How Online Dating Is Reshaping the Entire Economy

Joe Weisenthal (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Tracy, remember how you claimed on a recent episode of the podcast that you're a millennial?

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

I knew you were gonna start with this. Again, yeah, I did claim. I backed it up too, even by your own definition of being a millennial, which is someone that had Facebook while they were in college. I am in fact a millennial, although I am an older one, I admit.

Joe Weisenthal (0:43)

Okay, did you ever, but here's the thing. Did you ever do online dating?

Tracy Alloway (0:49)

No, is this another, is this a new definition of millennials that you're gonna start using?

Joe Weisenthal (0:55)

Kind of, I mean, not necessarily, but I do think that's pretty important. And the fact that you never did online dating and neither did I, it kind of makes us both not really millennials.

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (1:06)

Do you think? I mean, I'm definitely not one, but I also kind of think maybe that's another thing where I'm like, that is a pretty big thing in the world that really divides people by a few years. Wouldn't you say?

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

Yeah, I think so. And I have to admit, I have absolutely zero personal experience with online dating, although I don't know about you, but I've always been sort of curious about it. And whenever I meet up with my single friends, like I would sometimes borrow their phones and look through their Tinder profiles and the Tinder app and just sort of play around with it, which was kind of interesting to see how it works.

Joe Weisenthal (1:43)

Do you swipe for them?

Tracy Alloway (1:45)

I do, I do. I swipe on everyone and then just see what happens.

Joe Weisenthal (1:50)

Yeah, I've heard that's like a thing, like people who never did online dating vicariously swipe it on behalf of their friends. I think that's like a phenomenon. Anyway, I do really think this is a pretty big, bright line dividing one generation from the next, and especially because there will never probably be another generation in history that didn't have online dating. It's kind of a big thing and kind of makes me and you more similar to boomers and previous generations to the millennials and so forth. But it seems like the implications of the rise of online dating are probably still, at this point, underappreciated and underexplored.

Tracy Alloway (2:30)

Yeah, it kind of gets to a point that has been brought up on previous Odd Lots episodes, which is this notion that a lot of the economic models that we still use today are sometimes based on really outdated notions of society. So the idea that we're all going out to, say, a bar or a restaurant and meeting our future partners or spouses does seem pretty out of date given the rise of online dating. And the same for meeting your future partner through friends.

Nowadays, you're just as likely to meet them through an online platform, if not more so. So definitely something new that would need to be sort of factored into a lot of economic models, I think.

Joe Weisenthal (3:16)

Absolutely. And in essence, the economy is sort of predicated on people getting married and having kids and buying a house and all that stuff.

And if that process is going to change in some way, then you would imagine there would just be all kinds of ripple effects. So anyway, obviously we're going to talk about online dating today, but specifically we're going to be talking to a hedge fund manager who, I guess, in his spare time or maybe as part of investing, we'll find out, has done a lot of research into the world of online dating and even put out a very entertaining note on the subject, examining it from various data points. So without further ado, let's bring in Dan McMurtrie of Tyro Partners. Dan, thank you for joining us.

Dan McMurtrie (4:08)

Hey guys, thanks so much for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (4:10)

So Dan, before we get started, or I guess to get us started, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and why this was a subject that you thought was worth spending your time on, going through charge collecting data and even sort of writing up a note on the subject.

Dan McMurtrie (4:29)

Sure. So I run a small, long, short fund out of Manhattan.

And our approach is to look for what we think are big thematic drivers that are going to play out over five or 10 or 20 years.