwo for more games

Day 4: Are we tired yet?
Sleep in
Lunch at Ceviche Stop
Walk around Abbot Kinney and some other cute streets in Venice and Santa Monica
Walk around the Venice Canals
Plan for a chill evening at Dockweiler Beach. Build a bonfire

Day 5: Culver
Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook
Reservation at Etta
Walk around the shops at Platform, smell all the smells at Boy Smells
Walk around downtown Culver
Coffee from Super Domestic
Bike the Ballona Path
Go to Jam in the Van or the Comedy Store

Day 6: Who says LA is fit?
Runyon Canyon, mood and heat dependent
Jazz music and Ethiopian food at Industry Cafe & Jazz
Enjoy the patio and food at Mizlala
Walk it off at the Grove & Farmers Market, then meander to take silly photos by LACMA

Day 7: Don’t be sad it’s over…
It’s not an LA trip without rooftop brunch. Since we’re packing up, would stay close to home and go to Margot (also in Platform)

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My cofounder, Laura Ciccone, deserves a lot of credit and recognition in my story. Having worked on my startup with the wrong person initially, I can say: your relationship with your cofounder is one of the most important aspects of your startup, perhaps even more important than your actual product.

The relationship you have with a cofounder is, in many ways, like one you have with a spouse. There are difficult conversations about goals and money, occasionally awkward interactions around boundaries and insecurities, and uncomfortable realities involved in managing others. Being aligned, feeling safe, and trusting your cofounder is crucial to successfully navigating the inevitable and countless challenges you’ll encounter when building your company.

Laura inspires me to be a better leader, partner, and person every day and I’m so happy to have her join me on the exciting and challenging journey of building Blink.

Website: www.theblinkdate.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblinkdate

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talymatiteyahu/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/theblinkdate

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblinkdate

Other: Date in a Blink Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5NLsgOL3rr8nsiZaEbT69d