$16M Net ARR In Just Two Years (Maxime Barbier, Timeleft)

But just 2 years ago you were three people in the team. We have Timeleft in one city, and we are doing 10k revenue per month. Two years later, today, we are like 100 employees, 260 cities, 50 countries. We are now at 2.6 million net revenue this year.

So yeah, everything changed pretty, pretty quickly in the last 2 years. We scaled the business from 0 to 30,000 people on Wednesday, close the club at night. And so now we're opening Tuesday for women only, we have Thursday we do drinks in bars, we have Friday we do dinners.

We expand to give more things to do to the people within the same subscription.

So I have a small compassion. I—

Max, welcome to the podcast show. Great to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

Timeleft has been on the world ride. I keep seeing it on social media, so super cool what you're doing, and can't wait to dive into more what's happening.

Yes. My pleasure.

I know something you think a lot about is this whole kind of loneliness epidemic. One in four of us are now feeling lonely, and it's a massive problem. So we'd love to begin today's episode by hearing more about the Timeleft story and why the name Timeleft.

So Timeleft came from the first idea we had in 2020. So Timeleft is almost 5 years into the process. The first 3 years we didn't succeed on anything. It was a really long journey. We didn't make a single euros.

We tried Timeleft at the beginning was, it was a concept who basically you swipe dreams and I match you with people who get the same dreams as you. And so the name come from there. What do you want to do with the time you got left?

You know, go and chase your dreams and use the time you got left. So that was the first idea. Didn't succeed at all because dream are usually dreams and people dream about it, but they don't really want to do it.

And then we pivot after 1 year to try to connect not people with dreams, but people with something to do. So it was an app. You choose the strangers and you choose something to do and you send an invitation to someone to do something.

But the second learning was, if you put the man and the woman together, the man will try to date the woman. So he feel he look like a dating app and I don't want to be a dating app.

And so after 1 years, we switch. We said, okay, let's connect a group of people to do something together in the city. And it was hard to find something people want to do in the same time or know what to do.

And so 2 years ago, we came up with this idea who is the thing you saw online and on Instagram is to connect a group of 6 people who don't know each other into restaurants. It used to be every Wednesday and now it's in different days of the week.

I close the club.

So is it now on Wednesdays and Fridays,right?

Yeah. So beginning we start with Wednesday because Wednesday is not too soon in the week, it's not too late in the week. And for the restaurant also, it was a great day for to make sure we can have tables.

We scaled the business from 0 to 30,000 people on Wednesday, close the club at night. And so now we're opening Tuesday for women only. We have Thursday, we do drinks in bars. We have Friday, we do dinners. Yeah, we expand to give more things to do to the people within the same subscription.

So I have a small confession. I attended my first Timeleft dinner last Friday and I loved it.

Let's go. Cool.

I loved it. And for those who haven't tried Timeleft yet, it's a pretty cool concept. I mean, and it's pretty basic as well,right? You fill out this personality test before you attend the dinner, which I think was really cool.

And eventually, like when you go to a dinner,right, you know, it takes a little while for the conversation to get going. But actually, the people there were really cool. I was the only guy. There were three other people there.

And it's just a really cool concept.

Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

So 30,000 people are now coming to the dinners. But like all founding stories,right, it has to start from somewhere. So back when you were kind of like hacking away, how did you get those first people to the dinner and, you know, those first early users, where did they come from?

Yeah. So as I said, the first 3 years, we tried a lot of different things. So along the way, we acquired like a really small community. I think at the time, we have maybe 5,000 followers on Instagram. I knew a couple of people in Lisbon where I used to live at the time.

And so when we start this new idea, we have enough to try. Let's say, you know, we have enough traction to try at least what it is. But just, I think the beauty of Timeleft is super simple. Everyone knows how to do it, but also it's work with 6 people.

So on the first dinner on the 3 of May in 2023, we have only like 24 people who take a ticket. So we start the experience with 24 people. So it was 4 table of 6. I was in one table, my co-founder was in another table, and we really enjoyed the experience.

And I say that many, many times. Like when you start to, at the beginning, when you launch an idea, everything is really hard and everything is complicated. But then as soon as you find something that makes sense, everything becomes easier.

And so the people who came on the first dinner wanted to come on the second one to talk about it. And so we went from 24 people to 35 people the next week, then 50, then 70. And the thing just keep, just keep growing.

And then we start to do ads and everything. But we start with a really, really small number of people. And I think it's the beauty of the concept is that you can launch it with a really few people.

I mean, back then,right, when you just have 30, 50, 100 people, organizing it is quite straightforward. But now when you're doing 50, you know, 30 to 50,000 dinners, people coming to a dinner, the operations must be a bit of a headache.

So how does it actually work on the back end with you guys?

Yeah. So most of the people and what you can see on Timeleft is it looks easy and that'sright. Like, you know, you go into the app, you do a personality test and you book your seat. Then I send you an address of the restaurant and you show up and that's it.

Voilà. You know, it's magical on the user side. Yes, it's super simple. But what's happening on the back office is way more complicated. So to give you an idea, we are Wednesday actually now today and we are 30,000 people who are going to have dinners in 2,500 restaurants in the same night, simultaneously in the world in 260 cities.

So then when started, then things start to become complicated. And so since 2 years, we really invest in our back office. So we have our own platform to manage all this kind of thing. So there is a heavy, there is a heaviness into the upside to do business like Timeleft.

So you're manually doing this with all the restaurants. Is it the same restaurant every week in the same location or you mix it up? Or you have like a group of the same restaurants,right? Which you kind of pick and choose?

Yeah. So at the end of the experience, people can tell us if they like the restaurant, you know, like did they like the food and everything. So we have a scoring of each restaurant we work with and we try to get the best restaurant for our people and for our users.

So we select people based on a lot of criteria and we have people all around the world who help us to find the restaurant. Then we book the restaurant and then we send the people. And after the first dinners, we can see if the restaurant is going to be good for us.

And if it's good, then of course we call the restaurant and say, you know what, can you give me two table for the next 3 months? Usually restaurants say yes.

That's awesome. I mean, what I loved about the whole concept was it was so straightforward. But it's just like going out for dinner with friends. You turn up, you have a good conversation, you split the bill at the end.

Split the bill at the end and there's an afterparty,right? So on top of the dinner, if there are other dinners happening in the same location, you can all go to the afterparty and meet all the other, like Timelefters,right?

Like I call them that, happening at the same time. That's pretty neat.

Yeah. So at the beginning, it was only dinners and then we realized people wanted to have something more after the dinners. And so that's why we create this called The Last Drink, where we set up a bar location.

So every people who have dinners together can just join for a last drink. Also, just for people who don't know Timeleft, so I give you an example. So tonight we have more than 1,000 person in Paris only. And so it's going to be, we put usually like one, two, or three table of 6.

So all the experience is, you know, across a lot of restaurants in the same night. And so let's say in Paris we have maybe 70 restaurants who are going to receive people from Timeleft. And then you have the left side of Paris and theright side of Paris and we have a bar in each of the locations.

And so all the people who are in the, let's say, south of Paris, they go in the same bars and they have a drinks. And I think it's a cool moment because, you know, let's say you meet, we met you and me, I don't know, 3 weeks ago and then you have a dinner with someone else and I have dinner with someone else.

But then you go to the drinks, I go and say, Ollie, yeah, how are you, man? And, you know, and we have this second connection together because what we really know now is like, you don't have any, you can't build anything great with only one dinner.

You need more than one dinner. Friendship, love, business partner, whatever you name it, it's more than one time. You know, you need more than one time with someone. So that's what we try to do with Timeleft now is to help people to go from one time together to 10 times together.

I was going to say like a bunch of friends and I have spoken about like a similar concept before and we're like, oh, let's just go try it out and see what happens. I said, I keep, we keep seeing on social media, it's a list, like, just going to try it out,right?

But then we were thinking, oh, actually, like, how many people actually go to second, third, fourth dinners? But the more people I keep speaking to, actually, they do keep going. So the churn, I guess, is quite, quite low or is it quite high from what you anticipate?

No, no, we have a lot of people who go like every month because I think the big difference maybe with the dating apps and Timeleft is you don't really know what to expect and so you're pretty open about what's going to go.

And then I love, I'm going to quote some people say most of the time say, you know, even if we don't really vibe with the people anyway, we just have a good time, we just go out, we try a new restaurant.

So

the threshold for the experience is pretty high on Timeleft. Like if you go on the date and you have a bad date, then it's a bad moment. You just say, oh, I just, you know, I ruined my night.

Like what's a waste of time? But with Timeleft, I don't know, you can meet someone, you can just vibe with someone, you can try new restaurants, you just enjoy a moment with people. And you know, I did a lot of dinners myself incognito and I just realized something is there is more people than we think who just really need just to be outside and just smile and talk and just be there and be seen, you know, with people.

There are some people who go from Monday to Sunday almost without talking to anyone in real life. That's pretty sad.

I'll give you an example, actually. The dinner I attended, one of the members attending, she just broken up with her boyfriend, like coming on the way to that dinner. So she wasn't like, you know, in the best frame of mind.

The other person who attended was a creator. She was like comforting her and it's just like that completely opened my mind up and like this is why Timeleft is so cool and why it's needed. It really like brings people together, you know?

Yeah. And talking to people, like we talk about loneliness. Loneliness is the consequences of a bigger problem. It's the fact we don't really have, you know, moments in life when we can just go and hang out with people.

And talking with other people, it's a medicine. It can help you for depression. It can help you to see the world differently. It can help you to go through bad days. And I think there's also a beauty of talking with strangers.

Like I think you talk, you can talk more openly and more freely when it's strangers than when it's your friend. You know, I don't know, I give the example all the time is let's say you and me, we're a friend and you know my wife, let's say, and I have a really hard time with my wife and you're a friend with my wife.

Maybe I will don't want to talk with you about my wife problem,right? And maybe I don't want to, I don't know, whatever. But then with strangers, that's completely different stories. And you say, you know what, I'm going to share this with you because anyway, I don't know you.

I don't know if I'm going to see you again. I have a hard time with my wife. It's really complicated at home. What do you think? And it's really cool to be able to express this, you know, in a nice setup.

It's crazy. And I think especially since COVID,right, so many of us are feeling lonely. People are drinking less, people are going out less. Why do you think this is happening? And I think especially if you're younger people,right? Like my peer group, all in our kind of late 20s, we don't go out as much anymore.

We don't drink as much anymore. It's just not the same as it used to be.

Yeah, it's not the same because technology makes us really isolated. So we talk a lot about social media, dating apps, but there are so many, so many things who make us isolated. So, you know, before maybe you go out to grab some food or to go to the restaurant, now you make deliveries directly to your door and you don't see anyone.

Before you queue in the cinema to see a movie with your friends, now you just watch Netflix. So yes, the technology makes a lot of things way more convenient, but I think the trade-off is we are losing a bit of our humidity, the humanity.

And so it's all this new trend, it's all new technology who makes us more isolated by design. And then I think now we start to suffer from this big time and we try to realize we need to do something about it.

And the irony of the thing is I think we will need technology to help us to be connected again.

I mean, you guys are doing a great job and if you haven't seen Timeleft yet on your social media, maybe, you know, you've got more work to do, but you guys are heavily spending,right, on social. Is that how you're acquiring your usersright now?

A big part of our strategy is performance marketing. So we have a big team in doing this. But also we are in 52 countries. And so that's why we spend a lot because we have a lot of countries to touch.

40% of our business in the US now. So most of the advertising goes to the US. But yeah, we are doing, we are doing, we're spending a lot like globally, but if you look country by country, that's not that much.

When founders are starting consumer tech companies, sometimes they're almost afraid to spend those ad dollars,right? Are you just trying to acquire as many users as you can? Are you trying to make a return on investment as quickly as possible?

No. I'm going to quote my VC on this. He teaches me a concept of empty calories. And he said, like, if you grow for the sake of growing, but then all the people you just acquire that churn and then you use empty buckets.

It's just like you can pull as much water as you want, but if at the bottom of the bucket, there is a hole and the same amount of water goes out when you pull in, then it's just an endless thing.

And then when you have cash, that's okay. You can keep going, but at one point you're going to be out of cash. And so no, no, no. We are like really profitable into our acquisition and we want to keep it that way because acquiring, like if you spend, I don't know, one user's shows to have one user's show of our revenue, then okay, but then what's the point?

You know, like we tend to forget, especially in the startup world, but you know, a great business is when you make more money than you spend,right?

Exactly. It kind of reminds me of the meetup.com story. These guys launched ages ago. Their tech has pretty much stayed the same, but you know, I think they, at the peak, they reached $30 million in annual kind of revenue or something.

And again, it's a pretty similar concept. They just provide the infrastructure to meetup organizers. And you guys are pretty much replicating it,right? What were some of those early day challenges? I mean, you know, where you guys were a few years ago to where you are today is obviously very different.

How have you seen the company evolve over the last few years?

To be honest, the last two years are insane. Two years ago, just two years ago, it was three people in the team. We have Timeleft in one city and we are doing 10K of revenue per month. Two years later, today, we are like 100 employees, 260 cities in 50 countries.

We are on our way to do 16 million net revenue this year. So yeah, everything changed pretty, pretty quickly in the last two years. To be honest, we hire like, you know, one people every week since two years.

So yeah, it's going really fast, to be honest. And it's changing a lot. So yeah.

That's insane. $16 million annual net revenue. That's insane.

I saw a growth chart when you guys were first launching. I think it took you seven months to get to a million dollars in annual kind of revenue and then $10 million, another seven months,right? So one million to 10.

Let's not forget it takes us three years to make one euro. So, you know, like, it's really cool. Like, now on LinkedIn, we see all these people, you know, showing the graph and like, oh, we go from this to this to this.

Yes, but just for people who listen to us, like, we struggled for three years. So it's not an overnight success. The graph is like zero euros for three years. Then yes, we scaled from zero to 16 million run rate in 16 months.

So yes, it was pretty stiff curve for sure, but we struggled a lot before. So let's not forget this one.

I think all founders can relate. Like, especially like you said, like all of these AI companies now claiming they've done this in 12 months. Let's be honest, like I think a lot of them have been buildingright for the last few years, but I mean, that's insane.

How do you decide which country to launch into next? I mean, you're building to all these cities. Do you have like a waitlist system or how does that work?

So the true story about this is when we launched Lisbon and Paris, so Lisbon is where I used to live and Paris is my hometown. So we choose these two cities first. And in January last year, so, you know, 18 months ago or 16 months ago, whatever, we have only these two cities and we're making 10K a month of revenue.

But to do 10K, I think we were spending 5K. So, okay, 5K of profit per month. We're not going to go anywhere. It's even not enough to pay myself and the three people in the team. And so I said, okay, we have a bit of money in the bank, but I was like, okay, if I take how much money we lose per month, how much money I have in the bank, in six months we're going to be dead.

I was like, hmm, that's not good. And so I said, okay, you know what? Let's try to see if we can open Timeleft in Barcelona. And we did some ads in Barcelona and it was, okay, interesting start. And I said, now we do ads in Spanish, so let's do Madrid.

And also, you know, good start. And I was like, okay, interesting. Let's do London. Boom, explore like 300 tickets sold. I was like, okay, let's do São Paulo. Working really well. I was like, okay, so what's the limit then?

And then we don't have any limit. And so from the end of January to, I think, the end of December last year, we open a city every day. So we just said, let's try this. So I was taking ChatGPT.

I was like, give me the top 30 countries. Give me the top 10 cities in each country. And I have a list. And we are like doing ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, tickets sold, tickets sold, membership, blah, blah, blah, just booking restaurants, building the thing along the way.

So it was, it was not really structured, to be honest. It was more like a, like a fireball.

That's insane. It's insane. So how many cities are you in now? Again?

We closed some small cities, but we are in 250 cities now. Every single Wednesday. Yeah.

That's insane. When I think about like the experience I went on, it's almost there's what then comes next,right? And especially how do you meet more people, like how to the five people attended, you know, is it, can you start doing like adventures together, like on weekends?

Is it trips away? You mentioned like about the drinks afterwards. What kind of experiences are you starting to think about what comes after dinners?

So to do another dinners. So we have a feature called repeat. At the end of the dinner, you can say who you like. And then if this person likes you back, then you have a match. Imagine like it's kind of an in-real-life social network.

You know, you only connect with the people you spend at least two hours having a dinner. This feature is working really well. A lot of people use it to, you reinvite the people and go to a second dinner than a third dinner.

Now we have in Paris and Madrid only, but it's going to be globally soon. We have the drinks on Thursday. So instead of going to the restaurant, you can go to a bar and just have a beer. It's more affordable.

And this week in Paris, we're launching the running. So on Saturday morning, you're going to be able to run with six strangers. Same concept, but for running, you know, choose where you want to run, how quick and how far you want to run, and we're going to find five people for you to just hang out with you and have a nice run.

And then at the end, you finish in a coffee shop. So the goal is to try to add more things to do into the app so people can keep using Timeleft to repeat, you know, and see themselves again.

But, you know, life is life. And so we know a lot of people, you know, they exchange WhatsApp, they try to go to weekend to do this and that. And we are pretty okay with it because friendship is hard.

Friendship takes a lot of time. You're not going to, it's not because we exchange WhatsApp now, you know, we need to meet again. We need to decide who like, are you like someone who provides ideas to meet or is it me?

Like, do you want to go see a football game? I don't like footballs. Are you available on Tuesday? No, I'm available on Friday. Okay, let's catch up later. And boom, you know, the things go down. So it's like dating in a sense.

Like dating is hard and I think making friends is even harder.

I think that's really cool that the running club meeting for drinks and cause that, that'd be super cool. And I also think like maybe some things around, you know, bringing a friend to a dinner to like even out, not the awkwardness, but if someone's not very like comfortable going alone, how do they bring friends along?

Maybe like if you start to do more dinners with more people, maybe it's like you place people where to sit. So they do the personality test,right? So you have that data on like what types of people.

Yeah. We have this new feature now in some cities. It's gone bring a plus one. So you can literally come with your friend or with your wife or you can, she has to do the personality test, but she's going to be seated at your own table.

And so this feature is really cool. A lot of people use it to not come alone because if you never try Timeleft and you listen to this podcast, you're going to say, oh, I don't know if I can do it, go with five strangers, but

it looks more scary than it is. And if I give you a piece of advice and I did 67 dinners myself, it's like everyone is a bit stressed at the beginning. It's always a bit awkward at the beginning.

And that's okay. That's normal because, you know, you know, it's strangers,right? But then trust me, after like 30 minutes, one glass of wine and one appetizer, like everyone is just like super chill.

Yeah, that's what happened with us. I mean, it probably didn't even take that long, maybe five, ten minutes. And, you know, everyone's like having a great time, talking about like what we will do. This is a really random thought, but what I found quite cool is the restaurant knows there's a Timeleft dinner happening.

So it's like the waiter or like the person to help you, if they can like get your name and they go up to the table and like introduce yourself or introduce you, that'd be pretty cool. That'd be quite interesting.

Yeah, yeah, we work with the restaurant, but the restaurant is a, it's a, it's our, it's our partner in a sense, but it's really, it's really hard to work with them in the sense of, you know, the waiters are, there is a big turnover into waiters.

Like you can talk to the managers and he's going to say, yes, yes, we're going to do this, but if I get to pass information to the staff and the, you know, it's not really easy to do, to be honest.

Is there, what I think about it, is there not another revenue stream here where you can take a commission from the restaurant?

Yes, we can. So for now, we don't at all. We try, we did some attempt last year in Spain, in France, and yes, restaurants are okay to pay us because we bring, you know, we bring people and we bring money.

But again, it was really hard to find something easy to do with the restaurant. And so we said, you know what, let's postpone that in 2016, maybe 2000, I don't know, 16, 26, 27, maybe we're going to find a way to add a B2B revenue stream from the restaurant.

But for now, we prefer to be a good friend with them. And there is a big difference. Like, let's say we literally, we manage close to 3,000 restaurants in a single night. So imagine if we have to sell them something.

No, it's more easy. Hey, you know what? Do you have two tables of six? Great. Let's go. And it's a different topic. If I call them, oh, you have two tables of six, cool. But, you know, we have a commission base and blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, kind of, no, forget it.

It's just crazy. You guys launched a couple of years ago. It's getting $16 million net annual kind of revenue. Where do you guys go next?

Hobs, there are so many things to do, man. So first,

the market, so we created a market called the in-real-life tech space when now we see more and more startups trying to do the same as we do is mean using technology to bring people in real life because it's not just a pandemic, it's a thing.

Like people really need in-real-life connection. And so the market is getting beat up every day. And so we have a lot of things to do. For now, we're really focusing on the restaurant and on the bar, so eating and drinking, because we believe most of the time you meet people is around drink and eat.

Yes, you can do dancing and whatever, but most of the time it's around food and drink. So we really want to keep going on this space. We have a lot of cool things coming into the app. And the goal, yeah, is to make this app not just something you use once, but to make, to make like an app you use all the time.

Every time you want to socialize with people, we want to be able to provide you in one click, you know, five people tonight to do something. So for now, as a man in Paris, you can do Wednesday and Friday and Thursday, and women can do Tuesday.

But I would love for, you know, on Monday, you want to meet people tonight because you feel lonely or I don't know, you want to see your own friends and you struggle to see them. I would love Timeleft to be there for you and try to do this, to make this happen for you.

Super cool. Well, we can't wait to see where Timeleft goes next. But now coming on to the second part of the podcast where we love to find out, you know, what our guests are thinking about in terms of tech trends.

And the idea is what are the two to three tech trends you're most excited about and the types of businesses which could be created from those. So for the three trends we're going to focus on today is tech is the new frontier, friendship is the new dating, and the fall of dating apps.

So let's start with the first one. Tech is the new social frontier. What are you thinking here?

It's just, it's what I said at the beginning is like, we live in the world now like when we need to use technology, make us isolated and we will have to keep using technology to make us less isolated.

And it's a really interesting thing happening now is like, like we are thinking how to use technology to bring people in real life. And it's really interesting because we are competing inside the technology because most of the technology makes us more isolated.

And so it's really schizophrenia between like, do, how do we put people offline with technology, knowing it's technology who make us isolated in the first place? And I think we are seeing more and more like people get drived by technology, you know, like Google Apps tell you where to go and Google tell you what to read and ChatGPT tell you what to think.

And so we can really see a new trend of people rely so much on technology to do everything now. If we will have to create technology who are going to teach people and take people by the hand to, you know, hey, Ollie, I think it's time today you go out of your home and I think it's time for you to see someone.

And okay, I don't know how to do it. I got you, you know, you know, do on Timeleft, do on this, do on that. And so, yeah, I didn't, I didn't think 10 years ago people believed, even before, you know, before COVID, but even 10 years ago, I don't think people will trust us if we say, you know what, in 2025, 2030, we will not know how to hang out anymore together and we will need to rely on technology to do it.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy, like just how

fast technology is moving, but also like the rebirth of these in-person type of companies,right? There's this company called Hyrox. Have you heard of it?

Yes, I did. I did it in the spot. Yeah, I did the Hyrox Pro in Paris and it was insane. It was really great. Really great.

Yeah, this is like one pretty interesting company. They launched in 2017. They have 650,000 athletes like competing every year and they do $140 million in revenue. That's crazy.

It's huge. And then every competition is sold out in two hours. That's insane.

Yeah, it's crazy. For listeners who don't know, Hyrox is basically a fitness competition,right? You've done one, so maybe you can say that better.

Yeah, it's, it's, we call it the new CrossFit. So it's more, more, more accessible. So you just run for 1K, you do an exercise, then you run again for 1K and you do that eight times. And so it's a competition in a lot of different cities around the world.

It's the same competition for everyone. It's the same thing. So you can really compete with each other, but it's really accessible. So many non-athletes, I will say, try it for fun and you can do it by two with your, you know, your friend, whatever.

It's really cool. I really recommend to try.

It's pretty cool. So if you would start a company in this new kind of social frontier, if you weren't building Timeleft, what kind of company would you build in this space?

Huh. I'm pretty busy with Timeleft already. I don't know. Like I think fitness is an interesting thing is like we see a big trend of like running club and all this community based around movement and sport because now people try, people understand now more and more like you need to move your body to stay healthy.

And moving is a really interesting way to be and to do something. And so I will try to do not on Hyrox, but I will try to find a way to create something even more accessible than Hyrox. Hyrox is still, you know, you need to run 8K, you need to lift stuff and carry stuff.

So it's pretty, it's accessible, but not for everyone,right? And I would love to do like, like a gym, not a gym, but like, how do you say, like a concept for everyone. And this concept is a really structured concept.

And at the end, it gives you, it sets you on the fitness level of the humanity. And basically, like every people say, oh, I'm fit or no, I don't need to do sports or no, I run once a week or once a month or blah, blah, blah.

No, no, you know what? Come to my facilities, it's one hour training. You have to do things, you know, in orders. And at the end, it gives you like a position of your fitness capability on the world. And then if you're below, like, I don't know, a certain level, then your life expectancy is at risk, for example.

And it's something you can do every year, once a year. It's like going, it's like a fitness checkup, you know, something like that. I will call it fitness checkup. And you go, it's paid by the government or the healthcare, healthcare, then you have to do it, something like that.

It was crazy idea recently.

That'd be pretty cool. And I actually imagine quite a few governments will get behind it. I mean, the decrease of loneliness, diabetes, health issues, and so on. And I actually haven't come across any

companies doing this on a global scale yet.

Yeah, but we have one in Paris and one in London. There's this new super expensive clinic who are into prevention and, you know, it's a prevention medicine. So you go, even if you are cool and healthy and you think you don't have anything, and they do all the blood tests, all the checkups, everything in once.

And you go every year. And then the idea is like they can detect before something is really bad. And so you can try to fix it before. And they do it on the blood test and, you know, medicine checkup,right?

But I think we can do also the same into fitness. There is some study, for example, like if you can't hang yourself with two hands at least one minute, then your life expectancy can be in danger. If you can't sit down on the floor and getting up without using your hand, then your life expectancy is in danger.

There is some, some thing, I don't know, if you can't run, I don't know, one kilometers in less than seven minutes, of course you're maybe obese or overweight, but all this thing combined can also be a good thing to track early age.

That's a cool concept. Maybe after Timeleft, this is a new company. Cool. Okay. The second trend, friendship is the new dating. Are you thinking?

Yes. And so I think we added 15 years of dating, you know, from 2005 to even 2010, 2025, it was, you know, the big trend of dating. Like dating apps explode, making tons of money and everything,right? But now we live in the world of loneliness and now people start to accept and express the fact that they need friends.

Ten years ago, you can't say, I need friends. You can't say, oh, I don't have any friends. You couldn't say that because it was not accepted. And it was like, what do you mean you don't have friends? You don't know how to do friends?

Like I'll use strangers or WhatsApp. It's like, I don't know, 20 years ago, when you say using dating apps, people look, you know, why you're using dating apps? Why? You can't just go and talk to a girl in the street.

What's happening to you, man? And I think now friendship is the new dating and people understand it's okay to ask for friendship. It's okay to look for friendship, but also they understand within the friendship, there is dating in the sense of every date with someone or every person you're going to love.

I can assure you at the beginning, you're going to feel some friendship. You get along, you laugh. So friendship is the beginning of everything. Let's, we meet you and me and we want to do business. We don't have to be the best friend in the planet, but we need to have a little of friendship.

Like if I'm going to make a business with you and spend 40 hours a week in the same office with you, we need to get along,right? And so I think friendship is the base of everything. And then you can decide if you go love, business, more friends, no friends, whatever, but friendship is the new dating.

Yes, I believe so.

What do you think is missing here? Like from my point of view, I think one of the biggest opportunities is there are so many expats moving abroad from their native country. And when they come to a new country, they don't know anyone.

They go to meetups, they go to places like Timeleft. Any cool companies that could be created from this concept, do you think?

I just, yeah, I think now like friendship is more hard than before. And that's why like the new generation is struggling because we spend so much time on our phone. We travel more than before. We work from home.

We are like, we change city often. We are so like moving a lot. Then friendships start to become really hard. I think that's why we are, we need more friendship app. And actually now there is people who claim to be friendship app.

And I did this thing like one year ago, I was looking for friendship app into the app stores and it was really zero result. There is not, it was not, it was not a thing. There is no friendship app.

And all the friendship app who try in the last 10 years, they all fail because I think that was too soon.

Yeah, most of them failed or they became dating apps,right? Oh, you become dating apps. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Okay. Well, the third trend, the fall of dating apps. My favorite topic. Well, before you begin, I found this tag quite interesting.

I was looking at the Bumble share price before we came on. March 2021, the share price was just under $62. Now it's like $6.50. What's happening in the world of dating?

Yeah, 10x the valuation went down. Insane. In two years, one year or three?

Since '21, yeah. Four years.

Dating is dead. Yeah, people are going to say yes, but much groups make a shit ton of money still. Yes, yes, they are making a lot of money because there is an inertia of it, but the dating that it is, is out.

Like this, they went too deep into something who is not good is that giving people the illusion, the illusion of choice. That's what I'm saying all the time. It's like they make you pay for something who is against what you, what should be done.

So they make you pay so you can decide exactly what you want. Oh, I want a girl who is 6'2" and I want her to be fitness and entrepreneur with no dog, don't smoke, it is vegan, it's this and that and that, and I will pay for this.

And you look for it, but then it's a dream,right? And then I give this example sometime. I talk to my friend, single, since five years, and I say, you know what, give me your app, show me your filter.

And I was like, but do you realize like if I take your ex-girlfriend, none of them will match at all your filter? And he say, yeah, but that's what I want. He say, no, no, no, no, no. The dating apps make you believe you know what you want, but actually you don't.

I have another example. Like I was, I'm not in, I'm someone with three years. I'm super happy, super in love, but before that I was in dating apps. And I met a woman in Lisbon and she was beautiful, tall, models, whatever.

And then she, we talk about Bumble and she opened Bumble and I saw she's paying the premium version of Bumble and she's so beautiful. I was like, but why are you paying Bumble? Like you have all the match you want.

And I say, yes, I paid Bumble because I want the guy who is 1.89m minimum. And then I laughed and I said, why did you laugh? I said, because I lie. I'm 1.88, but I put 1.89 because I know it can play a difference.

And I said, but for you, it's okay. But I said, but that's the problem. Let's say we meet in real life. You're not going to put a meter and say, oh, Max, how much do you measure? I'm so sorry.

You went a centimeter too short. I'm really sorry. Sorry, sorry. And so that's, that's kind of the problem. And also with this business model who is not there to make you find love, but to make you addict to dopamine and entertainment and swiping and believing, they create this thing.

I have a friend of mine, he was a girl, they're like, they start super strong, everything was great. And then after one month, he broke up. And I said, why did you break up? He said, I don't know, there is a thing.

And I was like, what thing? He said, I don't know, the thing. I said, tell me what is the thing. And he was like, I don't know. And he couldn't. And then the next day, he goes back to swiping.

And so they make us believe like you need to find the perfect match, but there is no perfect match. I think the perfect relationship is not perfect. It's something you work on and it will be never perfect. It will be always 85, 90% perfect.

And yes, it's going to have sometimes some fights, some arguments, sometimes you're going to be annoyed, sometimes you're going to be pissed off, but that's okay.

It's kind of crazy. And also these dating apps, nothing's really changed. It's all just the swipe left, swiperight,right? And

since they kind of launched, I heard something crazy where you can now send your AI digital twin to these dating apps and they can basically do all the work for you. I'm like, if it really goes this way, it's like, surely dating apps are going to be dead.

Yes, but again, they are focusing on the, so finding love, you can imagine this as a funnel, you know, you need to say who you are, then you swipe, then you talk, then you try to get a date, then you go on the date, and then you try to have a second date, and then you try to do this as many times.

But then if you do AI, who do it for you, yes, it's going to maximize the number of dates maybe you can have. Great. But at the end, you have to show up in the cafe and sit down.

And what are you going to do? Say to AI, like, hey, can you talk for me? Because I don't know what to say. No. So they don't really solve the problem. And I think the problem is not in the match or the talking online.

The problem is the offline part. It's like people don't know how to behave. People don't know how to seduce. People don't know how to listen. People don't know how to ask questions. And most of the important, I call this Amazon Prime Effect.

It's like, we believe everything should happen super quick. You know, people say, oh, the date was okay, so I give up. What do you mean? What do you mean you give up? Just give it a second shot. Like give even five shots, given even ten.

I think advice for my friend who are singles, you know, like if it's above a bridge first date, giving a second chance, like 100% of the time, because you don't know. No one can be, maybe they're not in the best mood.

Maybe they're not, I don't know. You know, you can't know someone after one time,right?

Yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting what happens. And this is why I love Timeleft so much. Like when I went to the dinner last week, it's like there is no expectation. Everyone is super nice. Everyone's very friendly.

And we're just people, you know, having a great time meeting each other the first time. So I think, I think concepts like Timeleft is going to be kind of the way forward for meeting new people. And I know you guys are not a dating app.

I'm not saying this at all, but you might just find someone who you truly love.

Yeah, exactly. We have our first wedding, Timeleft wedding in Taiwan. So they meet four months ago and they get engaged recently. So, you know, can happen.

Wow, that's crazy. Hopefully many more to come.

Yeah, yeah. And I met my best friend in Timeleft two years ago, so it's working.

Awesome. Well, I'm going to another Timeleft dinner in the next few weeks, so can't wait to meet some awesome new people.

Cool.

Awesome. Max, thank you so much for your time. What a journey you guys have been on. And I can't believe it's only been a few years. I know it's been years of, you know, hustling, but can't wait to see where you guys go next.

Thank you.