Star Buck

just wanna feel something tonight

This magnificent giant Pacific octopus caught off the coast of California by sportfishers.

Why is matchmaking expensive? To illustrate, here’s how I’ll lose money on a client’s $49,000 package. Client is 46, 6’2, exited tech founder. He’s looking for a woman 27-33, very specific criteria around match personality, appearance, and profession. Without diving into specifics, she: • Isn’t easily searchable online... • Isn’t likely to reply when we find her… • Isn’t likely to be single… • Often has a deal-breaker trait we can’t screen for without a phone call… • Isn’t necessarily interested in my client… I was expecting this to be a difficult search, so I quoted $49,000. I wasn’t expecting ~100 hours of labor to find each match, not including communication with the client! To date I’ve spent $45,000 on salaries for the women staffed on his search, plus $2,750 on styling and photos, and we still owe the client 2 matches... Before considering overhead (let alone opportunity cost) this will be a huge L financially. Things balance out though. Most engagements are profitable. Some engagements are quite profitable. For example, a new client in NYC paid $30,000 and paused after his first match, because he’s 99% sure we found his wife. That's still a new relationship, and engagements last 9 months (6 months of active matching + up to 3 months of pause), so we could be on the hook for more work in coming months. But you get the point 🙏

Behind the scenes of Casino Royale, 2006