Dating : How I Ended Up Stranded in Austin Running a Dating Show During COVID-19

I flew from NYC to Texas late February to work on The Round, an ATX-based dating app for a month. Little did I know I’d be stuck here running a virtual speed dating show because a global epidemic would emerge and dismantle all of my plans.

I love dating apps and everything they entail: psychology, branding, messaging, product, etc., so when I was invited to join The Round, I was pumped. My flight was booked — I was on my way out of the cutthroat, bone-chilling cold environment that was New York City headed for the golden land of live music & BBQ.

I arrived and was immediately hit with the fact that I got scammed out of my apartment — a story for another time; I could already tell Austin was going to be a ride.

The team regularly co-worked out of Lazarus Brewery, which, for someone born & raised in NYC, was more of a radical change than COVID-19 remote work. People actually talked to each other down here, the brewery was larger than a midtown CVS building, and dogs were treated like humans.

On our first day working, there was a doggie birthday party next to us. A full out birthday party. For a dog. With 10 other dogs in attendance. But I guess that’s normal here so I digress.

Before COVID-19 madness ensued, we were ramping up our beta community outreach, finalizing our Ambassador program, nailing product development, and flirting with guerrilla marketing ideas for a classic post-SXSW launch.

It was a super exciting time to be on the team: things were moving, people were ready & excited to use the app, and the best time of the year for dating was right around the corner. A dating startup couldn’t ask for a better time and vibrant community to launch in.

Then, day after day, more and more drastic COVID-19 links hit our Slack channel. As a company that facilities intimate, in-person experiences — the pandemic was quite possibly the worst case scenario. No business plan or Trello roadmap could’ve planned for this curveball.

We preemptively paused in-person marketing efforts thanks to educated decision-making, and a “well, what exactly do we do now?” lull rightfully followed. We had to figure something out.

This slowdown paired with not having an apartment in Austin gave me the opportunity to couch surf/Airbnb hop from practically a mansion to an upscale studio right next to the capitol (again, both long separate stories) so life wasn’t terrible. I then made the decision to ride out the pandemic in Austin, mainly because my flight was cancelled a few days before I was scheduled to leave.

Things are clearly safer down here than in NYC, but not having family & friends in the area is definitely nerve wrecking. A close friend of mine got the virus (and has now recovered) and nothing will shock your life back into perspective than a scare like that.

As someone who’s deep into work from nearly 9am-1am, I think I can speak on behalf of most startup heads when I say there’s a weird internal clash of being opportunistic & practically numbing yourself to everything that’s going on with the world.

That said, everyone on the team adopted a “the show must go on” mentality — literally. So we pivoted, quickly. Inspired by “Love is Blind,” the wildly popular Netflix series, we decided that although we couldn’t set people up irl, we could do it online, and the concept of Pandemic Love was born.

What other option do singles have in a quarantined world? The one we just created.

Producing entertainment is drastically different than developing quote — unquote tech. Before COVID-19, we needed to focus on ensuring people were using our app, providing feedback, iterating on the product, and making sure the app didn’t break. The app would take care of the rest since The Round actually sets up the dates for matches.

With Pandemic Love, an entire reality series, we need to cast quality people, be in constant communication with the contestants, set up the tech infrastructure to go live each night with three rotating live streams, make sure we have hosts for the “Pods,” promote the show, and on top of that, we need to make sure people actually find the show entertaining 6x a week. It’s madness.

Dating whilst in quarantine seems impossible, and at best, is a challenge. We make it easier with a simple concept — live, virtual video and audio dates. We feature six singles who are paired up for dates. The first night, the singles are set up on three, 10-minute blind dates followed by two, 20 minute dates the second night and one 30-minute final match date with a video reveal for the finale.

We originally kicked off casting in Austin for our first few seasons, but we soon started seeing applicants from other big cities. So far we’ve held seasons focused on ATX, NYC, LA, & SF, each season has been phenomenal and people are loving being on the show.

In addition to our participants, we have incredible hosts who moderate and set up the dates. All of our Hosts are powerhouses in their own right: featuring comedians AlliWo & Mike Eaton, and opera powerhouse opera singer, Lucas Levy. There’s absolutely no such thing as culture fit here, and as a matter of fact, diversity works better — who would’ve thought?!

Our couples get to connect with each other in a unique way and it’s been a positive experience, in one way or another, for all of our participants across the board.

We haven’t had our Lauren & Cameron yet, but people are genuinely interested in each other and it shows in different small ways like getting dressed up in their ‘quarantine best’ for the face reveal, being fully present on the date even if they’re living with family, or going out of their way to specifically ask us to match them with their top date choice.

So far we’ve made 20 matches, have over 7k views, and we were even featured on HuffPost and SF’s KCBS. All within the timespan of two weeks.

You’ve probably heard of the saying “do the things that don’t scale,” popularized by Paul Graham the co-founder of Y Combinator. Well, spinning up a reality dating show from thin air is a great example of that. We can’t facilitate in-person dates for a while, but we can still provide amazing online experiences for the quarantined community and beyond.

Pandemic Love is also a great example of “innovate or die.” We could’ve easily thrown in the towel but something is better than nothing. In fact, our current efforts are taking off even more than we expected. We’re working on establishing partnerships with big brands and adding entertainment experts, like producer Arianne Ribiero, to the team.

And the thing is, any startup could pull off a similar feat. We’re basically pulling off an entire show with Slack, Google Sheets, Gmail, and Hangouts. All that’s needed is the will to see the project through, the right people to support you, and maybe a few dollars to support those people if you have access to it.

I wish I got to experience SXSW and more of everything Austin has to offer, but being stuck in a half-price Airbnb running a crazy dating show isn’t that bad either.

If you need me, I’ll be sitting outside on my little balcony working and wondering why those little black satanic-looking birds keep circling my apartment.