How I Hacked Online Dating by Amy Webb (Transcript)

Amy Webb

Amy Webb heads the digital strategy house Webbmedia Group, and is a founder of the SparkCamp discussion series. She’s the author of “Data: A Love Story.”

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Amy Webb_ How I hacked online dating

TRANSCRIPT:

So my name is Amy Webb, and a few years ago I found myself at the end of yet another fantastic relationship that came burning down in a spectacular fashion. And I thought, you know, what’s wrong with me? I don’t understand why this keeps happening.

So I asked everybody in my life what they thought. I turned to my grandmother, who always had plenty of advice, and she said, “Stop being so picky. You’ve got to date around. And most importantly, true love will find you when you least expect it.”

Now as it turns out, I’m somebody who thinks a lot about data, as you’ll soon find. I am constantly swimming in numbers and formulas and charts. I also have a very tight-knit family, and I’m very, very close with my sister, and as a result, I wanted to have the same type of family when I grew up.

So I’m at the end of this bad breakup, I’m 30 years old, I figure I’m probably going to have to date somebody for about six months before I’m ready to get monogamous and before we can sort of cohabitate, and we have to have that happen for a while before we can get engaged. And if I want to start having children by the time I’m 35, that meant that I would have had to have been on my way to marriage five years ago. So that wasn’t going to work.