Finding Real Connection Privately with Cupid AI and Soulmates - Amelia is building future of love finding

To find love you should not need to have public profile and swipe left/right like on the beauty market. Btw, there are many forms of love!

In this conversation, I dive with Amelia her innovative project called Soulmates which is all about creating authentic connections through technology. 

We cover the unique framework of Soulmates, the role of AI in facilitating connections, and signalling utility of Soulmate's physical bracelet that symbolizes different types of love. Amelia emphasizes the importance of in-person interactions and community engagement, while also outlining the business model and future plans for Soulmates.

Listen and get inspired to create serendipitous moments for finding soulmates and seven different types of love. Hint - it's from Greek mythology.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Decentralized Science and Web 3
02:04 Amelia's Journey into Web 3
03:29 The Concept of Soulmates
05:53 Building Soulmates: Motivation and Framework
11:37 The Role of AI in Finding Connections
14:54 Data Privacy and Digital Twins
16:55 Soulmates: A New Approach to Connection
19:54 Exploring the Seven Types of Love
22:26 The Role of Cupid in Modern Dating
24:07 Future Plans for Soulmates and Community Engagement
26:46 Innovative Approaches to Networking at Conferences
27:58 Defining Success for Soulmates
31:19 Business Model and Revenue Streams
32:45 The Interplay of Subscription and Community
34:26 The Excitement of the Upcoming Bracelet
36:46 Future Vision and Community Growth
38:19 Connecting with Soulmates in 2025

MY GUEST LINKS:
Amelia's X (Twitter): https://x.com/amelia_guertin
Soulmates X: https://x.com/soulmates_land
Soulmates website: https://soulmates.land/

Transcript

Pete (aka BFG) (00:01)
Here we are. Welcome everybody on Twitter. Welcome everybody who is watching as a podcast. I'm back and today, even though it's February and I'm diving into decentralized science, I'm here with Amelia. And you may remember Amelia from New York or ETHcc or Bangkok where I wasn't present. So I don't really know what happened there, but we'll touch on it.

And I figured, you know, what Amelia is trying to do. It's kind of a science. It's not a hard science, the different type of science, but it belongs here. So Amelia, welcome.

Amelia (00:41)
Thank you, I appreciate it, I'm excited to be here.

Pete (aka BFG) (00:44)
Very cool. So let's start with the basic question, which I ask everybody. This is how did you actually end up in Web 3?

Amelia (00:54)
Yeah, so I originally grew up outside of Toronto, Canada, went to school for finance and started working at a bank right out of university. So did a rotational program at one of the big fives and didn't particularly love working at the bank, but there was an innovation center like a lot of banks had at the time. And I remember going and the person who headed up that group was talking heavily about blockchain.

And I was never really interested in the, like, they didn't even call it DeFi at the time, but the financial application of blockchain. I was always interested in the use cases. I have a background in the arts, so I loved the idea of.

creating more ownership for artists and whatnot. And yeah, just became obsessed, bought a bunch of books on blockchain that were available at the time and just dove into it. But I didn't actually start working in crypto until a few years later after I spent some time at Salesforce and Snowflake.

Pete (aka BFG) (02:07)
I see.

Amelia (02:08)
It was always personal of interest of mine, but didn't quite know how to get into the industry. actually Coinbase, out of all the companies, reached out to me while I was working at Snowflake, which was pretty nice.

Pete (aka BFG) (02:23)
I see. Can you put it on a timeline for us?

Amelia (02:26)
My whole timeline. Okay, so I started in financial services doing a rotational program at a bank called Scotiabank. I then

Pete (aka BFG) (02:36)
What was

it? I'm totally fine if you skipped the before crypto part, just tell me the year where you joined the Coinbase part.

Amelia (02:46)
I don't even know what year that was anymore. have to look at LinkedIn. Yeah, no, know. No one really uses LinkedIn. It is kind of like a little personal timeline, which is nice.

Pete (aka BFG) (02:51)
Okay, that's new.

Amelia (03:02)
But I started at Coinbase back in 2021. So I started at Coinbase in 2021 and did that, which was really fun. And then I went in, joined an early startup, helping on the growth slash COO side of things, which is kind of silly when you're joining a team that's really small. joined them for about a year and a half and then moved to a founder and residence program.

And that's actually where I figured out I wanted to build Soulmates while I was working on a bunch of portfolio projects. And then last April, I left that role and started my own consulting while I was sort of hacking away at Soulmates at the side. So yeah, that's, and then since then, like fractional consulting, basically helped companies who

are looking for help on the growth side of things because my background is very much in sales, product marketing, and go to market. So yeah, that's my background.

Pete (aka BFG) (04:10)
Sure.

Wonderful. Totally makes sense. So is Soulmates like a side project? Can we call it that?

Amelia (04:14)
Yeah.

I would say it's definitely something that I'd love to turn into a full-time project. I'm sort of, I'm not really interested in fundraising. think soulmates can be revenue driven and be profitable actually pretty soon, which is great. And business model doesn't really make a ton of sense for like VC funding. So.

I think oftentimes in crypto, we look to crypto as an example of how you should start a company. But I actually like looking to traditional, like Web2 companies or just like consumer companies. And like some of the biggest companies were built in the basement while they're working on other projects. So

Pete (aka BFG) (05:15)
That's true.

Amelia (05:16)
I, yeah, that's what Soulmates is to me. It's something that I want to be a full blown business and I have the privilege of being able to grow and build slow while I'm helping these other projects. So, yeah, I'd say that it's a company.

Pete (aka BFG) (05:40)
Good,

Your choice. I'm just curious. So when you are working with the startups, I assume it's mostly Web3. And is there any preference for vertical or type of the projects?

Amelia (05:58)
Yeah, I think given my background, I typically index more towards like infrastructure projects. Prior to joining Coinbase, I was at Snowflake and Salesforce, which are very data driven, like SaaS companies. So I infrastructure side, there's like a lot more parallels when it comes to my personal experience. But I'm also super passionate about like us actually bringing more consumer.

Pete (aka BFG) (06:10)
Thank

Amelia (06:26)
and projects to life in this space which there are very few in between.

Pete (aka BFG) (06:34)
True. Any last question on this side and then we move on. Just curious, is there any favorite project of yours right now which you would like to highlight?

Amelia (06:47)
man, that's a good question.

Favorite projects, I mean, I'm biased towards like Chipped and like Bearabaddies are great, like consumer based projects at the moment. I think the other ones that are interesting is just like the agents that are being built with different frameworks available. So there's quite a few different frameworks. I have a friend who's building offline protocol, which is also

Pete (aka BFG) (07:00)
Okay.

Amelia (07:21)
a very cool project. So I'd say those. There's not a ton of consumer crypto out there though, unfortunately. Not yet, hopefully soon.

Pete (aka BFG) (07:22)
That's interesting.

Not yet, yeah.

Soon, soon,

So, do have your chipped nail?

Amelia (07:43)
I had them, I was wearing them when I was in LA, but I don't have them anymore. I don't have any nails right now. Yeah, have you tried them?

Pete (aka BFG) (07:50)
Right.

No, I had Winnie on the podcast about a year ago when she was, you know, it was early days and it was still during the friendship phase with the other project, which is now rather not mentioned, but I think they are doing better without them anyway. So, so definitely. Okay. Let's come back to Soulmates then. So how...

Amelia (07:55)
Thanks.

Yes.

I think so too. Yeah. I think so too. Yeah.

Sure.

Pete (aka BFG) (08:20)
What was the motivation behind Soulmates? I mean, you know, from the growth marketer, let's put it B2B person. How did that happen that you decided you want to create, let's call it a project which would help people find a Soulmate and do it in crypto, which is all the weird combination.

Amelia (08:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I appreciate you not calling it a dating app because a lot of people call it a dating app and that's certainly not what it is. It's really focused on like finding authentic connections. When I first joined... Good, love it. Thank you. The intention was kind of funny actually when I joined the Founder in Residence program.

Pete (aka BFG) (08:58)
That's me speed watching the videos before we do.

Amelia (09:10)
I thought I was going to build a infrastructure SaaS product because that's where a lot of my knowledge was and that felt like the most easy thing to do. I wanted to be really passionate about the problem. And at the time, I...

was personally really struggling with loneliness, not to the point where it was like super severe, but it was just very frustrating for me that it didn't feel like it could quite find my soulmates. And I always use soulmates because I think we have multiple and different forms. And I was frustrated by the fact that technology wasn't enabling us to do that in a better way. Again, I have the privilege of having worked at very large companies and I know

all of the data that's being utilized to sell us more stuff. But it's not helping us connect on a deeper level and we know that people are willing to like actually pay for that. so I just saw that there was a sort of unique opportunity to completely change the way that we meet people, whether it's romantic or platonic and sort of create this like novel experience that we haven't seen before.

That's where Sam's Soulmates was born. Did a lot of like research just on our biological factors, on social connection, psychological factors that really play into what sort of reduced that feeling of loneliness. And yeah, I just really wanted to be intentional with building this experience because...

I didn't want it to feel like another replica of what we currently see in the market because the direction that the market is currently going in is not helping the big problem.

Pete (aka BFG) (11:07)
Yeah, you could say that, but you know, so market is big and there are always some fringes which are working on interesting and maybe, you know, revolutionary stuff. It might be soulmates as well. So I have a couple of questions. So when you designed it, I hope I remember them sort of in a chronological order, which makes sense, but if not, we will jump around. When you designed it.

Amelia (11:18)
Yeah.

to.

Pete (aka BFG) (11:37)
Was there any like a framework which you could use or did you basically just made it up through the fact that, you know, there was a first, there was a form and then you figure out how you're going to fit it into the form or first there was like a function and then you sort of came up with a form.

Amelia (11:56)
Yeah, I mean so the the proof of concept was definitely not like a fully built product I think again, we have this like weird approach to building products in crypto where we like Build the product and then see if people want it and I just wanted to make something really scrappy So the form isn't what the actual product is It was just a way for me to sort of validate a lot of assumptions that I had

First and foremost, think that any company that's telling you that you're going to make promises of like, you're going to meet your soulmate by filling out all these like questionnaires, and we're going to find you the perfect notch is really lying to you because at a very basic level, the way that we connect is based off of our pheromones and our hormones, right? We need to

be in person and actually interact with that person in person to get a sense of we're attracted to them or we want to be around them. And then layering in some of those, I call them data inputs, so that they can be further matched based off of those things. The other aspect in those things is like what you typically think of, like what are your value-based, like what are some of your love languages? There's a couple of different

studies that have sort of incorporated into the questionnaire while trying to keep it fun and engaging and not feeling like you're filling out a match.com survey which can feel a little bit daunting at times and not so much fun. So taking into consideration those aspects but then also the fact that humans change over time. I think one of the big problems that we see is that

We fill out profiles once on what we're looking for, but it doesn't really reflect who we are in that moment. And so making sure that there's this constant stream of data, sort of updating based off of...

Amelia's needs and wants and values and how that's evolving over time because we're so contextual as humans, but we don't really have the tools that are necessarily representing that. So if I were to sort of like break down what the framework was, it's like, okay, get people in person, get them to fill out like more.

deep layers of information about them while keeping it private and then making sure that that's constantly updating. And then the fourth pillar, which is more around the experience stuff like.

How do you make it feel more serendipitous in a novel experience? Because as we've seen in history, especially when it comes to consumer apps, people don't really change for lookalike products. They don't really change for like copycats of Twitter or Facebook. Like they want something new. That's why when we see like ChatGPT and like a lot of...

and chat models taking off, like that is a new experience that's enhancing our lives. So I really wanted to create like a fun experience. And I love the idea of serendipity of just sort of bumping into the right person at the right place at the right time. So yeah, that was sort of my framework for building Soulmates

Pete (aka BFG) (15:24)
Okay.

So it kind of begs the question. You partly said the answer that you believe people have to meet in person. But then the question is, would you believe your AI agent to actually find you a potential list of soulmates?

Amelia (15:46)
I have sort of a mixed feeling around this. think there's like, there's two different things. You have your like digital twin, which is meant to be a like digital representation of yourself. But then you have an AI agent whose task is to go and find like matches based off of the algorithm that it's been trained on. So I think

I think your digital twin, ideally in the future would be almost a good match of who you are in person. But we're not there today, which is why you sort of have to do these like additional things to like get more information about person real time. I do think an agent whose task is to essentially match you with lookalike people.

does sort of remove the additional time that you need to take. I don't really believe in that, like they should be discussing back and forth. I kind of think that's like, why do you have two, yeah, no, you have like two agents speaking to each other. I don't really see the point in that when they're just, they're working on the same data inputs. I think it's more interesting of,

Pete (aka BFG) (16:47)
It's like behind your back.

Amelia (17:02)
Like, okay, you have an understanding that these two matches are in the same vicinity, they've expressed their interest in the same thing, and they're open and willing to meet someone within a specific timeframe, like a sort of match timeframe. That should like the role of the agent should be in like, okay, how do I create the serendipitous moment for the two to connect? Without exposing any data, because that's the other thing I don't want people to

I think existing dating apps are very invasive of privacy. I hate that people can see my profile. I don't want people to see that information. So I think the agent can use things like trusted execution environments to not expose that information, but still facilitate that connection and provide little clues, so like little hints on why you would be a good match, which help for the ice breaking and whatnot.

I don't know if that answers your question.

Pete (aka BFG) (18:04)
yeah, yeah. Look, it's, because it's, special science. I don't think you need to give me hard answers like yes, no, yes, with 10, you know, list of 10 things. So it's totally fine. I have to say that, you know, I had a couple of discussions about this. I think it was in Brussels with somebody and, and we were sort of, we got stuck on a disagreement.

Amelia (18:18)
Yeah.

Pete (aka BFG) (18:33)
about the fact that maybe if you would get access to all the data, which a couple of companies already have about you, say, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and maybe one other, your favorite app, and you would give it to any sort of LLM right now, they would probably be able to find you like a perfect match in a no time, I guess.

Amelia (19:00)
Yeah.

I think so. think it's like an interesting concept. I'm again, like just playing on my experience from like, so me, sorry, not so many snowflake. I've worked at a lot of places that start with S and I've made this trouble where I then named my, so this S keeps falling around. So Salesforce and snowflake. we talked a lot about like data silos and I've written an article about this where like,

Pete (aka BFG) (19:14)
I can see that.

Amelia (19:27)
there's fragmented versions of Amelia that sort of live across the internet. And I think it would be really interesting to sort of like create this like version of me, which is like all the versions of me online into one place. So I could be like, cool. This is what I look like. And I think that's what like the concept of a digital twin is necessarily supposed to be is that it's like, this is who you are. But like data has always been, not always.

Data is a very important resource for a lot of these companies. It's how they create revenue. so there's sort of, I think a lot of them are much more open and sort of like opening the data floodgates, but it's still not perfect and data is not easy to work with, especially when you have different formats and whatnot.

Pete (aka BFG) (20:20)
Yeah, I would probably argue that we are not 100 % there yet because even if someone would give me the option right now to take all the data we have about you and do whatever you want with them, would honestly, I wouldn't know where to put the data so I could be sure that it's basically just me who has access to it and that I can work with it.

Amelia (20:37)
Yeah.

Pete (aka BFG) (20:49)
in like five years and maybe 10 years. So a lot of cool projects, but they're very new. So who knows? And there's a lot of places where I can put a lot of data, but there's no guarantee it's going to be just me who sees that. So there's like, it's not 100 % there, even though I am super curious to know what the others know, of course.

Amelia (21:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Like what version of me are you getting? But then sometimes you like, like if you're interacting with something and they give you like,

a recommended product, you're like, why on earth did you recommend this product? Like, which data inputs did you get to figure this out? And then it makes you more curious because you're like, what the heck? Like, you're really sort of wondering what sort of brought them to that conclusion. So yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Yeah.

Pete (aka BFG) (21:38)
You

So coming back to Soulmates,

in your opinion or in your eyes, is it more like a social media show or reality TV?

Amelia (22:06)
Or sorry, what was the second part?

Pete (aka BFG) (22:09)
Is it more like a social media show or is it closer to reality TV?

Amelia (22:14)
okay, so it's actually neither. It's, I think soulmates.

So you saw Soulmates New York and Soulmates New York was more of a like another experiment to see whether or not you can create like matches within a group. I had the chance to do that show because we worked with the Celestia team and the MegaEth Eve team and they provided a...

an opportunity for me to essentially turn it into a reality TV show. It was super fun. It was a great experience, but it's not really the ethos of what Soulmates is.

And so if I were to sort of synthesize what Soulmates is, it's closer to social media in the sense that it is a consumer experience, but it's also paired with a bracelet, which we haven't really talked about, like a physical bracelet. So are you familiar with AuraRing? Yeah, so it's actually, you lost the lock.

Pete (aka BFG) (23:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Used to have a couple of them, lost them all. I use whoop now.

Amelia (23:23)
Okay,

Pete (aka BFG) (23:23)
Yeah.

Amelia (23:24)
that's like me and my AirPods. I've lost every single one of them. am like scared to look at my fine mine because it's just like a graveyard of my AirPods. I'd say it's actually more similar to an aura ring, right? So aura ring is amazing because it's providing all this data on your health and whatnot, but it's like a physical ring that you wear.

Pete (aka BFG) (23:33)
Yeah.

Amelia (23:46)
Soulmates has two components. So it has the agent that essentially does the matching based off of the inputs that you've provided.

And then there's a bracelet, which is a physical indicator of, you're a part of the Soulmates community, but then it also has different band colors that sort of indicate your intentions. Soulmates has this concept of the seven types of love, which is based off of Greek mythology and how they viewed love.

Pete (aka BFG) (24:11)
Okay.

Amelia (24:18)
In modern society, we tend to look at love as like just romantic partnerships, but love comes in many different forms. So the seven types of love is meant to sort of represent those different types of ways that you can connect with people. And the bracelet has band color that represents each one of those loves. And so if you and I happen to be in the same city or at the same conference like East Denver, and I see you wherever

wearing a soulmate's bracelet and I say, wow, okay, Pete is interested in making friends, he's open and willing for that, I'm also that, but I can see it based off of your bracelet. And what it does, akin to a wedding ring, it gives a social signal that someone is A, open to connection and you get an understanding of what they're looking for without having to do all the guessing work.

Pete (aka BFG) (25:17)
Okay, can you say what are the seven types of love you guys are matching for?

Amelia (25:22)
Yeah, of course. So let me pull up a list so I don't forget any of them. But there is... Let me just grab it.

Pete (aka BFG) (25:33)
At

one moment I actually thought you're gonna say, we are gonna make a bracelet with changes colors based on your mood and intentions.

Amelia (25:41)
I

do love a mood ring. The agent itself, what we're designing for, this is alpha information about some mates. The agent is Cupid, but Cupid traditionally is viewed as this baby in diapers with arrows, and it's a little bit cheesy and corny and sort of a dated version of...

of what love is. And so the new version of Cupid is actually sort of an orb shape and it changes based off of your intentions. So it is kind of like a mood ring, similar, but the bracelet, similar to the bracelet colors, it would change.

Pete (aka BFG) (26:22)
Okay.

Amelia (26:29)
the orb color based off of your intentions. the different types of love, just so can read them out to you. So first and foremost, there's Eros which is passionate, like romantic firely love. You have self love, which is also really important.

Agape, which is just sort of this like universal love, love for strangers. Ludus, which is like a flirty, playful type of love. Pragma, which is more committed. I'm looking for a longer type, longer lasting relationship. Phila, which is friendship. And then Storge which is, like familiar, unconditional love. So.

Obviously some of those are a little bit more obvious than the others, but what I think is nice is that it sort of acts as a conversational starter for a lot of people, right? If they are part of the Soulmates community, they know which colors associated with which type of love, and so it's an easy way for people to start conversations and sort of formulate the way that they approach folks.

Pete (aka BFG) (27:41)
Okay, so it's like an entry test. You have to memorize the seven types of love and colors.

Amelia (27:48)
I mean, ideally, you just have a little card that you can refer to, and it's not something you need to memorize all the time. Like, we don't want to make it that difficult, but yeah, kind of like that.

Pete (aka BFG) (28:01)
Okay, So you mentioned Cupid as sort of the little AI agent, assume. When is it coming out? How are people gonna use it?

Amelia (28:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, so the cool thing about agents is that you don't necessarily need an app. I've been testing. My agent is not perfect yet. I'm working on adding in the custom actions and whatnot. But you'd be able to interact with it in Telegram or X. So

I don't like one of my strong beliefs of the world is that you don't need another app on your phone. You really don't. have enough apps downloaded. You don't need any more chat interfaces either. we're good. We're good. You don't need any. So for soulmates, you would be able to interact with it either on X or in Telegram.

Pete (aka BFG) (28:47)
That's true.

Don't get me started. Don't get me started.

Amelia (29:04)
Eventually, I'd like to add more clients like Instagram so that we can really expand out to a wider audience outside of crypto. But those are essentially the three clients that we're focusing on. And essentially, it just be a DM to the soulmates agent or Cupid and just saying, hey, I'm looking for this. And it will ask you which city you're based in.

Just some basic questions similar to what you saw on the quiz and then based off of that plus the data that they have access to from your socials that you give user permissions to. It would make the connections based off of that. So yeah, I don't want people to have to like download anything to be able to interact with the page.

Pete (aka BFG) (29:49)
Okay.

Neat, So is

there a chance that you are going to do the same thing you did in, for example, New York together with the TV show and stuff somewhere in 2025? Or you're going more stealth with the agents and Cupid?

Amelia (30:18)
Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be doing another TV show. think we're going to be making a lot more video content, which is good. One of the big values of Soulmates is, again, you shouldn't have to put yourself on public display to meet someone, right? And it was sort of antithesis to create

a reality tv show which by the way again i really loved doing them very grateful to the teams who like helped me be able to build that so i don't want to sound ungrateful for it but my like you shouldn't need to have social media or you shouldn't need to have like

any sort of public profile to be able to meet someone. One of the things that I think is really difficult in our version of reality today is that social capital is built off of

how many followers you have on X or Instagram and how much money you're perceived to have. And that's not a good indicator of whether or not somebody is a good person. I think there's a lot of different other indicators and it's not really fair and a lot of people will create like opinions on whether or not someone has social media or not. So.

Sorry, that was a long winded way of saying no, I don't think reality TV shows are necessarily the right fit. I like leaning into the anonymity, anonymity, a non aspect of.

social and like creating communities and allowing people to be anonymous and remain private, which I think is something that is like nice for this industry, which is like a good sort of starting place. But I know that it is also important for other people outside of crypto, like they don't want to have to put themselves on public display.

So in terms of what the plans are for Soulmates in 2025, a lot more community events. So really focusing in on like the cities that we want to launch in. Initially, we're going to focus on Lisbon because I'm based here and likely one other European city and doing a lot of community activations and making sure that people can meet up in person. And then just improving the agent overall

so that people can ultimately utilize it and start meeting people in their cities. And then we'll be launching the bracelet as well later this year.

Pete (aka BFG) (32:54)
So.

So that brought a long list of questions, one before I forget, are you going to Denver with Soulmates? Okay.

Amelia (33:08)
I am. Yeah, so I am not

going to be doing what I did at ETHcc I'm doing something a little bit different called sending flowers. So again, playing in the ability to be able to be anonymous. People can send their appreciation to people who maybe they've had a crush on. And or maybe to someone who's a friend or colleague that they've really appreciated. And just creating

that space in what is typically a work environment for people to sort of like shoot their shot, right? Like conferences are weird, there's boundaries that need to be held and the soulmates sending flowers is really meant for an opportunity for you to share your appreciation and love for someone.

Pete (aka BFG) (34:01)
Very cool, very cool. I basically spoke about you with Francesca, I think it was two weeks ago. We were saying, well, she was saying, it's like, I have to ask Amelia to actually get me a date. She's horrible, dating normies. Okay, fair. So.

Amelia (34:07)
Yeah, she's amazing.

Yeah, exactly.

Pete (aka BFG) (34:27)
I forgot my next question. Nevermind. Please skip that one. So the question was, with Cupid, do you, do you, do I need to live in a city where you have actually like officially launched Soulmates to actually use it and, know, or is it basically working everywhere? I understand that there is, you know, there are two sides of the story. So I may be in a city, there may be no one else on the other side.

Amelia (34:31)
Please!

Pete (aka BFG) (34:57)
he can work with, so that's possible.

Amelia (35:00)
Yeah,

no, it's a good question. we're launch wise is going to focus on some key cities to begin with, and then maybe focus on having some ones that are more specific to nomads, especially for the crypto community because we move around very often. And the reason for that is because

It would be really disappointing for you if say you lived somewhere that didn't really have that many like soulmates participants and you didn't have an opportunity to meet somebody in person. So I think the biggest opportunity is really honing in on key cities where people can actually have these serendipitous in-person connections or activating at conferences specifically for crypto because that's actually when we all

best.

Pete (aka BFG) (35:56)
Yeah, that's true. Conference cities could be like a good base to start with, I guess. So what does... This is now a builder question. So what does success for Soulmates and from your perspective look like?

Amelia (36:17)
That's a very good question. think having a working POC of Cupid and building a bracelet that people want to wear on a day-to-day basis. it's kind of unique and very similar to what Winnie is building with Chipped for a different intention. But when you're manufacturing something physical, there is a whole lot more room for error.

than when you're creating software, right? There's a lot more risk when it comes to the cost that needs to go into it. So I want to build a bracelet and that's been a whole other learning experience. I want to build a bracelet that people are going to desire.

want to wear it every single day and are proud to wear it every single day, which is difficult. Like how many things do you wear every single day? Not that many. Yeah. Yeah. And then the product itself is... it doesn't feel like something that's ethereal and meaningless.

Pete (aka BFG) (37:23)
So there many.

Amelia (37:34)
in that it really sort of understands you and is making an effort to find matches that sort of match you where you are. That would be on the product side.

On the growth side of things, because the cities that we're focusing in on, Lisbon is a very crypto centric city. I'm not going to sit here and say that there's no crypto people here, but there's a lot of non-crypto folks here. so I think if early on this year, we can start building a community with activations that draw in folks who are outside of the industry, that will be a really huge

Pete (aka BFG) (38:00)
.

Amelia (38:16)
in for me and again, I because I'm not sort of focusing on the fundraising side of things, actually starting to build revenue and having a revenue stream is something that sort of demonstrates to me that okay, this works, people like it. Let's keep going. Scaling.

Pete (aka BFG) (38:40)
True.

So if it's not a secret, so what's the business model? Gonna be, I should probably say gonna be.

Amelia (38:45)
Yeah, so it's, yeah.

Yeah, no, the business model is two aspects. So similar to what you'd have with a lot of other consumer applications we're subscription based model, which has a monthly fee, mainly to interact with the agent. Again, similar to what you have with ChatGPT or a lot of other sort of agents that we're interacting with today. And then there's a one time cost for the bracelet. So again, I used Oura Ring as an example.

at the beginning. a ring is a great example of what

what Soulmates ultimately is. You don't need the bracelet to participate in Soulmates. It's helpful because it's such a big component for the IRL aspect. But the bracelet essentially would be an elevated tier that would give folks access to exclusive events and sort of like higher end aspects of being part of the Soulmates community. But again, yeah, one time fee in a subscription model.

Pete (aka BFG) (39:56)
Okay.

So at one point in time, I was thinking that you are going to say that the goal is actually like to have people join and never leave. But you know, once, once it's a SaaS model, it's kind of hard because that's the turnover is sort of natural. but I can imagine that, you know, if I would like to use the, bracelet as the signaling tool.

Amelia (39:56)
So.

Pete (aka BFG) (40:26)
I can do it even without being a paying member because partly I can imagine that if the community is great, maybe people join because they are looking for a soulmate, but then they can transition to looking for different types of love from the seven you just read.

Amelia (40:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that the two are combined, right? So the agent wouldn't just be, it would reflect your intentions as well, right? That's what I meant where it sort of changes based off of what you're looking for.

Pete (aka BFG) (41:01)
Okay.

Amelia (41:01)
So I think the two can intertwine, but to your point, like maybe someone doesn't want to interact with an agent and just wants to sort of live their life. That's where the serendipity piece comes in, right? Like you see someone who's wearing a soulmate's bracelet and you're kind of in the secret club together and you have no indication of it, but like you happen to be in the same place at the same time. Like it's sort of that sign that maybe you need it to just sort of look up and

and you're like, my god, they're wearing a soul mate's bracelet and they're wearing the same colors as me. I'm gonna go have a conversation with them.

so yeah, I mean, you're right. You don't, you don't need to have the subscription to have the bracelet. you don't need to have the bracelet to have a subscription. Ideally you can have both, but it's not necessary. I know a lot of people who, by the way, have their aura rings and they don't pay for the subscription anymore and they just wear it as a fashion statement. And I'm like, this is not a fashion statement. Yeah, it's a little weird, but you know, to each their own.

Pete (aka BFG) (41:58)
You

Okay, that's kind of weird, but okay.

Yeah, sure, if you...

Amelia (42:09)
But it's

a real thing. You have to sort of let people do what works for them. And I think at the end of the day, the biggest differentiator for Soulmates is that we're encouraging people to meet in person and we're using data for good.

Pete (aka BFG) (42:29)
come. So the I is it fair if I say that the bracelet is coming in 2025 or is it coming this summer or when is it spring wonderful cool.

Amelia (42:38)
play in the spring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been an

interesting process for sure. But

Pete (aka BFG) (42:46)
I just saw

that, you you lit up a lot when you talk about the bracelet. So I assumed it's sort of close.

Amelia (42:52)
Yeah,

you know what, it's been really fun for me. Trust me, if you would have asked me if I was building something that was consumer, I would have been like, that doesn't really fit into my background.

But when I think about the things that I personally love, like I've always loved fashion. I've always loved jewelry and building something and creating something that like I actually want to wear every single day and that my friends would want to wear and still having that be something that's tech. like, I think fashion utility is so cool. Like it's so cool.

And I always say, why don't they make these prettier? These are so chunky. I know that they capture a lot more data. But yeah, it's something that I discovered throughout Soulmates that I'm super passionate about and find a lot of energy in. So of course, think data is exciting. But being able to put something that's tangible out there is.

just as exciting, if not more.

Pete (aka BFG) (44:06)
Very cool. I like it a lot. I think, you know, honestly, we need more people doing some physical products like Chipped or, you know, the bracelet.

Amelia (44:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it just makes it makes everything that we're working on a little bit more real. like, as an industry, it's it's hard for us to see progress and for moving forward. And if you feel that's why we love conferences, in my opinion, so much as because we get to see each other and we get to be like talking about all the things that we're working on. And I think we sort of like undervalue how much we care about having tangible things and

Yeah, Winnie is definitely like an inspiration. She's been a, I hate this word, but I'm going to use it. She's been a trailblazer in the space when it comes to building something that's truly different and important. And yeah, definitely look up to her in lot of aspects. Yeah.

Pete (aka BFG) (45:07)
So Amelia, this was great. I think we are on like 40 minutes or something. What is the question I should have asked and didn't?

Amelia (45:19)
That's the question you should have asked and...

Pete (aka BFG) (45:22)
maybe

because I missed the context or maybe because I didn't know that this is important to you.

Amelia (45:30)
No, I feel like I try and get my important points out. But now that's a great question to ask. I don't know. No, I think maybe like, how do you how do you know what's like going on with Salesforce with Snowflake? So I think just for updates, like following along on the social, we're in the midst of like updating our website, and making that a lot more clear on

what Soulmates is, but again, if I was really to boil it down to two things, it's an agent and a bracelet that's meant to help you find more meaningful connections, IRL. And then like future vision roadmap is not only are you building connections over time, you're rewarded for the connections that you build over time. So we're really thinking about like,

Okay, once you have this community, how do you keep them to want to stay around for a while? And I think a lot of people immediately think like financial incentives, but I think there's different ways that you can create rewards. Yeah, token, of course. No, no, no, no, it's not a show for token. Absolutely not. But yeah, I think that's another sort of

Pete (aka BFG) (46:40)
Of course.

You

Amelia (46:52)
thing that's not gonna be happening in 2025. 2025 really focused on growing the community and getting more people on board and whatnot. yeah.

Pete (aka BFG) (47:05)
Okay,

so for us who need it like in super simple terms, where can people meet you or Soulmates in the first half of 2025? Because after that we will forget.

Amelia (47:18)
Yeah, I'm online. I hate that I'm online all the time for someone who likes being in person. If you're in Lisbon, just send me a DM. I'd love to meet in person. Next week, I'll be heading to ETHDenver Soulmates is going to be doing sending flowers. So even in Denver, yeah. So on February 25, we're going to be at the Zerion house, which again, we're going to be

Pete (aka BFG) (47:33)
is then where you meant, right? Okay, yeah.

Amelia (47:45)
sending out some flowers, showing some appreciation. And I think we're also going to be doing a community event at the end of March in Lisbon. So I think the best way to sort of keep up to date with what's going on is to follow the SoulMates account and follow me.

Yeah, if you have any advice or or not advice, but if you have any feedback or comments, or if you just want to meet up and talk more, I'm always open to connect with people, especially if they're interested in seeing how soulmates can sort of solve their personal life.

Pete (aka BFG) (48:25)
I

think that's a lovely line to end up with. It's like, how can soulmates solve your life? Yeah, yeah. You should make it into a slogan. Amelia, this was a pleasure. lovely chat. I've learned a lot about soulmates. I am looking forward to the bracelet. I'm not going to be in Denver, but I may be in Lisbon. So if I'm there, I'll definitely DM.

Amelia (48:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, please message me. No, it's such a pleasure. And thank you so much for having me. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye.

Pete (aka BFG) (48:54)
Everybody have a great day.