Dinner Club#8: Closures
After the first set of dates on Dinner Club in June, I was very unsure about what to do with post-date feedback, especially when one person ended up liking the date more than the other. It broke my heart to let them know how the other person felt. I mulled over it till one person asked me why I hadn’t connected her with her date given that she’d indicated an interest to meet again.
Call me naive, but I decided to share my dilemma with her to which she just said it would be good to know as every other service updates this. It occurred to me then that I take all this more personally than people expect me to, so I decided closures are important, and everyone expects to have them.
So, this week, I reached out to a few of you over email expressing my disappointment in being unable to set you up on a Dinner Club date since I couldn’t find you a relevant match. And here’s what someone had to say…
You know you don't have to hurt me like this. Sometimes not responding to my application is better than rejection.
Well, who knew?
Of course, this was followed a note like this…
Actually...thank you for setting up something like this. Even the sign up process had a stop pause think and realise vibe to it.
That’s sweet, isn’t it?
About this week
For the last 8 weeks, I’ve been setting people up on dates but the only thing I ever get to learn about these dates are through post-date feedbacks. I wanted to be part of this super cool experience like all of you. So, I decided, it was time to be kabab mean haddi.
I was setting up two friends (and clients of M.B.A.) via Dinner Club this weekend, so I took the liberty of surprising them. I organised a 15-min quiz on growing up in Bangalore to help warm each other up before I left the room and let the two of them chat. But hey, I don’t want you guys expecting me to do this for all of you as I can be pretty charming and end up ruining your date (LOL!).
Anyway, the dates this week were mostly very one-sided except a few that were…wait for it…DOUBLE opt-ins. We’re still at 40% double opt-ins, which is quite promising. Of all the things people said this week, there’s one piece of feedback I absolutely loved because it captures the spirit of Dinner Club so well…
He’s not the kind of person I would usually talk to - my friendships and past relationships have usually been more “personality” centric. So this was refreshing and helped remove my blind fold that there’s more than maybe appealing to the eye and ego.
Learnings
I know a lot of men think that women have more choice, and are more likely to reject men than the other way round. This isn’t the case on Dinner Club. Men and women on Dinner Club “NO” pretty much equal number of times - 59% and 64% of the time respectively. Those of you who are good at math will be able to figure out how many people are on Dinner Club based on the data I’ve shared.
I either did something cool with 30-35 yr olds or pissed off 25-30yr olds over the last week because of which my theory about openness to blind dates being correlated with age is now slightly challenged.
I don’t expect people to “date” virtually forever, but introductions are virtual. Now, what you do after that is entirely up to you. I agree that it would wonderful to meet someone physically first, but there’s a reason why businesses like Floh struggle to exist today because it’s simply not scalable despite how wonderful the experience is.
What’s up next week?
Can I just ask those of you who go on dates to fill out feedback within 24 hours of your date as I don’t want to be following up a million times to let your date have closures. I think that’s the least you can do for someone who spent 30min chatting with you and for me who spends at least 30-45 mins on each date.
There are a handful of people that I simply cannot send on a date because I don’t have a relevant match, but I am holding on because I want to give it a second chance. So, some of you may hear from me this week in case I give up.
There will be more details on sign up for a final event I plan to organise for members of Dinner Club before this experiment ends by end of this month. You’ll receive emails individually with details to RSVP, in case you’re interested.
Re-sharing the availability tracker once again for those of you who want to go on a date next week, since I’ll only be setting up those who fill this (mostly!).
Lots of people have already started booking in time with me for a chat. If you haven’t already done so, and would like to, then you have the next two weeks to do so.