Interview: Say Allo Founder Talks Product Rollout
Say Allo is a new AI-powered dating app for mature singles, co-developed by one of the pioneers of of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) Dr. Brian Shaw.
Its relationship-oriented offering integrates a number of features designed to keep users safe, from facial recognition technology to sophisticated “Profile Intelligence” functionality.
The startup is live in a number of cities across the US and Canada, and has raised seven figures from seed investors ahead of a wider rollout.
CEO Zackary Lewis is a former US Marine and the founder of Liquid Compass, a premier Streaming Delivery Network to the audio entertainment industry.
GDI caught up with Lewis to find out more about the innovative dating platform.
Find the full interview below:
For those who aren’t familiar with Say Allo, can you describe your product?
ZL: “Say Allo is a next generation “relationship discovery” app – it’s Bumble meets eHarmony with the brains of Amazon – for a more mature audience (30’s to 50’s) who have accrued valuable life experiences who are less interested in a casual relationship and more interested in long term compatibility.
What separates Say Allo is its continuous learning algorithm and belief system that we are reengineering the dating app experience to create a safe environment to build compatible relationships.”
How did having a psychologist on board help with designing the offering?
ZL: “To build an intelligent platform, we had to look beyond what our team could develop from a technical perspective and find a partner who wrote the book (several, actually) on forming successful relationships.
As a preeminent mind in psychology, and one of the principal founders of applied Cognitive Behavioral Psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dr. Brian Shaw’s knowledge and experience has been invaluable to the development of our continuous learning algorithm. More specifically, helping us to build a platform that identifies key compatibility attributes and also attraction is foundational to the core value propositions of Say Allo.”
What stage of development is the company at?
ZL: “After raising our first $1M in a limited seed round and a successful beta release in Denver, Colorado, Say Allo is now available in select cities throughout the United States on both iOS and Android devices.
As video dating is an important offering within the app, the company is investing more resources into making this an efficient and safe platform to meet inside the app, and also expanding Say Allo’s reach north into Canada.”
Your core demographic is 30+. How do you look to reach that audience in your marketing and messaging?
ZL: “It’s simple, really. Our focus is to attract a community of singles who are not interested in a casual relationship – that phase has passed – but rather, singles who are more interested in finding long term compatibility. The caveat that we must overcome, however, is that the word compatibility can be a turn-off, especially to those who feel that this may be a false promise after a string… or years… of bad dates and unsuccessful relationships.
We believe that we can overcome this by using humor to call out dating pain-points that we’ve all gone through, and offering a solution using an intelligent platform (Say Allo) designed for people in search of a relationship.”
What are your goals for the rest of 2019 and beyond?
ZL: “Now that the heavy lifting to bring the product to market is behind us, our goal is to reach more singles, make more connections, invest more resources into machine learning and video to better our platform and overall matching capabilities, and hopefully cross the pond and Say Allo to Europe in early 2020!”
Visit the Say Allo website here.
