This Stanford Dropout Wants to Help You Fall in Love

today's dating apps have been designed and tweaked

and redesigned and redeployed to keep you single

they're perversely incentivized

to try and keep people on the apps for longer

try and keep people hopeful enough

but also unsatisfied

so that they're more likely to upgrade to being paying users

we do such and up on boarding

that maybe there's only 10 people in the entire city

that are bookable for you

if you say no we might not find you another person for a week

it could be two weeks

and we can't guarantee to you when we will find you another person

because

there's not an endless supply of people that are just right for you

I was walking along the Marina Green with a potential investor

while I was fundraising

a woman stops me and grabs me by the wrist and goes

you don't know me

but I know you because you set me up with my boyfriend

and I've been single in San Francisco for seven years

we have set up in our beta

there's 1,500 dates

and we know of a couple hundred couples that are dating

you canceled our jobs that we had lined up

and really burn the ships in some ways

first believer should be you in your own idea

and like your own ability to execute

little me would have thought that I was going

trying to start a career in politics

I often tell people that you will never catch me

being a serial entrepreneur

but we were pre product we raised our seed round in 4 days

and had more than a dozen term sheets

hi my name is Celeste Amadon

I'm the co founder and CEO of known

where we're building intelligence for human connection

and you are watching founders in motion

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okay let's get back to the video

Celeste thank you so much for joining us

so you're the youngest of nine kids

you left home at 13 for boarding school on the East Coast

that's quite a lot of independence at a very early age

what did that version of you

think that she was going to do with her life

I've always been very passionate about social impact

and in search of ways to create social impact at scale

so there's a reason that I started my working life working in politics

I was a Senate intern I was a Senate page um

and was a congressional intern as well

I would have been surprised if you told me I started a tech company

but if you told me it was one that was aiming to try and create

large scale uh

social good then I think it would make a lot more sense to me

so I think little me would have thought that I was going

trying to start a career in politics

I often tell people that

you will never catch me being a serial entrepreneur

uh if none doesn't work

I will not be standing at a whiteboard

brainstorming 7 different ideas for potential companies I could start

and doing market research

to find out

which one of them is the most likely to be a breakout company

uh I don't think that's a correct way of doing entrepreneurship

and more than that I think known is a outlier for me

and things that would be interesting within tech

um and it's because of the mission other than the social impact site

you've always been very curious about human connection

and where do you think that kind of manifest

but I grew up in a family with nine children

uh it was a blended family

so my father had been divorced before marrying my mom

and my parents were also divorced when I was quite young

so I think I've always been in the midst of complex

familial dynamics and human dynamics

and it's always been something that's been very interesting to me

even human compatibility

trying to understand what makes people actually be positive

long term fits for each other

I've seen you know

my older siblings go through relationships and breakups

and finding their marriage partners

to getting married and having kids

um so I think it's always been something that's been interesting to me

and even in working in politics

so much of what you do is trying to understand

how you can convince other people to change their minds

or be more open minded in campaigning

you do a lot of trying to understand what will resonate with people

um

and that's a huge part of what we do at known is trying to figure out

how do we get people interested in trying this

once they do try it

how do we convince them that the person we found is worthy of them

meeting yeah

so you mentioned a lot about your background in politics um

and campaigning and always being in that space

what do you think about your experience working in politics

have really

shaped the way that you are thinking about building human connections

now

well I think that dating is an inherently political problem

um that's a hot take

I think it is a hot take I think we

we missed loneliness epidemic

headline coming across every news channel

and I think it's easy to imagine that the loneliness epidemic is

affecting someone else

there's some lonelier person than you out there that needs saving

and in reality

what the loneliness epidemic is really describing is that all people

you and I included are spending 30%

less of our lifetime with other people than our parents did

and for social people

that can be as much as 10+ hours a week of your life

that if you lived 20 years ago

you would be spending with friends

um yeah

and all conveniences that we've created

whether it's online shopping or food delivery or streaming services

they make our lives easier

but they also have created a more solitary society

especially in the US so Americans are now shopping alone

eating alone unwinding alone

watching movies alone living alone

all of those things would be very uncommon

20 years ago and yeah

the dating and the loneliness epidemic are very political problems

um as an angle that we talk a lot about and know is

how can we create not just better dates

but a more cohesive society

yeah I love that

I think the loneliness epidemic is probably one of the

biggest issues in the next um

in the next century and inherently becomes a societal issue

and not just a individual type of experience

so we've spoke a little bit about politics

but now I wanna talk a bit more about your time

kind of working in early stage investing

so after boarding school you had Stanford

the JP Morgan offer the pre seed invest experience

you were sitting across from founders

deciding whether their ideas were worth funding

or the founders were worth backing

now kind of you're the one asking for that conviction

or I've already asked for that conviction

does having live 0 sides give you an edge

or does it actually make you too aware of how you're being judged

no I think it definitely gives you an edge

um

yeah I mean

we raised our pre seed I think it was in eight days

and we were I mean

it's very very grateful

we were pre product for consumer data

um and we raised our seed round in four days

and had more than a dozen term sheets

and I think a lot of that comes from understanding

what investors want to see

how to communicate with them effectively

um investors don't want to waste your time

or have their time wasted either

um as I can

cutting through the noise

and finding people that are likely to want to back your company

explaining to them why you think that that is true

and figuring out if they're not interested quickly

is the key to effective fundraising

and I think that seeing that from the investor side

and knowing kind of what how to decipher what

what you see as signal from the

in from the founder side has been really helpful

I think there is definitely such an art towards fundraising

that people don't really talk about

um and a lot of it is that kind of building momentum

figuring out who's interested

who to focus your time on um

and optimizing almost like a campaign

so you definitely have a lot of experience in the space

so since you've mentioned fundraising

I um

on all the business side of things

so forerunner is kind of a leading consumer

USB C had never really invested in dating

you kind of walked in at 21 and changed their mind

what did you say and what was the hardest thing that they push back on

well I'm

I'm really grateful for my partners or former

they've been incredibly helpful to us and uh

strong early believers in what we're doing

I think that they were interested in our results driven approach

you know I think usually when people are pitching dating apps to vcs

they're pitching niche dating apps like dating apps for Mormons

dating apps for cat lovers

dating apps for every kink imaginable and known as not a niche product

it's a completely different business model

and so I think they buy the fact that with new technology

it's finally possible to create real outcomes for users

and that people want those outcomes

and they're willing to pay for them

and a consumer at large you know

people will pay for things that either create meaningfully enjoyable

real life experiences so like for example

someone will pay $30 to get into a bar they want to go to

or they'll pay for things that make their lives more convenient

yeah they'll pay an extra $10 to have their Doordash arrive faster

or they'll pay for things that make them feel good about themselves

and unfortunately today's dating apps don't do any of those things

they don't create real outcomes and enjoyable real life experiences

they definitely don't make people feel good about themselves

and they don't make your life more convenient

because they're designed to take 10 hours a week

and still provide you zero result

and so I think that being able to flip the business model

and use cutting edge technology

to create those results was exciting

not just to forerunner but to investors at large

yeah super exciting

so I've never really been on dating apps for maybe like

the last six years and then suddenly in the last few months

I've like found myself on them

I have to say it's

it is like a pill merch of like people to go through

and like

that fatigue of just even being on the platform is super real

so what I really love about the known story

your story is that there were no kind of like dramatic moment

no like big decisions

like you and your co founder Asher just got really obsessed

started missing classes

and realized you would miss the Stanford enrollment deadline by weeks

where did the obsession initially come from

hmm

I'm thinking back on it right now

so Asher and I started working on the idea of known

almost a year ago now so probably March of of 2025

um and we were curious

could you basically make an AI version of you harmony

could you onboard users with this very in depth onboarding process

where you would understand enough about them to really service them

um could you if you had that information

what could you do with it

and how could you get rid of the parts of dating apps

that people dislike the most

which turn out to be exactly what you would think they are

it's swiping it's chatting

it's being ghosted it's having too many options or too few

so it's market dynamics um

and when we realized that if you had the type of data that we now have

it known you could solve many of those problems

in a secure and user aligned way

and that was really enthralling

because we understood

from doing so much research on the current market

that today's dating apps have been designed and tweaked

and redesigned and redeployed to

keep you single and it's quite it's

it's surprising

but it also is when you when you really start to think about it

it makes a lot of sense because they're

perversely incentivized to try and keep people on the apps for longer

to lengthen their attention curve uh

and to try and keep people hopeful enough

but also unsatisfied

so that they're more likely to upgrade to being paying users

because only 5% of people on dating apps pay

they can't make enough money yeah

for sure so

so yeah I think this is a great segue for me to ask you

if someone is moving over from a hinge and a tinder to known

what should they expect

they should expect a lot less volume uh

but more precision so unknown

we'll find you one person and hopefully you like them

but if you don't we can't just replace them right away

because we do such in depth onboarding

that maybe there's only 10 people in the entire city

that are applicable for you

and compatible with you and so once you say no to the first option

we have to go out and find another one

one of the things I hear about

some of our competitors is that you can essentially swipe

via chat like you can say no no

I don't want to meet him no

I don't want to meet him and I'll continue to feed you new people

that still creates the same market dynamics that create um

choice paradox on dating apps

and so unknown if you say no

we might not find you another person for a week

it could be two weeks

and we can't guarantee to you when we will find you another person

because

there's not an endless supply of people that are just right for you

yeah yeah

and I think that kind of discretion is really important

cause choice is such a big thing

if you always know that there's gonna be choice on the horizon

you will always keep swiping or moving to the next person

so you mentioned that the onboarding is so in depth

that you understand a person fully

so could you give me a glimpse in terms of like

the questions you would ask someone on this onboarding flow

yeah I think it starts the first question that we ask is

it's usually something along the lines of

hi Celeste you joined known because swiping just isn't cutting anymore

so we're gonna do this differently um

I'd love to hear where you grew up

and how you ended up living in San Francisco

so essentially

asking you to tell it about the first chapter of your life

and from there we ask follow up questions um

about your childhood and maybe where you went to college if you did go

um and then we

we ask about your career

we ask about how your friends would describe you

we ask about what you do in your spare time

you try to understand whether you're an introvert or an extrovert um

whether you work to live or live to work

so there's a variety of questions I'd implore anyone uh

watching this is curious to try it and tell me what they think um

I don't think that the questions are fully the secret sauce

like I think we do a great job of

of understanding users at onboarding

but it's also what we learn about you over time

from continuous conversation yeah

and something you said that I found super interesting is

I think you mentioned at one point that doing it through voice

you can learn a lot about who they are as a person

what they value using their voice and tone

could you talk to me a bit more about that

yeah so we are completely compliant with all biometric data laws

but we are able to try and use some uh

inference into people's speech patterns to understand

not just what they're saying

but how they're saying it

because when you meet someone for the first time

you're not just assessing the transcript of what they're saying to you

you're listening to how they speak and judging

found no humble or boastful

are they sincere or insincere

are they kind or they kind of conniving

and so with known

part of what we can do is also understand personality from

the way that people talk

in a similar way that people assess other people in your life

yeah I think that's super exciting

and definitely a part that

a lot of the current

products in the market don't really get a read on that

and I do think like

you can tell a lot by a person by the way that they deliver a story

not just by the actual content of the story

um so I wanna go back to like

so you had this whole like dropping out of Stanford moment

talk to me about that how did that feel

um was it out of left field

any initial regrets

I'm on a leave of absence from Stanford

um

and it was something that I

I did because I really wanted to build the product

and I knew that the time to build it was now

not in three months or six months

Asher and I are both pretty risk positive people

so we took time off or dropped out when you call it

before we raised a dime or had even really a single user

because we knew that there was a meaningful product to be built

and we you know

canceled our jobs that we had lined up

and really burned the ships in some ways

but it was never that dramatic

I think in some ways actually

building a company

when you still have the option to go back to school

if it doesn't work is probably less risky

yeah and I love that um

I and I

I love that framing you're a very risk positive person

um and that's true

I think taking risk is actually a very positive thing

and one of the notion I really hate is

people thinking that they have to raise a certain amount of money

in order to do something but no

like your first believer should be you in your own idea

and like your own ability to execute

if you don't believe

it's like hard to get someone else to believe in you

and okay so um

you mentioned Asher so I think you guys have such a

a beautiful dynamic so tell me about your co founder Asher

he's an amazing product person

him and I have been friends since we were 18 um

so almost like five years now um

I met him right before we both wanted to Stanford together

we worked together um

on a variety of kind of side projects

but also taking classes together and traveled

you know for spring breaks

but also you know

I traveled with his family

so very tight knit um

I think we have a one of one founder

co founder dynamic because we're such close friends at this point

we have a friend group together

we live together we have a dog together

we have a company together

so in a lot of ways

he is my life partner and I'm lucky that we are very in sync

we think about the world and usually

probably 99.9% of the time think the same thing

which means I can trust him to act on my behalf

and he can trust me to act on his

because we see things very uh similarly

yeah and that trust is so important

because sometimes the co founder dynamic lasts honestly

longer than most marriages these days

so I would so one point that you mentioned

I thought was pretty interesting is you saying that like

you're very similar and you agree on kind of 99% of most things

so do you ever find that like maybe that's not a super positive signal

or do you really enjoy that

hmm I can see where you're going with that

I think like it's always valuable to have people have other opinions

and have healthy debate

Asher and I have different opinions about the design of you

this model versus that one or

you know should we order like this food for lunch versus that

I'm not saying that we agree on everything

and I think that we

are able to use the fact that if we have differences

it usually means that we'll end up meeting somewhere in the middle

I'm warming that generally speaking

him and I agree on the type of company we wanna run

and the type of team we want to have

and the type of product we want to build

and what is the end goal and what is the end mission

that is all completely aligned

so the small stuff that's beneficial to have multiple ideas

but different ideas doesn't mean disagreement

I I think that's very true right

like I think the overall alignment needs to be very clear

but like the small nitty gritty things like it's great to have like a

a healthy debate and to things out

and you never know what you don't know right

so like who knows

like maybe you both could be wrong or both could be super right

um so you guys are very close

so here's what I keep thinking about

you're building a product

about what it means to be truly known by another person

and your co founder is someone that you've known for years

and trust completely and aren't dating

like does that fond like shape how you feel

I think what it does do is

it shapes the way that Asher and I think about teams

so because Asher and I have such a compatible relationship

and we are so in sync with each other

like there is no tension or disrespect between him and I ever

and I think that

that modeling of behavior stemming from the founders on our team

goes pretty broadly about

the way that we want to interact with each other as a team

what it means to have this agreement

how you handle that

and it's created kind of a haven of positivity and amicable

like co working that I think really benefits the company

yeah yeah

I I find that some of the best teams I know

their co founders are absolutely best friends

and also like first few employees

they're all like one big cult

so you've had a very iconic kind of morning

walk on the Marina with your investor

can you tell me

you bring me back to this SF Bay Marina moment and what happened

so yeah I was walking along the Marina Green with a potential investor

while I was fundraising and I had someone stop me first and go

oh my God I see you all over TikTok

um and we keep walking and like 10 minutes later

a woman stops me and grabs me by the wrist and goes

you don't know me

but I know you because you set me up with my boyfriend

and I've been single in San Francisco for seven years

and I was bewildered but obviously very excited

anytime I find out that people are dating from known it makes my day

um but the investor we as we walked off from from this woman he went

you paying them

and I no but that's a great idea and I should really start doing that

when you're creating a positive impact on people's life

like they want to say thank you

um and

and that's so beautiful so how when you got

got start to

get started on building known and like building this database of like

people to mass to match with each other

like how did you get things started

like was it AI at the beginning

or was it just kind of like you hammering the phone

playing like real life matchmaker

the matching

early on we would have AI do it but it didn't do a good enough job

so we would go in and we would look at

we'd try and rearrange the matches to make them better

or veto matches that we didn't think were good enough

we don't have to do that anymore

thank god um

but yeah we got our original users mostly from like TikTok

like I would make silly TikToks that wouldn't even do that well

it would like 3,000 views and SF

but then we would get 800 people signed up

which was the first signal to me that what we're building

people really want you know

it's not rocket science in hindsight

like the idea of being able to serve someone a date

with someone they would want to go on a date with

on a platter does have PMF

like it's a PMF result right

but more can you actually do the engineering work

that gets you to being able to provide that to people

this is super funny that you mentioned

cause I was trying to like match

make founders together a while back um

and I also tossed it over to AI and it does a horrible job at it

so it's really interesting that you mentioned that

like the kind of intake part you were able to do very early on

but the matching part had a little bit of um

human in the requirements at the beginning yeah

and so

so you've seen so many people go through the platform at this point

like how many people are unknown

and like how many matches have you set up

so we don't share those numbers publicly

but we I can say that we have set up in our beta

I think it was like around 1,500 dates

and we know of a couple hundred couples that are dating

currently from those states

which is really exciting

that was back in the late summer and early fall of 2025

and then we just launched in San Francisco

as I said we're not sharing numbers from that yet

but it's going better than our beta did

when it comes to user acquisitions

I'm really excited about it

uh and we're gonna hopefully be launching dates next week

so once that starts happening

I'm considering doing like a build in public

publish the number of dates that happen every week on Act one thing

but I also

I don't want to have people feel like we're being invasive at all

so we'll see to make a decision on that yeah

so you talk about loneliness

the loneliness epidemic like super fluently like the stats

the structural argument everyone eating alone

scrolling alone but do you ever feel it yourself

I am very rarely alone right now um

given that I work seven days a week in office with my team

and we work a lot so I hope that I feel the type the

the type of loneliness that I think most people are facing in the US

but I can say that being a founder and having a lot of stress

and working a ton can feel lonely

even if you are not alone

I'm really grateful that Asher and I started this company together

because I think without him

I would feel lonely

but I have an amazing team and we get along really well

and everyone's in in some ways

friends and family so I

I think that's made it a lot easier

yeah yeah

I think something you mentioned like

like being a founder

you could feel lonely even though you're in a room full of people

I think that sentiment resonates a lot across the board

um and it

it's something kind of like a founder's curse almost

when you think about known in the next year

what are you really excited about

I hope that we have a million users and we set up

you know a million couples

that's that's what I hope to have happen

um maybe even more than that

one of the

interesting things about consumers is that you can grow really

really quickly at the builder technology in a way that it can sustain

uh high concurrency and

and usage and we're investing in that heavily at known

and I'm excited to see people outside of San Francisco using it

because it's already working in SF

and I can imagine

the amount of good that we can bring to other cities

and it's just it's

it's a very meaningful product to be working on

yeah I love that

well thank you so much for coming on

like I really appreciate your time

and I love learning more about love and human connections

and human intelligence

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