Core Team

The dominant social technologies of the past decade have failed us; most actively make our lives worse. The primary use of tech breakthroughs has been extractive—not to create real value for users. It’s time for a change.

We started with a matching event at Stanford, and it caught on quickly—our annual tradition has grown to 350,000 users across 83 colleges. That gave us some unique insight into how delightful and explosively viral social experiences work.

We’re using that insight to design social experiences for the future from the ground up. What would our tools for socializing, dating, and self-reflection look like if they were designed natively for AI, and gave us the full power of our data?

Our earliest experiments aimed at proving or disproving components of our thesis, but we kept re-proving it—like growing 15% day/day for a month, or seeing 100,000 weekly active users, or 50% d30 retention, in some of our earliest iterations. Now, we’re experimenting further to put it all together.

We believe our work should enable new experiences—not just do the old thing at a larger scale or slightly better. We have some promising traction, although it’s still early. At any point, we could fail. But if we succeed, this could be one of the biggest companies in consumer social.

Finally, we’re proud of the way we work: with a small team of extremely competent designers, engineers, and scientists. Want to be part?

The bedrock of great relationships is compatible values. Our values are at the core of who we are and how we do things. They can be a bedrock for your working relationship with anyone on the team.

Here are our core values at a glance. They’re not in priority order—simply in an order meant to follow their natural place in the creative process.

Nearly 150 feature articles have been printed about us so far, across The New York Times, NPR, and The New Yorker. Here are some of our favorites:

The most important things you’ll find working at Marriage Pact are (1) interesting and challenging work, (2) substantial founders-class equity awards, (3) comfortable salaries with market adjustments at Series A, and (4) opportunity to grow as the company grows.

But beyond that, the full time team gets $18,000/year in benefits:

🩺 Health, vision, and dental insurance — The company offers good insurance plans and covers 100% of your monthly premium.

🍻 Weekly team dinners — Food and drink fully covered., We explore the culinary scene across West Village, Chelsea, Meatpacking, Flatiron, and Greenwich Village.

⏳ Schedule optimization coaching — Your time is your most precious resource. We pay for a dedicated time management and leadership coach for all full time employees.

🏋️ Exercise stipend — $100/month you can use for your gym/exercise memberships, classes, equipment, clothes, etc.

☕ Caffeine stipend — $72/month you can use for coffee/tea out and about or at home.

🖼️ Monthly team outings — We visit museums like MoMA or the Whitney, go out to comedy and jazz clubs, picnic in central park, and more. Anyone is welcome to plan one.

🧺 Full-service laundry — We want to save your time. Use a dedicated card on laundry wash and delivery or a wash and fold of your choice.

🎁 Premium subscriptions to Marriage Pact products once we build them — Everyone on the team will get premium subscriptions for their personal accounts.

🗞️ News — Stay up to date with logins to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Information, Bloomberg, The New Yorker, and Harvard Business Review.

📚 Books & learning — Expense any book you want for learning (textbook, nonfiction, etc.).

💰401(k) accounts — The company doesn’t offer matching, but everyone gets a 401(k) savings account to which you can allocate up to $22,500/year pre-tax.

🚲 Commuter benefit accounts — You can contribute pre-tax money to an account you can then spend out of on any commuting expenses.

📍 In-person location at Soho Works, Meatpacking — our workspace has plenty of light, plants, exposed brick, and luxurious finishings. The space was chosen to be highly accessible by transit. We may get our own space—if we do, we would deck it out comparably.

📦 Relocation help — If you’re moving from out of state, we’ll help you get here. Get a substantial relocation stipend, grossed up for taxes, to help you move.

🕗 Flexible hours — although we work long hours, you get the flexibility to set your own schedule and choose when you work best (within reason).

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Candidly, here are some other considerations not discussed above:

💻 We’re using our own computers for now. We’ll get nice devices when the company raises Series A.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 We work in-person / don’t offer remote work. We value face-to-face conversation, opportunities for quick answers and in-person collaboration.

Relationships give life meaning. Great relationships should be cherished and nurtured. And people without one should always have a way to find one.

We’re building a world where it’s effortless to invest in your meaningful relationships. Where you don’t grow apart over time—you grow more in touch with your friends and with yourself. And where you’ll never have to wonder who you might have met.

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Gabi (designer): We innovate in the unknown of human connection. We want to improve human connections and lead people into more meaningful relationships (whether that’s friendship or love). Our curiosity helps us create unique ways to get there. We are constantly questioning our world and society and I love the creativity and curiosity we approach it with.

Kyle (expansion): I love bringing people together. Whether it’s hosting dinner parties, kickbacks, or attic ragers, I love bringing my friends together, introducing them to each other and seeing new relationships form. Marriage Pact is about bringing people together.

Preston (designer): I love experimenting and playing with technology. That’s in the ethos of the Marriage Pact brand: technology, advancing, using the very very latest, and most cutting edge, while juxtaposing it with humanism.

Liz (operations): What caught my eye in the first place the feeling! It was pure fun—the energy, the excitement, the anticipation... your heart racing in the moments leading up to the match. Marriage Pact took something people are naturally curious about—psychology, romance and relationships—and amplified it 1000x. And delivering that feeling at scale? Truly unbelievable.

Julia (expansion): It’s rare to get the chance to work on something where you can actually feel the impact you are making. And the way it’s impacting people’s lives feels palpable: whether you’re seeing the joy created when matches come out, or having friends who are now dating their Marriage Pacts, or experiencing it firsthand.

Allie (writer): Dating & relationship-building in general is changing right now. Not only are we giving people a way to connect in spite of this change… we are the change.

Kat (relationship scientist): as a relationship scientist this is kind of the craziest place to be working right now. I’m here to transform the online dating industry so it’s not a place of dehumanizing efficiency—and instead make it a place for delight, serendipity, and care for the whole person. It’s important that this exists.

Julia (expansion): There are so many apps out there that are just spin-offs of other ideas or already existing apps, so it’s rare to find a product that is actually doing something entirely different and new. It’s inspiring to work on something that you feel could actually make a long-term dent in the world.

Ian (iOS engineer): In the future, when it’s all said and done, other dating companies will be looked back on like “whoa, those weren’t even really dating companies”. And for me, it’s the ambition of it all. Why waste my most productive years not trying to do something huge & transformative?

Liz (operations): It feels like such an honor and responsibility to be in an environment where I can build something fundamentally new in the relationships space, and it actually has a real shot at working, changing the course of culture. Most people never even come close to this sort of opportunity, and I don’t take it lightly. I feel a huge responsibility to make the most of it.

Preston (designer): I think that human connection is essential in life, and I don’t see anyone else doing what Marriage Pact is doing, so I feel a deep amount of potential towards it being able to improve lives, and add a sense of mystery, beauty, and intrigue, while allowing the opportunity for people to expand themselves, and meet those who resonate with their soul, vs just a few profile photos.

Kyle (expansion): Marriage Pact is just really freaking cool. The concept is so cool. I feel like I’m a part of something special that aligns with my personal values. I feel good about the work that I do. I’m ultimately making a significant net positive in a lot of people’s lives.