Friday Wrap-Up: Online Dating and the Portfolio Manager Debrief

Marthe Skaar (0:00)

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to our Friday wrap-up. I'm still Marthe Skaar.

Nicolai Tangen (0:04)

I'm Nicolai Tangen.

Marthe Skaar (0:06)

And this week, we will talk about relationships in the modern world, because you spoke to Spencer Rascoff, he's CEO of Match Group, the company behind Tinder and Hinge.

Nicolai Tangen (0:26)

Really fun. And it's interesting because it's the kind of stuff that everybody is concerned about. And we had a lot of input beforehand from people in the organization. And my, do people have opinions about the dating and the dating apps?

Another thing which is kind of fun is that he previously ran his own podcast. He was the founder of Zillow, which is a big real estate portal and an online system in the US. And it's kind of fun when you interview people who run their own podcasts, because it's just a different type of dynamics. They are typically a bit more snappy, shorter answers. They interrupt back and forth like that.

And you'll see the similar type of thing when we interview Scott Galloway, which is coming up soon. We saw the same with Adam Grant and so on. So it's just kind of fun.

Marthe Skaar (1:12)

Great. Before we start this off, I want to take you a bit back in time. Imagine you are in London. You actually are in London today as well. But it's in year 1695

And then you pick up the vehicle newspaper, and there you read this ad. And it says, A gentleman about 30 years of age that says he has a very good state would willingly match himself to some good young gentlewoman that has a fortune of 3000 pounds or there about. And he will make settlement to content. Do you know what this is, Nicolai?

Nicolai Tangen (1:45)

I think that probably was the first, you know, personal ad.

Marthe Skaar (1:49)

It is. It's the first ad to find a partner. That we know about, at least. And then you zoom forward like more than 300 years later.

How many of us use the modern version of this?

Nicolai Tangen (2:04)

Well, probably more than, I mean, it's like more than half and increasing, you know, a lot. I think, in my mind, what is interesting is that we are now very reliant on it. I've seen the stats, more than 40 percent, I think it's 45 percent of young men between age 18 and 25 have never approached a woman in person.

And so we now do it online. The other thing which I think is interesting is that actually marriages which started with online dating last longer. The divorce rate is lower. And so these algorithms for sure have value.

Marthe Skaar (2:41)

Yeah, they do. And talking about that, because this whole business model is built around an algorithm. And he explained the algorithm as a deck of cards.

It's quite the opposite of these old contact ads that had very little context.

Nicolai Tangen (2:57)

Basically, the advice is giving and of course, you need to listen to the podcast to figure this one out, but you need to put in a lot of context. The more you put in, the better it is. You need to have a lot of pictures of yourself. Never have the same sweater on in several pictures. Always surround yourself with a lot of friends because nobody want to date the loser. So you want to date into a person who's got already a lot of friendships.

And of course, dog is good. Put in a dog.

Marthe Skaar (3:23)

You also mentioned that you got a lot of input from the organization because you wrote this post to the organization that you met your wife back in the dinosaur age show. You didn't, you haven't really used it or you haven't used it. What kind of tip did you get from the organization?

Nicolai Tangen (3:40)

Well, we got all kinds of questions. I think an interesting thing is, is it really in Tinder's best interest to match people early or late? If you match them early, you lose out on business revenues.

What he is saying is that the quicker you can match people, the better it is because then there are rumors that this is a really, really good app and that is more valuable than actually keeping your subscribers on for a long time. So that's at least what he is saying. Of course, they never give the amount of women and men. They don't give percentages. I suspect there are fewer women than you think on these apps. But hey, that's a number they don't want to get.

Marthe Skaar (4:21)