Our origin story

It started with pain — not an idea, not a whiteboard exercise — but real tears.

I had just come home from a date with Karen. On paper, we looked like a perfect fit. In person, it ended with a gut-punch of rejection, the kind that leaves you reeling for days. I felt the hurt so deeply I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, couldn’t shake it.

That night, something clicked:

If I feel this bad, millions of people must be feeling the same way. Every. Single. Day.

Not because they’re unlovable, but because online dating is designed to fail. Apps only succeed when their users fail — because failure means more subscription fees. Success means the app loses not one but two paying customers.

I called Tanya — my ex-wife, an ESTJ, a natural leader, a Christian woman with a smile that never fails to light up a room. She listened, and said, “Stop crying. You’re over-reacting. It was just one date.”

Of course she said that, because she’s an ESTJ, and “Ss” are grounded, unlike ”Ns” like me who live in a world of “what ifs.”

I told her: “I never want anyone else to feel as bad as I did that night. I want to spare the world that pain.”

That conversation became a turning point. I knew I needed to build a prototype. No PowerPoint deck could capture my vision.

I could write all the text, but for the prototype, I also needed photos. Tanya agreed to let me use hers — the crappy ones like most people post, and the better ones I knew anyone could produce with some hand-holding and coaching with AI.

And by that I don’t mean AI-generated images; I mean real photographs that result from instruction AI can tailor for each user to help them create better images themselves.

Now I could see it and show it to others. Then MagneticMatch™ became my mission.