The Hoely Hour - E218 Yappin' With A Dating App Founder

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Amelia is drivin' the Hoe Wagon(tm) alone this week and has a yap with Daniel Mossaband, founder of Firefly, a new dating app. Will AI know us better than we know ourselves soon? Jump scare: yes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If at any point anyone was wondering if my tech skills have improved over the years of working on this podcast, the answer is no, because I am completely useless without Liz by my side. It just took me a good 10 minutes to realize that the reason that I couldn't find the microphone on my sound settings was because my microphone was not plugged in. welcome to the holy hour a podcast about sex relationships mental health and everything in between i'm amelia samson and i'm liz ball follow us on instagram and tiktok at the holy hour i'm on instagram and tiktok at amelia samson and i'm on instagram and tiktok at liz ball so hard you can also watch us on youtube or listen ad free on patreon at patreon.com slash the holy hour Check out our merch at theholyhour.com and email us your spicy stories at holyhourpodcast at gmail.com. We're here. We've made it. I am alone today recording a solo Sode. This is going to be

just kind of like a little mini Sode. I was lucky enough to sit down and have a conversation with a dating app founder named Daniel Mosaband. He is friends with Frank. They've known each other for a very, very long time. And I got asked to help with getting the app started up and it's been just the best experience ever. As some of you may know, my whole thing on the internet is dating apps. I've been trying to move away from that a little bit since I'm now off of dating apps and am living with Frank but you know that's that's what my my bread and butter has been up to this point but leading up to that I wanted to read you this tale that I found on the r slash dating subreddit um I only read the first few sentences of it and then I wanted to get my like real real

time reaction to it but the first few sentences sounds interesting so the the title of this is man combed lice out of my hair as a first date a little backstory i am 25 female an assistant preschool teacher unfortunately lice is an occupational hazard i'm not just a filthy person like a side note from amelia i got lice going into my senior year of high school and like everybody was under the impression because I've always been anxious everyone was under the impression that it was just anxiety is why I was like so itchy which is ridiculous and then when I went to the dermatologist for a different issue they looked in my hair and there was just a bunch of lice eggs and it was it was so gross I picked it up at summer camp I'm also not a gross person

okay about a month ago I met a man on tinder yes I know it's accessible we'll call him d26 male funny enough i had swiped on him on accident because i dropped my phone he matched me and i didn't unmatch because his opening line was funny this feels like divine intervention to me personally we talked online for a few weeks before deciding to meet in person on the day we were supposed to have our first date i discovered one of my darling students gave me lice i was freaking out i knew he wasn't going to believe me and that he was going to think i was just blowing him off i immediately tell him that i have to go to the store and get lice treatment and that i need a rain check on the first date. As expected, he didn't believe me at first, which is honestly so valid and I

couldn't blame him for it. After I secure the lice treatment, I video called my best friend crying about it and in their genius way, they tell me to offer to send him a picture of my raw emotion with the lice treatment. I offer and Dee says, sure, let's see it. As soon as this man saw that I was genuinely crying and holding lice treatment, he offered to come over and help me comb bugs out of my hair. I asked my best friend what I should do and they said I should obviously let him do it so i give him my address apply the treatment to kill the bugs it needed to be on my head for a while before this starting the combing process and i met him outside of my apartment complex to let him in this man exposed himself to lice for you this is i don't need to know

anything else this man is your husband he spent two hours combing bugs out of my hair i was just a girl he met on tinder we hadn't even met in person before this we spent the whole time talking and joking and discussing our interests all of the normal stuff that you talk about on first dates This man was meticulous. He took time and was so gentle and kind. He didn't make me feel bad about it at all and even tried to make light of the situation. By the time we were done dealing with the lice and all the nonsense that goes with it, bagging clothing and bedding, etc., it was nearly 10 and the Mexican restaurant we were going to go to was about to close so we went to a different restaurant. This man still wanted to take me to dinner after combing bugs out of my hair. I of course decided that he'd already seen me at my worst so I wasn't going to be shy about eating and ordering a Guinness and a burger. he refused to let me pay i tried i tried given everything he had done for me and he asked if he could see me again soon we're going out later this week edit tad for everyone wondering what his funny opening line was it was clever play on one of the pictures in my profile that was taken at a 303 concert oh my god i fucking loved 303 update one the second date was even better

than the first we went to the mexican restaurant that we were supposed to go to for the first day and he offered to do a second comb through on my hair as a precaution while we watched a movie I was bug free yay okay a second come a second come through is starting to feel like he maybe has some sort of kink he's like no you're not itchy anymore but like we should probably check right no I'm just kidding though it is cute that's that's very thoughtful of him we watched mean girls and he was quoting the movie a line ahead pretty well the entire time I was quite entertained and pleased that he likes chick flicks that is one of my biggest pet peeves now I feel like I'm dogging on this guy. This is very cute and she clearly likes it. But personally, people

that quote lines in movies before they happen, I want to put them in a soundproof bubble. We can still watch the movie together, just I don't want to hear you. We discussed life goals and political stances and discovered that we have similar worldviews and goals. We also have a lot of shared interests. My antisocial cat likes him too, which is a major green flag in my book. She doesn't just let anybody pet her but she snuggled up to him after he was finished combing through my hair oh she probably saw him grooming you and was like like grooming like grooming your hair like how cats groom each other and thought that like oh this is a person i can trust that is so cute he's very sweet and funny and i feel like i can actually have an intelligent conversation with

this man we're going to a pumpkin patch and haunted house this weekend and then there's a second update update two we are official he is absolutely the kindest person i've ever dated I know it's a little early to say this but I might have accidentally swiped on my forever with this one oh I introduced him to my friends and they both really liked him he took me to see Terrifier 3 for my birthday even though horror isn't necessarily his favorite we started reading play-doh together the other night and it was so much fun I love the classical works and so does he it was nice to have someone to bounce thoughts off of I promise to keep you guys updated it's so weird having this many people invested in my dating life I didn't expect it to blow up like this

but then there's no other updates so I need I need more I need more now I'm invested too this is what I like I feel like whenever people you ask someone like oh how'd you meet whenever people say like bumble or hinge like there's always like a little bit of shame that comes along with it and I don't think that there should be first of all there's not very many opportunities to meet people these days like it's it like how are you supposed to meet people when you're not like in college anymore or like unless you're gonna like date a co-worker or like go up to people at the bar like those are really only those are the only options we really have now like for the most part so I don't know it's this there's it's a vehicle now for making connections

and then there are moments like this where you like meet somebody and have this like crazy story of how you first met that is going to be fun to tell for forever like even if you don't end up marrying this person which it sounds like it's going well at least as of the last update but like it's still a fun story to tell in the future like oh yeah I dated this guy for a while that like he combed lice out of my hair on the first date like that's it's quirky and it's cute personally I think but anyway thank you for letting me um read that with you um going to going to transition into my conversation now with with Daniel to talk about his experience with starting a dating app I hope you enjoy the conversation um we did not sing the outro

so I'm gonna I'll sing the outro by myself after the interview just because you know I'm I'm a creature of habit okay enjoy um i'm really bad at introing people so bear with me here but i'm speaking to the one the only daniel mosa band he is the founder extraordinaire of um the dating app that i've been working with called firefly would you like to say hello daniel hello thank you for that lovely intro daniel is so great at what he does he is an innovator a mover and a shaker he is a other corporate terms for being good at tech things i like it yeah disruptor disruptor that's the other one yeah yeah solid thank you for talking to me i'm hosting alone this week and everybody that's listening to the podcast knows that that is not my strong suit i'm

really bad at yapping alone so thank you for yapping with me yeah of course that's what i'm here for yeah so okay let's dive right in yes um a little icebreaker for you okay fuck marry kill tinder bumble hinge all right so by default we gotta do the kill tinder i think they're having an identity crisis gotta get rid of it what made them special is no longer okay why why do you say that yeah so you know they started with the whole like like hot or not vibe um and i think like they're originally just copying grinder but then just made it for straight people which is like that's kind of like the opposite of how things get cool so yeah yeah let's just kill it you know totally and then you have the like mary

and fuck and i'm gonna go with that's actually a hard one but i'm gonna go with mary hinge interesting okay yeah i'm a big fan of their logo actually i think it's the mascot that really does it for me and then fuck we gotta go bumble you know right of course i okay you see i feel like for me i would swap tinder and bumble i feel like i would i would fuck i would fuck tinder but it would be like it would be like a hate fuck you know what i mean like i wouldn't like yeah i don't like love like every moment of it but um and then i would probably kill bumble there's something about i feel like bumble was great initially because women had to send the first message right right but it does feel like that is no longer like part of what makes them

beautiful it kind of feels like it's given men more of a reason to be angry at dating apps yeah i think like in general letting men say something first is just like a wrong thing to be doing totally and so switching the one thing that like made you unique to then making it like every other you know incel app is not the best decision to have gone with right right absolutely okay cool thank you for that i feel like this i feel warmed up does your brain feel warm i'm ready energized even incredible okay so tell me about why you started firefly and and the the story of how it came to be the lore behind it the lore so you know we all know apps or dating apps i guess suck right like that's just like it's like a thing like i don't think there's any other industry

where the the people who make these things actively hate their user base you know that like car dealerships or something yeah so you know looking through literally all these different subreddits talking to people it was very obvious that there's a want or a need for something that's better and like i think part of me part of what was helpful is that i you know impulsive naturally so i'm like oh i think i can make something better and like obviously it's an uphill battle but you know we'll just start and see what happens and making something like making an app a really small version posting it on reddit getting absolutely blasted with how little features there were, but also the fact that like, the blasting of Wow, I'm so glad somebody is finally

working on this. And I think that was the motivator in continuing to work on Firefly. It was like, okay, we got good feedback. People, you know, I think, I think it's better that people were upset that it wasn't as feature filled, right? Because if they didn't care, I think that's like, you can't you can't change people not caring. Totally. But people who care and are passionate, but it's like okay like maybe we can start building something yeah totally does you came into an industry that is so saturated that it's been interesting to be on now the inside of it working with you and seeing like what the reception has been like because I feel like we're also in this like we're in this unique space right now where like it's super saturated

and people are super jaded but it seems like the user base has been super welcoming in a way that i wasn't really expecting i've worked with dating apps in the past and it has not been received so warmly were you surprised by that or were you were you coming into this expecting there to be like you know like a little bit of pushback i think a little bit of both i think in any industry that's just been like constantly attacked that like when someone comes along and is like oh we're doing this but better i think it's easy to fall into like okay sure you are mm-hmm we all know it's hard and like how are you not just going to turn into the thing that everyone else is yeah so I think there was that that did happen but also I think maybe this is

just like me being arrogant but like I know that what I built was better and I know that the people would see that and be like okay this is just like an indie app and we are going to give it a chance and i was like and i think part of like what's been helpful is when someone says oh how are you not going to turn into tinder or bumble and like me being super honest and is like well you don't right but like hopefully the fact that i'm even communicating to you right now live or like on the website i pull up the issues and bugs and features we're adding that are updated live on our website and like having converted it to a public benefit corp like there's all these things i've done to gain that trust and that those things aren't easy right and so i think it's a lot

of people being like okay he's been working on it for a while he is going to monetize and we know the way he's going to monetize and we agree with how that's going to happen i think totally just like having that transparency that others don't is has helped and i kind of figured it would and i'm glad i was right yeah totally i mean that makes sense that it would be like you building the trust and being like i'm doing this because like i care rather than i'm doing this just for profits then i think like you're saying it makes sense that people would receive that so much better it's like okay well now that i feel like i'm not getting like dicked around by these corporations you know because like match group owns all of the other all of the other dating

apps and they put profits ahead of everything else so it's good to hear that people are like okay now that i understand that you're not in this just for profits i'm willing to give you my money like yeah or at least like yeah no definitely and i'm not you know classic software engineer right or like don't necessarily enjoy talking to people but you know i think that's important to do to the point where like when people random people are like oh hey we should have a video chat like i have ideas i want to give you or like i've met somebody in real life like we hung out for like two hours and we just chatted and that was somebody from firefly community that just reached out to me and i think it's really important to know that we don't know

everything and that these users are the ones that do have ideas and those frustrations and it's worth like going out of your way to set up time to meet these people and that also is just like another a way of instilling trust because that that gets around right like people do talk about that in the subreddits now for sure i know when i was on the dating apps like it was the piece of it that bugged me the most was how impersonal it felt like i felt like if i knew who was like in charge of all of this not that it would like fix all of the issues but like it would make it feel more personal it It would feel more like matchmaker vibes, you know, and it wouldn't feel so just like robotic and impersonal and just trying to like get money and shuffle people through

and da da da da da. So it's been it's been cool seeing how people receive that. Yeah, I also think what's been really fun about it and not what I expected, but like someone was mentioning, hey, Daniel, I, you know, I'm part of a vegetarian group and I would really love if I could filter people by their dietary restrictions and I would love to share it with my friends. And I was like, oh, that's a really smart idea. And I remember adding that in a few days later and then letting them know that I added this feature. And they were so thankful. And it was so cool to have that direct impact for a specific person. And I think that's

also the benefit of this being a small team, right? There's just me, you, and a few of us doing this. And we're able to iterate that quickly. And I think that's also really cool. Totally. That is a great segue into my next question. So, I mean, we've talked about how you feeling so connected and like face to face with the user base is part of what separates Firefly from everyone else. But what else would you say differentiates Firefly? Like what's our thing? yeah i think there's a few different parts that are making it so different one is we do have the quizzes and our like match algorithm um no one else has this and the one other product that has this is now taking it away and that has really really helped i think a big i don't know if you could say problem with online dating versus like meeting someone in person and why a lot of people say they have more success in person is that you're not judging them just by their face,

right? Like you're actually going in person and maybe someone can make you laugh and that adds a point to them, right? As opposed to just this physical trait. And I think the match percentages that we have in the compatibility score help with that. I think looking at someone's profile and you seeing their face, right? Okay. Maybe five out of 10, right? And then the about me oh they're funny they have the similarities to us six out of ten right and like now this match percentage score that says oh we're 80 90 95 compatible like that adds that like gives more incentive to message someone there's more data like go off of and i think that is really helpful and i do think that's why we have one of the highest response rates um for when somebody

gets a message and they get messages back totally and i think another thing that makes us so different is how we plan on monetizing right like all these other apps they lock 99 of the products and you have to pay the monthly fee to get there to unlock everything else whereas we were not doing that we are letting things for free you can see who liked you you could you can message people back. You can swipe as much as you'd like, right? Our monetization is the aesthetic customizations that people want to be doing on these other apps, but can't. And part of that aligns us with making it so people do enjoy using the app, right? Because if people aren't enjoying the app, they're not going to spend time customizing their profile. And so having that be our monetization

aligns the incentives of the users with us for it to be an enjoyable experience. totally wow look at you you really like really nailed it on this pitch i know i found this is the first time i'm doing it so i'm glad it went well oh good no yeah this was a good first test no it's it's really like speaking personally i think i've been i've seen the absolute worst of these apps like you know people send me just like the worst things they see and i have had my issues with all of these apps for so long that when you approached me about potentially like helping out with firefly i was y'all are the second app that i've dating app that i've helped with the first one i we don't need to get into it just didn't it didn't go well and they no longer

exist in that like capacity now they're like doing nfts and shit which is just like garbage gross but anyway all that to say i was like i was very apprehensive and it's been really cool to see like how i mean everybody on the team is so amazing and like cares so much and that translates so well into how the app functions like it doesn't feel like i don't know like fakey and like you know like we're just trying to get into this like i feel like being in the dating app space is not like you don't get into the dating app space to make like a lot of money at this point like in people's minds because there's so many i feel like i'm just saying the word personal like over and over again but it really is like yeah it feels like it's touching on what a lot of people have

been missing out on so i don't know it's been it's been cool just to like see the evolution of all of this even though i'm not on the back end of it i have no idea what y'all are doing over on the software side i couldn't tell you the first thing but yeah i don't know it's just really exciting. And I'm excited for you. Yeah, I will say that, like, you know, I professional software engineer, right? So like, I had an idea, I executed it, I had a vision for what I wanted. But there's a lot of stuff that I am not skilled in. Right. And I think the reason I reached out was because I think it's really important to delegate and like have people you trust work on the things they're good at right and I think that is also how businesses and like

the user base and all that scales and so I think like it's not just me anymore right it is you it is the other people and like we are getting this to be a functional product that people like and I think that's also really cool because for this is the first time for a lot of us that are doing this and for it to like be going this well is a very promising sign absolutely yeah it feels like everything's jiving really well which is which is cool you've built a really good team and i'm really proud to be a part of it yeah that's right firefly fam as we say ff baby so okay did you tell me if this is too personal the question and we can just skip it did you meet your wife on a dating app no i did not meet my wife on a dating app i actually moved to northern california for school

realized hey i don't really know anybody here i should try to make some friends and so i joined a fraternity i don't really drink i don't really party that hard or hardly party some would say and it was fun it was a good time met some friends and one of the things we had to do was like help set up an event for this like org and she worked at that org and so that's how I met her and she got I was like a complete dickhead at first which is like not inaccurate but it was nice to have swayed her eventually I love it so you were you ever on dating apps before you met her I was on a ton of dating apps and what I remember dating apps being was really fun I remember logging in and just having like a blast like answering quizzes talking to people messaging people and

like you know the last time I was on dating app at this point was like eight nine years ago but like recently going back to dating apps I'm like why aren't they fun anymore you know like that sucks like and so I think that's also part of it but no that was like I used to go on dating apps a lot I really enjoyed it I've even like made chrome extensions for dating apps before and so I was familiar with it yeah I've just never hadn't recently noticed how much it changed until I was trying to build something but yeah totally okay so then with that in mind did you do you feel like you were able to take your experience with like it being so fun back in the day with how you met your wife and the connection that you made and like take aspects of all of that to create what

Firefly is or do you feel like they've just like they're totally separate in your mind and I'm asking a stupid question i don't think you're asking a stupid question and they are totally different in my mind okay i think like okay you know i was saying i've met a bunch of people from the community and like there's even some other like really small indie dating apps that are like ideas only that have reached out to people of firefly to like collab and just get insights on how we made it this far and like i almost think my superpower is that i'm not that like i'm not excited necessarily by like a dating app right i i want to make a good product like that is what is exciting to me like making users happy like building something that people use

and so i almost think it's like a good thing i think the venn diagram of people who are passionate about dating apps and then like maybe loonies is basically one-to-one and so i'm glad to not be a part of that diagram yeah okay question yes i'll preface this people that listen to the podcast know how much me and liz talk about ai and it's either with a lot of love in our hearts or like just a lot of fear understandable and i was wondering do you think that we'll ever get to a point where ai and like the algorithm knows who we should date better than we do personally i do actually interesting i think there's a lot about us that can be picked up on that we don't actually know or notice like it's it's why the tiktok

algorithm is so good right like like what they do is they someone uploads a video and they have ai going through the video knowing that like oh there was a dog at 10 seconds a horse at 15 seconds you know whatever a cow at 30 seconds and like you swiping left you going to the next video at 20 means oh you like the dog but you don't like the horse like they just have all this information that you don't even know and i wouldn't be surprised if there's a world in the future where like okay we just tag and figure out everything about everybody on a dating app and like then you clicking someone's profile means you like all these traits and you don't even know necessarily these traits right it's like when you have a crush on someone like you don't really know

why you have a crush on that person it's just there's just some like feeling right yeah like indescribable and so I wouldn't be surprised if that is a potential feature that makes a lot of sense to me yeah but it's so true it's interesting though watching specifically I have one of my guy friends in mind when i say this like he is so like he's he gravitates toward such like the obvious wrong type of person for him and like he's he's broken things off with women where we're all like obsessed with her you know we're like this is amazing she's you guys compliment each other so well and he's like i'm just not feeling it so it would be interesting to watch you know in the future how like humans push up like push back against what who ai thinks is right for them

or if like the people that are judging these women for him are the ones that are wrong you know like maybe him and ai are gonna agree it's there's so much nuance with human attraction yeah i think it'd be really really fascinating to know like okay if this existed tomorrow right and then like in three years down the line we had all these data points of like okay like obviously the ai is doing something right and like maybe that would change how people feel maybe people would feel less reluctant to let the ai because they're like right it's like a self-interest of i want to find somebody and if this is the best way to do it then like i mean wouldn't it be nice to not have to go on a thousand dates yes it would and also like maybe in the future that would be like a fun

thing like maybe people would still miss that right yeah and so just because there's like a better way you know these are some fighting words but like you know an mp3 player or itunes or whatever verse a record right like most people would say mp3 players right like spotify is better but like people still enjoy the act of going to a record store yeah that's a that's a good parallel to draw yeah it'll be interesting to see how the pendulum swings because it really does feel like there are big big swings and being on the forefront of it like you are too is that's probably going to be an interesting thing for you to be trying to follow along with yeah there's been lots of people who are like we should pivot right like we should just have somebody talk to an ai the ai learns all

about them and then the ai finds their matches i don't think we're there yet for a few reasons i think one is that like technologically it's just that's just not something we can do and also like and maybe this is just a bias like that just doesn't seem like good like i don't know i don't know what good is right but i think it just doesn't seem it's not something i want to build it's not something i i don't i'm not building this to reduce human contact yeah right yeah yeah you're building it to aid in human contact yeah i do think it's important like i think the people who say like you know finding somebody online is way easier than in person and like to an extent that is but finding the right person online i would argue is harder than finding the

right person in person so i think 100 yeah yeah i think that's what we should be helping yeah it's it's going to be an interesting challenge for firefly to to like kind of combat that like dating fatigue and like the burnout this like the choice fatigue that people have too which is i think that like the the percentage match helps in that too because it's like okay well this person that's like attractive but like is like a 20 right is probably not the one for me but also might be fun to message totally why not yeah you never know so is adds that extra layer that doesn't feel so like, you know, just like monotonous of just swiping through a million faces a day. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Do you have anything else you want to add before

I let you go? I can roll out the red carpet for you to plug the app or anything you want to say. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe to Firefly. You can find us at datefirefly.com, available on iPhone and Android. And yeah, no, this was great. I appreciate it. Cool. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Daniel. thank you Amelia all right thank you for listening Liz will be back I think in a couple of weeks um yeah I miss her I'm so I'm so lost without you Liz I love you and we both love you our children damn I hit that fuck yeah okay bye Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.