5 Pivots, Dinner With Strangers & €18M ARR - with Maxime Barbier, founder of Timeleft

Tender, you know, bumble, meetups, they all try to solve problems of loneliness. What makes you think that, you know, your application is going to fix that billion dollar companies have failed to fix. Bumble and Tinder are trying to fix love and we are trying to fix loneliness. We just try to create the most simplest and seamless way to just meet new people anytime you want. The most fun is the building apps to connect people digitally, you're building one that's forcing people offline. Now we are completely disconnected by design so we spend so much time on the screen that's why we are feeling lonely. It's not because something changed in us, it's just because we spend three hours on TikTok every day instead of spending three hours outside. What's the friendship you lost over building the business? Oh, wow. [Music] Over the last two decades, the amount of people with zero friends has tripled. All that whilst we have the largest amount of social media apps ever. So what's happening? So we more connected but more lonely. So today I'm super excited to have a conversation with Max Barrier, who is co-founder of a very interesting app, Time Left. And it's the app that is turning strangers into friends over a dinner. So right now, the 200 cities around the world in 52 countries with amazing 150,000 monthly users and around 18 million euro of annual revenue in just 20 months after several pivots. So welcome Max. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope I introduced you very correctly. If not, you feel free to add more stuff. No, it's perfect. It's a great discussion. I'm happy to be there. Thank you for inviting me. Awesome. Awesome. Max. So welcome to building Great Tech. Really fantastic to have you. Really quickly to begin with. So Tinder, you know, Bumble, Meetups and Facebook, they all kind of trying to or try to solve problem of loneliness. What makes you think that, you know, your application is going to fix that billion dollar companies have failed to fix so far? Oh, that's a good question. So I think we are doing two different things. I think Bumble and Tinder are trying to fix love. And we are trying to fix loneliness. And I believe the love and friendship are kind of of the same bucket, but it's two different things. So if you think about it, like Tinder's and Bumble, what they're sell to you is to find love, but they just make you to have dates, right? And us, what we do is like we try to make you not feeling lonely by just finding you easy way for you to have a dinner with someone. So we are two different approach, even if I tell a lot of people use this as a dining app. We don't try to save the dining app at it is. We just try to create the most simple and seamless way to just meet new people anytime you want. Right. So you're sort of thinking this is going to be working much better than any other friendship, sort of creating apps. I think the market we try to address is well better. So if you give an example, a time left, any week we have people from 20 to 80 years old. We have people who are single, people who are in couple, we have people who are like divorce or just get engaged. So what we try to to give to the people is really a shot of human connection. So it can be any sort of human connection you need. So some people come to the dinners, explaining to find a beautiful woman. Some people just want to meet you on the same nationality or someone else to be friends. So we are web more large in the addressable market than the dining market. Love that. Love that. So most founders are building apps to connect people digitally. You're building one that's forcing people offline. I got to say absolutely love that concept, Max. Do you think that the tech industry created this loneliness problem and now you're attempting to fix it? Yeah, I think I think the tech and let's say let's be more precise. I think like they need a social media. All this kind of thing. Yes, or a big part of I think creating this loneliness. And to be honest, like we said, like we said there is a pandemic of loneliness and that's right. It's not because we don't know how to express our humanness. It's not because we don't know how to connect. It's just because we don't have any space and moment during the week to do it. I don't know, like 50 years ago you used to go to the church, used to go to the grocery market, used to go to the football game and you start to you know you live the people around you live in the same city. Now we are completely disconnected by design. So we spend so much time on the screen. That's why we are feeling lonely. But when you put people who don't know each other, actually they are they know how to talk that they really connect really well. So the problem of running this is mostly by design. It's not because something change in us is just because we spend three hours on tiktok every day instead of spending three hours outside. So the goal of what we do at time left is just to reverse what's happening. And you mentioned the dining apps and so we are the opposite of the dining apps. Tell me everything you want to know about someone, put all the features, swipe, talk and then you decide if you want to meet someone. We do the opposite. You don't know anything, you have to show up first. Just go outside, go to the dinner and then you decide. You want to sit, use you, you want to be friends, you want to do business, whatever it is. What we try to create with some life is literally this magical thing on you click on the button and next day tomorrow you're going to be with people. So I said, then it's up to you to try to get to know them and whatever, but I did I did 90 years myself and Konito actually it's a great thing to do. I have like a lot of story about it. I say who I am a dean. But what really fascinate me after meeting this 400 people is like we are social. We are really social animal like we know how to connect we know how to be a window. The only thing we don't we just don't go out anymore and we spend so much time on the screen. I think that's a real problem. So what's the premise of the app? I mean, obviously we discussed this, but just for our listeners. So if I register with the app, do I provide a lot of information about myself and algorithm somehow matches me with some people that potentially could be great for me to meet. Can you tell us a little bit about that max? Yeah, so we are available in 200 city. So particularly in all the big city in the world. And so what you do you go on time at that come or you don't want to open you do a really short personality test and you give information about you like you know sex age like what kind of type of restaurant you want. So the algorithm we have can create the best group possible. And then when you ready you just choose what you want to do. So we have dinners for women's only we have drinks coffee run you decide in London we have a things every there for example. And then when you ready you just click on the button and tomorrow morning you're going to receive an address of the restaurant with a time seven PM you show up to the restaurant you say I'm time left. Why is my table table one you can see there and you see it. Five people are going to be coming to you and say are you table one. Yes, cool. And then here we go. You just check out and voila. Okay and can couples come as well together or is it just individually. Then we have a plus one feature. So if you can bring a plus one some people are a bit shy or a bit you know panic about going on you know outside of your confond zone and meeting like to be honest like for people who listen to us is always a bit tricky at the beginning you know you it's just meeting people you know so you have a bit of stress at the beginning. So we create this plus one feature so if you want to come with a friend or your wife some people said the beginning I don't know if I can come you know I have a wife you can come it's just it's not a beginning of so when your wife and you will see it's it's for everyone. Nice love that and so you said there was quite a wide range of ages you said said at the beginning. Yes, who would you sort of given that scope who would you say like for our listeners time left app is actually for. The most surprising thing for us it was how heavily it's used by women so when we start the time left concept it was close to 70% woman participating all the time on every city so again big difference with the I think because women are way more social than guys and I think it's more careful woman to just meet other women I think as a guy you know we are more like you know what's going to happen we don't know and so now it's a bit balanced I would say 55% of the participants are women the big part of the participant is like 25 to 45 and we start to see more and more other people joining because we also do communication about it my dad is 72 now I go one month a month or most one I also the beauty of the concept because what we do at the end is the dinners and everybody know how to go to restaurant and other dinner so it's kind of a super easy things to do multi culture also we have time left in Tokyo Los Angeles or Italian is the same right is everybody know how to play the game basically. And how do they split the bill. on the table. But again, I will tell you what's sorry. So when we start twisting the half ago, it was in Eastbody, in Paris. And everything was really manual. So I was going to the restaurant, I was printing Christian card and I was making short restaurant, know what to say and what to do. And we're still losing money. So I was like, OK, we're going to die. It's not quick, but we're going to die one day if we don't know how to open more city. But I said, I can't open the city. If I need to have one person in a city, it's not going to make sense. And so we say, OK, let's do as in Barcelona. And we launch Barcelona without being in the city, without knowing the city at all. We have 50 people participating on the first dinners, so I find, you know, a restaurant online on Google reviews and then just find the restaurant. And I was doing the customer support by then with my own WhatsApp. The dinner go, no complaint. I was like, okay, interesting. The next day I called the restaurant and I said, did they find Table One, Table Two? And he said something who completely changed the trajectory of time left. He said, yes, they are not stupid. And I was like, okay, it's like, yeah, like, people are not stupid. Like, they know how to be a, so they know how to speed the bill. They know how to order food. They know that we'd be on like a starter as a main and a dessert. And they know how to not drink too much. But he was fascinating because what's happening after that in 2024, so he was one years ago, we launched one city every day for 325 days. Every single day is we open a city with the same concept in mind, people are not stupid. And it just helped us to scale pretty quickly in 2024. - And Mark, can I ask you like, what is the difference between countries? Like, do people do dining the same way or the specific things that you discovered that, oh my God, in this country, they do it completely differently? - So when we start to open a city after cities, it was funny because I was always the same thing. So, oh guys, we're gonna open Germany. Oh, Germany, they are so close, it's not gonna work. Right, super-success. And it's all, we're gonna open Brazil. Oh, Brazil is, I don't need that. They are so funny. It was also a big success. There is some specificity, but I think what really was interesting to see is the loneliness, the need of human connection, the need of go outside from your own comfort zone and to meet people, actually, is completely everywhere. We are living 52 countries and in every city, we have people coming every week. So, it's really not a French thing or a UK thing or Asian thing, it's really like everybody thing lonely. Then there is some difference. There is a bit of some time, you know, Portuguese people and Brazilian people, but we really like to be together sometimes, Japanese people, they prefer to stay together. There is some light differences, but again, it's really international concept and it basically worked the same on almost every country. Love that. So, you sort of briefly mentioned that there, that you've kind of pivoted multiple times before you've gotten to where you are now. How many times did you fail and what have you learned through that kind of process? - I have a mantra, who is like, there is nothing stronger than the little hope who don't give up. And I think it was really this for the first three years. So, we didn't make a single Euro for three years and we pivot five times. So, the first idea of time left was to connect people who share the same dream. So, in the middle of the pandemic, I get fired from my old company, so I was free sooner than me, so I decided to travel the world and I make a list of 100 dreams and I take two years to achieve all my dreams. And it was a pandemic, I was living my best life and my friend get the press at home. So, the idea was, swipe dreams. And every time someone wants to do the same dream as you, we're gonna create a conversation. Time left. What do you want to do with the time you get left? For no, don't know why the name. And then it was cool, people loved the idea, but nothing happened in the chat because I don't know, you want to do a marathon, you in London, you never run me too, it's just a dream, so nothing happened. And people number two, okay, a dream are too big. Let's try to do something more local. So, he was an app in Lisbon, but because I move back to Lisbon, and it's okay, to someone, to something you want to do in the city and send like a match with something to do. So, he was a bit different from Daningham's, right? But then, if you do a one-and-one meetup, then the guy is gonna use this as the Daningham. So, guys are taking the same expenses, sending to 200 girls in a minute. The girls use it completely differently. Not safe at all. Oh, you want to try rock climbing, and after two minutes, can you have a drink first of my place? So, he was a Daningham's, and I don't really like Daningham's. So, okay, how we can kill this? Okay, let's do group's meeting. So, there you want to do yoga, we're gonna try to find people who want to do yoga with you on Thursday morning, for example, and it was really hard to find staff people who want to do in the same time. And after three years, super tired, nothing was working or was normally in the bank, I said, okay, to my co-founder, do you wanna try one more time? He said, okay, but now we need to do what we want. I said, okay, what do we want? No tech, we need to make money. He has to be simple, and we need to know how to do everything in the product. So, basically, it was a stripling, Chad G.P.T. WhatsApp, and voila, and we start with this idea, okay, it's gonna be once there, it's gonna be in a restaurant, and they're not gonna choose anything, they just have to shop, so we can with this idea. And then the last three years was pretty cool, right. Amazing, which failure hurt the most out of them, and why? - I think this question also, do you have any regret or stuff like that? I will not change a thing because I really enjoy where I am now, and I think we are in a great position. So I think all these failed help us to be where we are. I think one will be to charge users where before, I think this thing, or make you up for free, and get a lot of users, and at one point, you're gonna monetize. I send advice, I completely disagree now. I say, charge really quickly, because I think taking money, is the only way to know if people have value of what you do. I think one million users for free, it's doable. But then, when you're gonna try to monetize, two things gonna happen, you don't know what's gonna happen. That's the first thing. And the second, as soon as you start to monetize, you're gonna learn how to monetize. And so if you start to monetize in 12 months, then you're gonna start monetizing at zero in 12 months. But if you start now, then you're gonna wear more learning curve onto that. And we're always afraid to ask money for people, but we start with five euros to get a seat at the table, and people are super happy to get five euros for a seat. And so there will be something I will probably try to have done way before. I see second learning also, you don't have to be in the US to launch the US. Everybody's telling me, you need a team in the US, you need to understand the market. No, no, no, no, it's finished. I think on B2C now, you can do everything for a minute. And US is our biggest market, 50% of the business, and we have only one person in the US. So it's also, it was a big learning for me. Hey guys, we're really hoping that you enjoying this episode so far. And if you are, please like, subscribe, and follow. And if you really want to know more about who we are and what we do, go to buildinggreattech.com. Now let's go back to the episode. I love that. I think that's an important point about just charging straight away as contradictory as that is in the kind of world of tech and founders. It's like, get something free, get it out there. But actually that extra hurdle of, oh, you have to pay to use this is a real determiner to, okay, this is a value to me. And I'm willing to pay. Like, if it's free, you don't really have that kind of threshold. Yeah, but I think you can't start for free. But I mean, like for one month, like, you know, just try to make sure like there is no bug and people, you know, they go from the beginning at the end of the final. Okay, fair enough. But I think if you have 1000 visitors enough, let's go, let's try to monetize. And we learn the hardware, like, when it's for free, then when you start to put the payroll, everything you built is that you put it to the garbage. Oh, we have a 90% conversion rate on the onboarding. Yes, it's free. Put the payroll. Oh, you go to two percent. What are we going to do now? You need to understand why. And so I think it's a mix of, you know, yeah, don't wait too much. You can start for free, but don't wait more than one or two months, I think for monetization. Yeah, makes sense. And I just wanted to ask another point. You said, we wanted to do what we wanted to do. And so we said no tech. What we're doing. Yes. So I'm going to make a piece with them. I love them. We are tech company. I have amazing end of engineering and 20 engineer. But before my last company was a content production in social media. So not to be too see up, no tech, only like production. So I was managing video guys and graphic designers. So nothing technical. And then when we saw this new journey of being a tech, like my assumption was, oh, you need to have a strong tech team. The product has to be strong. You need like a heavy tech. And if you don't succeed is because you don't have a technical thing. And then I was one tech team on the first pivot. And the second tech team on the third pivot. And I feel I felt so hopeless because all Max is good in one month. And then one month's come. Our story is going to take one month's delay. Why? That's it. You can't do anything. Just like I was like stuck. Well, I want to check the guy. And I couldn't do anything. So when we pivot again, I say, no, it's not possible. We need to own. And actually, now I think even more, we've lovable and all this kind of thing. But from the beginning, for the first years of time left, we went from 0 to 1 million of revenue in 10 months. So we went from 0 to 10 million in 10 months. So one million month added. And we were on low code, Flotterflow and Beber. So a really shitty tech who took us one years of immigration after that. So I wasn't a year. But it was really cool because everything was so easy to build. All you want is features. You know, you was plug and play. And then at one point, after one years, one of the tech guys that's really maxed, I can't touch anything. Because if I touch something, everything's going to fall apart. OK. Maybe I'm too high for a proper tech. But it's a different discussion when you go and try to hire a tech guy. You know what we are doing 10 million a.m. and we have all these things. already working, I just want this low tech as a better tech, but this is what it is, it's already there. Instead of like when we start, oh, I don't understand what really I want, there is no market feed, I need to pivot super quickly and so it was really hard to navigate back in the time. Pretty cool, nice approach. I guess it's like different these days because you can use like set a lovable on other or other vibe coding platforms and you can just build everything like a week. And then sort of get product market fit. So it's kind of like changing now the speed of delivery of the products. Yeah, but I read this quote, I think it's like AI speed up the time between ideas and MVP, something like that, but they don't speed up the time between poor judgment and good judgment. And so I think now we are really quick to ask something in your end and hello, look at builders in two days. Great, but that's only, that's great because I understand what you have in your mind, but now we need to figure it out like marketing and all this kind of thing and how we're going to scale. So yes, we can build a lot of things quicker, but I'm not sure we have where more successful people to build. Yeah, no, it's true. And actually the founder of lovable said that the bottleneck changed from who can build software to what should we build. So essentially there is no probably a recipe for success on like knowing straight away what is the right thing to do, right? AI make us wear more efficient and now we've clothed and all this kind of thing. I feel I'm wear more efficient. I love course, I'm going to love punchline. So I know the punchline is like a if you give a hammer to a child for him, everything is an ale. And you know, and like it's like the same with AI like now everybody access to everything in AI, they can do everything. The goal is like you don't need to do everything. You need to understand what's need to be done and remove the noise and go specifically. There is another start I think like now on the engine aside, I think there is the top 5% or something like that get five times more efficient than the average of the engineer because it's about not it's not only about the tools, but also about the human who is using the tool. And so if you have a great scales as a human and you have a great tool, then the combination is amazing, but if you have a poor judgment with an amazing tool, then it's even worse. Yeah, for sure. It's like multiplies if you're really bad. Yes. So Max, you know, you mentioned that like the big night you had, you know, when you brought together what did you say 50 people for the sort of main sort of dinner, when did you know that that's going to work? Like, when was the moment during that dinner that you were like, oh, actually, you know, this could be good. I think when we start to make our first 25 years, like them, like, wow, we have described and I do and say, oh, Max, well, 100 euros. I was like, no, no, like it looked funny now that again, it was a, you know, damn people are paying for something. They are paying for this, right? And for the first almost one years, I did every dinner on Koniton Wednesday and I of course attend the first one. And I felt it. I was like, wow, this is, I'm nervous. Oh, this is great. Oh, this is, you know, and people have such an amazing time. And then they come back and I was like, wow, okay. And then it just starts to scale, you know, slowly but surely. And I was like, okay, I think we're onto something. And then we just push all the way. Nice. And so after that, you know, first big dinner that happened and people started paying you on your way back home, how did you feel? I feel a good question. I was now almost three years ago, but you know, I was like last week. I was again with the dinners and, okay, it's a little bit cliché that I believe we are a mission driven company. Okay, you go to these dinners and I'm Konito and I have this girl who did twenty-five dinners and this guy who did seventeen and how they talk to the concept and how they convince the new joiner. And so this is great. You're going to love it. And we have an amazing time. People laugh and and also people express our amazing stories happening at time of dinners. And so when I go home after that, I was like, you know, I'm proud of what we do at time of it. And so it's it's a good energy to have. I love that. I'm being proud of what we do. Yeah, amazing. And you mentioned before that there is no, you know, swiping or no bias. You can't check people you're going to see. You're going to meet for the dinner. But like for some people it might feel like the most terrifying thing. How do you sort of look at that? We don't really know what the percentage of people who are afraid and don't show up. I think two years ago we attract only the brave, what we say. But now it's become more and more popular. We have 1.3 million followers. Like we have like four million users in the app. So it becomes more okay. I will give an energy. I think it's like Uber. You know, like twenty years ago your parents never go in the car with the strangers. And now like you do it every day. So no, I think it's okay. The world of math is pretty cool. But for sure there is some people who are afraid to do it. Like if you really introvert and you and for you is a big challenge for sure. So that's why also we create the coffee with strangers and the running with strangers. We have people who do the run because it's more, I don't know, more easy for them or like you know casual or the coffee or so more easy to just leave the table if you don't like the person or something like that. So that's why we have this red. No, it's happened. I have crazy stories if you all know about it. I remember. Yeah. Yeah, it's not the crazy story. I think one of the stories I tell the most is at the beginning when we launched London, actually it was in London. And I think it's a part of the concept people don't really get. It's like it's stranger. So you can really be yourself in a sense and talk about kind of what you want. And so in the app we have a question game. So we give questions for people that can ask them stuff. And one of the question was, what is the thing you're the most proud of? What is the thing you're the most proud happened? And so the guy says something super, super feature and there's a guy super feature. And then he was this guy. He was on my right angle. And you can see changes answers. It was after one or two years we have some dreams and it was a cool moment. And he started to have tears in the eyes. I was like, oh my god, what is going to say? And the guy said, the thing I'm really proud of is six months ago. I didn't kill myself. And then everyone, whoa. And he started to cry. And then there is an emotion of connection rising in us. It's like, you know, we all kind of, I don't know, like Ben, you know, close to him and like, bro, this is amazing. You should be so proud. You're like, he was like, a lot of joy, like intense joy. And then the girl after that, you can say, oh, shit, I'm need to change my answers. Now we need to go deep altogether. And she says something like also super like vulnerable. And I say the same. And we have this crazy ending. We know we kind of knew we never be friends, that we have this, this lightness going home like, wow. And now I know there is some therapy, therapy people and secret shake. They send, hopefully not all of them, all the clients. But if you just want to express yourself, sometimes you can't because I don't know, I have a guy also one day, he said, like, I'm so happy to be there because I think I'm going to divorce with my wife. But I don't have anyone to talk to. Everybody knows my wife. I don't know how to express to who and to what. And I was like, okay, just talk for the one who's to our most. And we have this conversation. Okay, it's not only about divorce and people who want to kill themselves. But I mean, you have, you know, like, it's like, maybe I will never see you again. And that's okay. So you can just really let yourself go. And I think there is a beauty in it. Wow. Love that. That's, yeah. Yeah. But it's true. Like, yeah, I do get that. Sometimes it's very easy to speak to people that actually don't know you and you can just open up and be very. It doesn't actually matter. Yeah. But also, like, when we say loneliness, I think there is a stigma around it. We have this cliche or maybe this fat guy is alone on himself like this. You know, we have a cliche, like, but like, I meet 500 people and I see a lot of different type of fuel. The people you will never guess they are lonely. And also you can be lonely in your relationship. You can be lonely with friends. You know, loneliness is a feeling inside. We have also, I meet some people who say, you know what? I have the same friends as ten years. We always do the same thing. We talk about the same stuff. It's always superficial. And they are stalking it. And after 30, I don't know what you age, but I'm 41 now. After 30, you know, it's hard to make new friendship, to go outside by yourself or to be our school. And you know, randomly talk to someone in the street. We don't really do that anymore. And so it's a pressure for people. Yeah. And can I ask you, because obviously you're meeting complete strangers, like, how do you make it safe? Good question. So when we raise money, it's not disclosed, but when we raise money two years ago, we have a big VC in the US. It's true story. It's true story. We're going to give you money, but you have a strong trust and safety policy. And I was like, as a French person, trust and safety, where this is trust and safety. It's really a thing from the US, you know, like, it's trust and safety. And you say, OK, this is a thing, you know, they need apps. They have a thing about trust and safety and escalation. I learned all this in New World. And I was like, OK, OK, yeah. Yeah. given money, of course, I can hire anyone. And we created this really strong trust and safety team, actually, XBumble. And he came and after three months I said, so how is that? He said, man, this is crazy. There is nothing happening. And like what you mean, it's, oh, I'd Bumble, it's crazy bad. There is millions of things happening all the time. And then we discover something. Is in time left, you can't really scam people or harm people online because there is nothing online. You need to create your account. Then you need to pay. If you don't pay nothing happened. And then you need to shop. You need to go in a public space in a group of six. And then if you do all this stage, maybe you have access to someone into the app. So we have things happening sometimes. Of course, now with the volume we see more than more million people in real life in the last two years. So we have things happening. But I mean, it's 0.009%. Because again, it's a public space. I think the same concept in private home, I would be not super safe to do it. But the restaurant in the group city is kind of a reputation mechanism. And we have a strong trust and safety if anything happened, of course. OK. And can people use your app for networking? You can't really use the app for anything else than just showing up. And that's kind of the baseline of time left, you know, shop first. And they said what you want to do. So you can't say on the app. I'm here for networking. You can't say I'm single. I just want to be with single. You can't say all this kind of thing. Because we just want to let you decide by yourself. And then we move to the expectation. We have so many copycat of time left since two years, like a lot. And there's also a different variation. So entrepreneur, time left. Like we have the Christian for people who believe in Christ. It's all the holidays. I love the name. We have branch time left. We have a lot of variation. But I think if you do like a non-trippinero version of time left, I think there is a lot of expectation behind it. Oh, I hope I'm going to make great entrepreneur. And then you focus on that. And so as soon as you sit and then you assess and you say, oh, I don't really like what they do as a business, that's it. That's also a time left. It's open because we don't be asked you what you want. Of course, you have your agenda. You say, oh, please, I want beautiful women tonight. I want to find someone. Great. You sit down. There is no beautiful woman. You still open with this guy on the right. Oh, you do basketball. Me too. Let's do basketball together next week. And so you're more open towards coming. And I think that's why I described at the beginning, I think getting up is the opposite. You try to narrow down to the really specific thing you want. And then you go on the date and you're highly disappointed because of the problem of getting up. And time left is the opposite direction. You don't know anything. And then you'll be more open to what's coming. Are you collecting some kind of feedback of people? How did it go? Did they-- how does your algorithm even match people? In terms of it needs to be some kind of logic behind. So you don't match completely random people. And so every time we match people at the end of the dinner, they can tell us how was the restaurant, who they liked their experience, who they want to meet again. So we have millions of that line, which-- and of course, we use all these that. And so we know now we have this kind of not so magic, but this time left recipe of what's a great dinner. So six is the perfect numbers for a table. You need to have a balance of gender, age, 10 years between the youngest and the oldest. It's kind of the maximum you can have. Of course, it's great to have this dinner with your grandpa. But you know, same generation usually is the best. The price of the restaurant has a huge impact on the connection. If you send people who have only 20 euros to spend, we have a restaurant that we feel want to spend 60 euros, create a lot of friction. So we have all this data point we use to maximize the chance of success of a group. And so that was really interesting. But it's not a magic algorithm. And it was also a big discovery for us. It's like, people know how to connect. And so it's not about-- as soon as you put the gender, the age, the restaurant, the setup, the language, all this criteria, people they know how to navigate to the next. That's really cool. And then what about on the front end, do you see people that sign up and maybe don't follow through because they're feeling awkward and they don't go the next? However, yeah, we have a lot of people who sign up and don't participate. Also, because I think most of the people who download the app we are maybe not open in the city. That's a fact in London. In UK, we are in London and Manchester and Liverpool. But there is a lot of city we are not open. So we can't be accessible from them. But yeah, I think people are struggling to make the step. It's how we not say it's like you want to lose weight and you have to go to the gym. It's still a step you need to make on yourself. So some people say, oh, I would love to meet new people. Like in London, blah, blah, blah. What do you do? Nothing. OK, but till you do nothing, it's not going to change. But for them to make the step, you know, it sometimes you take a bit of time. But one day we're going to have them all. Yeah, work it on that. How do you-- so if you have people who registered but haven't actually booked anything, do you have like a magical way of bringing them in or like do you try to lure them in? Or do you do anything with them? Yeah, we have a-- we have a serum. We have four million users. I think we have now more than one million unique clients, people who pair at least one. So you can see the restry million of people who are there waiting for someone. Of course, when we do like a Black Friday, like promotion, and it's kind of thing, we have a lot of new people. Plus one and the features we are doing now bring also-- they bring their friends. So that's great. Also something we didn't know. But like when we do time left, we put two to three tables of six per restaurant. And it happens sometimes where people say, what is this? Why these people have so much fun? Like, what is it? Oh, it's time left. What is time left? Oh, it's a concept. So we are also playing with the restaurant as a also good sleeper. So to give you an idea on every once day, we have 25, 28,000 people on the single night in 2,500 restaurants across the club. And so it's also a massive exposure to what we do. Wow. Wow, amazing numbers. Perfect. Speaking of the numbers. So I don't know if it's correct numbers. But from like you went from four employees to like 19, is that 19? Yeah, we are 100 now. Oh, 100 now. OK, so my data is outdated. And that was in 18 months. So like, and then you went obviously to 18, probably now more million euro a year in just 20 months. So how does, like, it looks a bit almost suspicious. Like, what's your-- like, how did you drive that? The main driver was the geographically expansion. And so it just math. You know, if you have two city and you make X, then if you have 200 city. I think one of the thing who really savers that was this guy in Barcelona saying people are on the stupid, I need to find this guy again, I think, and to give him something at one point. But we were like kind of out of cash and desperate to make it. And so we were really bold in saying, OK, let's open as many cities as we can. And we really like-- I was on charge of the pitch at the time. And I was like, OK, like Italy. I was-- give me the top ten city in Italy. OK, Germany. Give me the top ten city. Germany. Malaysia. Give me the top ten city of Malaysia. And it was like just opening, opening, opening. So pretty, of course, gross in time of revenue. And then building the foundation. So now we have a strong tech team, a strong product team. The product is involving a lot. What's hyper is also is to move from one-off ticket to subscription. So now we are 100 subscription business. A bit more hard to acquire, but we're more retention and we're more predictable business. So we really help us also to scan subscription days. But when you say you were launching every day in different city, what does it really mean? Do you mean you would unlock the restaurants? Or what does it actually mean? So when we did some ads in Spanish to get Barcelona, I said, OK, we have the ads in Spanish. So let's do the same ads in Madrid and Sevilla in all the city. Great. Oh, we have ads in Spanish, who speaks Spanish in the world, Mexico. OK, let's use the same ads and do ads. So first thing was to do ads to collect the demand. And so we have 25 people who want to participate and pay. We have a few people. When we launch London, we have 400 people in this first week who want to pay and participate. And so as soon as we have the participation, then we find the restaurant. Also, if I need to resume the value of Tamlaf, it's really two things. One is the five, the matchmaking. So we really good now to finding people who agree to meet you without knowing who you are. That's great things. They can't do that. And the second thing is the logistic. So we really book the restaurant, make sure the table is there for you, so it's really seamless. But if you think about it, the restaurant are doing a huge part of Tamlaf experiences. And the great thing about the restaurant, they are everywhere. They are really welcome to get free money. And they have Google reviews. They are-- everything is online now. So every time we wanted to launch a new city, it was really easy to find restaurant. You need to convince them at the beginning. We have two table of six coming. They don't know each other. Who's going to pay? They're going to pay it on row. And so it was a bit of an onboarding. But yeah, no, it's all good. That's amazing. So did you say 720 bookings a day? You've got now? Is it more than that? Like, booking, we are close to 140,000. month and so I don't know in London I think we have 1,500 every week people are showing up in London to have dinners all together during the week. Wednesdays are biggest night 25,000 per Wednesday. Women's only on Tuesdays are also popular. 8,000 women per month have dinners together. They love it. Great rating. They all it's amazing. The difference between women only and mix. Coffee is working really well. Coffee is scaling so we scaled the coffee so now it's on 3 p.m. on Saturday and we have 5,000 people every Saturday now having coffee together around the world and we're launching run now so run also is going up. That's absolutely amazing. So the like marking engine behind that he said adds in the language and then you kind of move that on a bit with the restaurants kind of directly and if in else kind of fuel that. We are still heavily performance marketing based so we have a really strong performance marketing team. We produce like thousands of ads per month so we are really pushing on this direction for sure. We did some branding activation. We did a lot because every time I start up doing subway at the tithing every phone there was they go and they take a picture and I was like oh this is so ridiculous. Of course I did it so in Paris we are a subway campaign and I was like wow this is such an expensive selfie and I was like okay but let's see how it goes. We have a lot of ads. Ads are main drivers for sure by far. I think ads is a really great tool because it's predictable. You can really manage its performance driven. We still didn't succeed. Well we want to be so we need to be careful with the money and we need to have you know we need to control error, error and stuff like that for sure. Cool, love that. And what about like word of mouth? Do you get awareness or sigh of that? Yeah well of much is the thing. We grow like more than one million followers on Instagram. I think on any given week I think 30% of the people are coming organically so we still have this thing for sure because I don't want to be like a bucket list you know air being experience stuff but for people doing a dinner with strangers something you talk about. What did you do yesterday or do you know what I have you know if completely strangers or how it was amazing. So yeah we have a we have a bit of a lot of months for sure. Well people around the world are going to have less dinners with their family and they will have dinners with strangers now. But to be honest like the restaurant industry is dying like I talk with many restaurant owners and they are struggling for many many reasons. One is because people are behind the screen all the time. They don't drink alcohol you know like the new generation drinking alcohol. Alcohol is one of the highest margin project for restaurant and so restaurant are suffering from that. You know I don't like 20 years ago when you go to restaurant people say right or right and it was classic you take a bottle of wine and now it's it's it's over and so people are you know consume more or less food because they drink less. In Paris now we start to see first restaurant who banned cell phone at the table at 9 they said like guys you need to talk to each other it's not you know and you're on the phone all the time and so the restaurant industry is dying like Uber Eats and Delivery in all these you know services who bring you food to the home. Another example so I was on Sunday with my with my wife in the restaurant and we went to this to this restaurant and well great there is no one you know we just gonna have food quickly and then food didn't come off 30 minutes 40 minutes and then I talked to the guy and said what's up like you know it's empty. He said but look at that like there is all these orders from Delivou and Uber Eats and I was like oh so 10 years ago this restaurant will be full of people but it's not because it's only like people who order to watch Netflix so if you think about it the restaurant are like a third place restaurant or this this place we can go when we don't want to go on your place on my place you have to go somewhere else right so we have to go on coffee or restaurant or whatever and coffee shop are dying restaurant are dying in the sensor they are struggling big time and so having time left can really help them to to fight this this decrease of of demand they are facing. Wow so you're not only saving people from loneliness but also saving the high street and restaurants of that. Yeah and they are partners for us we really want to team up team up with them because they are really I think there is an important part of our life restaurant and coffees and because we don't have any church anymore we don't have any supermarket my parents they live in the server and I'm shocked like when my mom go on once a morning to get the grocery she's high to everyone do you say hi when you go in your in London no you don't say hi to anyone we don't know anyone but this thing are completely lost and so this this this this space and time we used to have in the week when we know we when we know we're gonna meet people is good and so I think restaurant or the last survivor of this and I think we need to protect the restaurant and we need to protect you know have a glass of wine you know just just chill people you know enjoy a bit life but maybe the old school part of me saying that but we don't want to replace the restaurants with the what's it called dark kitchens like yeah that's what it is which is kind of scary concepts for me to be honest to you but yeah we'll see so most most startups like die trying to find market product market fit you found it now that you found it like what do you think other founders are missing in that journey I think the zero to one yes is really hard I think it's just a question about how fast you try stuff and how fast you iterate and so if you raise money for and you have 12 months of cash or if you just you know you just quit your job and you have 12 months of cash in front of you then you try once things a month you have 12 at them we did five people but in in this people to we just you know try so many different things and so we were lucky to raise two million when we start who give us enough time to iterate and we succeed because we didn't around we didn't run out of money of motivation but most of the time the problem is is this like most of the business who dies because the founder don't have any motivation anymore but most of the time is because there is no money and if you have an uncertain amount of money then the question is how much things you can try to make sure you're gonna find the market fit and if you need six months to try and buy the date and hypothesis then it's gonna be really hard for you so that's the zero to one and then what I'm discovering now is like for every stage there is different style challenge so when you want to go from 20 to 50 million for example it's completely different game with different challenges even the same art is even the same hard as going from zero to one I believe. That's cool I've never had that before though you can check this amount of things that you want to try. Yeah what are the challenges you're facing now? It's I think scaling the acquisition the user acquisition so you know spending I don't know 10k months it's one thing one hundred care months of this one as a thing one we want to reach now more like close to one million or two million a month then you reach a ceiling and now the question is how do you break the ceiling? We have this kind of the same problem as dating apps so when people make friends they turn so how do you you know what do you do about it? Do you want to be more like a you know only at the beginning of the journey of the users or you want to build something more sustainable and and so this is the question we have also it was a really hard lesson for me and one of the hardest and the last couple of months is is suddenly what bring you here not gonna bring you there and so you need to be really honest with the people you have in your team and it's really rare the people who help you to go from zero to one going to be the one who help you to go from one to two and it's really hard for them to understand it's really hard for you as a CEO because you hire them and you work with them but you can see at one point when the growth of your company the growth of your company is the average of the growth of your people and so if some of your people start to be cap and then you know the plateau then the whole company starts to also be plateau and and it was really hard for me to to navigate this because you know you have this belief oh we're gonna be forever together you know let's go 10 years together but that's not really the reality I think in the US there are more aware of that I think in Europe especially in France you know we are most like oh if I joined your company it's for 10 years but there is a different stage of company and it's really hard to know who is at his limitation and and all this kind of thing it was really hard the last two quarter depending on the way. Yeah and how are you getting support with that sort of through that transition you're investors supporting you much. Yeah really three amazing VC so I make also my change my mind about VC with this new VC and I have a coaching also coaching is a great thing I think it's a great money to invest are we really recommend any CEO who start to make money just find a coach who is also you know good for your stage of company and I have great people I think last time I was like what is the job of the CEO I asked myself this question and I think it's three is like one you need to believe in something no matter what it is and second you need to sell it you know you sell you you sell it what you believe I think I think as you see you are a great search person and I think third is like higher the best people and make sure they work with together and I think if you're struggling is maybe because you don't have the right people around you and so sometimes you need to do hardcore but the cockpit, you know, your support system is everything. Yeah, so actually on that point, what's the friendship you lost over building the business? Wow. I will, I will, I will also something who is not exactly the answers but um, like three years ago I find love and this girl became my wife and I don't know if it's a coincidence but three years ago that's why when we start to scale. I think I didn't lose a friend but I understand the the power to have like a strong partners and friend who understand who you are so I didn't lose any friend in the process but I think I'm successful today because a big part of my personal life is stable and I think without this stability in my personal life, I don't know if I will be able to do what I do. My single life was a bit messy to be honest, you know, none of dates and you know, parting and stuff like that so I think it's the true thing when we say, you know, like finding your partner is the biggest and most important decision in your life so I will say something like this. What I lose though is like I become really close with people on the first years who have to left the company and be replaced and it was, yeah, it was a bit tough because when you're CEO, you're really lonely, I think in CEO is a really lonely job because you can't be fun completely with the people because you know, you might not stand, you can fire them so there is always this thing right when they laugh in the open space and I come you can see there is a different all you know, the CEO's here so and then when you take decision people really blame you, blame you a lot, you know, they believe everything is your fault most of the time so it's a really lonely job so it's really a bottom to have a strong and stable personal life I would say. And did you find your girlfriend and now wife through the app? That's a question. Almost. Between before this last pivot, like we didn't know what I didn't know what to do to occupy myself so I was doing parties in Lisbon and she was there not for the time left party but bring for friend Huneomi and and the truth is like we met I was a bit tipsy so I don't remember her pretty bad and then we match on each four days after that and I completely forget I saw her and so oh you're new in town I say oh are you are you for real? We just talk three days ago it's like and I have the ring so I make my way up. You made it up too I love that. What are you most excited about over the next 12 months? It's desmitation we we are starting now and we have really cool things going to be lunch actually next Monday so we want to migrate from like NAP you use once to just have a shot of new people to more like to become an in real life social network and so we want to transition with NAPO it's only about strangers to a NAPO is also a bit about strangers but also more about the people you already know and so I don't want to be like a Denny app to only give you first date. I want to be more like a Denny app who you can use all the time and to go to the end goal with friendship with love and so now we have some features who you can be connected with the people you match but it's really low level in terms of interactions so now we have you know new feet coming we have some really cool things coming so we're going to look more like a a social network more than the Denny app so I think we are starting to transition away from the Denny app kind of space to be honest. Last question I have Max for you and that would be if somebody is you know at the beginning of the journey right now and pivoting another time and another time what would be your one piece of advice for them. The only way the only way to fail is when you give up so it's my mantra as insane as like there is nothing stronger than the little hope who don't give up till you don't give up there is a chance now the question is like what are you willing to lose do you need to take a freelance gig on the side to make a bit of money do you need to go back to your parents home like what do you need to lose to keep going and if you stop then that's okay but also there is another thing who I think it's a big I think it's the dark side of the resiliency of entrepreneurial is like at one point it's also okay to give up you know you can give up and try again so maybe give up take a job make a bit of money find a girlfriend you know have a nice and have a nice place just be more you know whatever and then you go back again so I think I will yeah I don't know if it's a good advice because I recommend the boss but oh or maybe something also like if you pitch your idea to your own closed circle and then don't get it and then don't buy it then then think again. I want to be concerned now because my mom never understands what I do for living so that's it. No mom it's okay the mom it's okay mom it's okay well then that's completely free but I want point you should feel it if it's hard like I mean if everything is hard you know like acquisition costs are super high people don't understand what you do you need to pitch three times to make people like bro just just pivot like change like something is off and you don't have time so just you know pivot change quickly. Awesome Max well listen it was such a pleasure to have you at building great tech great energy obviously doing amazingly so we're going to be like watching you closely and you're and you're sort of progress. Thanks so much for joining us and if people want to find you what how can they find you? Maxim Barbie on Lingjing on Instagram and and time left.com you have everything on the website. Amazing. Cool. Amazing thanks Max. Thank you.