Maxime Barbier, CEO and Founder, TimeLeft

Hello and welcome to the GDI podcast, the online data show presented by the industry's leading trade publication. Each week we'll be speaking to a variety of fantastic guests about how their products change the lives of single people all over the world. This podcast is sponsored by Stree. The company helps developers build engaging apps that scale to millions with performance and flexible chat, video, voice feeds and moderation APIs and STKs powered by global edge network and enterprise grade infrastructure. I'll tell you a bit more about stream a little later. On this week's GDI podcast we're speaking to Maxine Barbie from Time Left. The questions are being asked by Mark Brooks, who is the CEO of the dating industry's leading consultancy and agency, Caughtland Brooks. Maxine Barbie, welcome to the GDI podcast. It's pleasure to have you. Pleasure to have you. Well, I've got a keen interest in Time Left. I love what you're doing with the company. You're doing something quite different because you're doing dinners. Actually, I understand you launched the company. You're actually your first company, you launched a nightclub promoter and that was back in 2003 at the age of 18. What did you bring from the VAPS that you applied to your current experience at Time Left? Yeah, it was 20 years ago, so it's a long time ago before Facebook and Instagram and all this kind of thing. Yeah, I saw my life. My entrepreneur, Johnny, when I was 18 in Paris trying to connect people with music and alcohol, so it was kind of the theme at this theme of my life. Actually, I was 18. I went to a nightclub when I was 18 and as I was always an interesting world, I want to be part of it and I did that for seven years and after seven years, I was like, wow, I need to get out of this world because it's really too exhausting and I don't want to be drunk every day. So, yeah, after 20, I was 25 when I decided to left this world and try to do something different and having to wake up at normal hours, like normal people. And so at 25, I switched to a big part of my life, was for 10 years, why to connect people with emotion. I was doing content on social platform and I was funny enough, I tried to connect people around food. So, as you can see, it's kind of we can connect the dots looking backwards. And connection is the common trait all between the various companies it worked with. And certainly, it must have been tough starting time left to look to the date you start a time left in 2020, which of course we know for. Yes, the first three years of time left, we are like what we call overnight three years success. The first three years was really painful, we pivot four times, we make zero, not a single year or four three years, nothing was really working, but we learn a lot of things along the way. So, the first idea was to connect people around dreams. So, in 2020, I was living my best life traveling the world and my friends get depressed. So, I say, maybe we can have them to dream again, and I'm going to connect people with the same dreams. So, we use the swipe of theming us, but to swipe dreams, not people, and you swipe dreams and and you match with someone who has the same dreams. Learning number one, we learn like a dreams is usually a dream. It's not something people really want to do, so not really engagement to the app. Then, the next period was, "Okay, if Jim are too big, let's try to connect people with something to do in the city, more actionable, more easy to do, right?" So, you choose someone in the app, you don't know, and you propose to do something with these strangers. And we learn something in the hard ways, like if the meet-up is a one-and-one setup, like if it's one against one, like a man with a woman, it looked like a dating app. And guys use this as a dating app, sending the same experience to 100 girls in two minutes. So, you really look like a dating app. And you can talk about it, but I want to create something different from the dating apps. And so, how can we block this dating vibe, right? And so, the people number three was to connect people with groups, groups meetings. Okay, not one-and-one, but with the groups. And it was really hard to find something people want to do in the same time, in the same day of the week. And so, I say, "Okay, like, we've almost no one in the venue." We say, "What is the only thing every people in the planet know how to do?" And actually, going to restaurant was kind of our abuse. And so, two years ago, we started with this idea of connecting group of six people into restaurant, and we choose Wednesday at the beginning as a day of the week. Yeah, that's great. That's a day when people start to think about it. I need to break away from work and do something more interesting. So, wouldn't say there's a wonderful day to do that. And it still leaves them the opening to do something other weekend. Yeah, so, at the beginning, it was only the ones there, but we quickly understand, like, we've only one thing to do per week. We're going to have a ceiling. And so, we reached, like, in within two years, we reached, like, 30,000 people, having dinners in the same night around the world. So, now we are live in 250 cities, 50 countries. And now, we are starting to opening more days. So, we have the Tuesday for women's only. We are the Thursday. We have the Friday. And we have one experience already launched, called drinks. So, not in restaurant, but now we're going to bars. More easy, more casual, less expensive, also, for making new people. And actually, now in Paris, we have a test with working with you. What is the running? So, on Saturday, you're going to be able to run with people. The goal is to give more things to do in the same membership, because time left now is a subscription base. It's 20 years per month. And also, the goal is to bring more things to people. And at the end of each experience, you can say who you want to meet again. And if it's mutual, you have a match. So, it's not a match as dealing up to like before, and you don't know anyone, and you try too much, and try to get the date. Actually, time left is the opposite. You need to show up. Then, maybe you can connect with someone and have some connection into the app. And then, you can really invite this person again to do something else within time left. Oh, that's interesting. So, you do have that social connection built in now. Yes. So, you can have a question. What we discover is, I think I'm the number one user of time left, it's 70 diners myself in Konnitor within two years. So, I really enjoy my product. And also, it's great to see how people think about your products, so I go in Konnitor. But what we do, what we realize is like, people don't want to miss strangers. Like, people really want to meet people and hope to find someone they like, love, friends, whatever it is. But there is no good relationship after only one meet-up. Like, you can, it's not, you and me, we match, and we have a great vibe, or we need more than just one dinners, right? So, we click realize, like, we need to give option for people to be able to go for one time, to ten times together. Because I think magic happened after ten meet-up with someone, right? So, that's why we try to achieve with time left. What do you think of the term? How would you describe time left? It's kind of the category that would be. And I've heard the term social wellness. Would you put it in that category? It's a good question. No, now I say like, we are in the in real-life tech space, IRL. Gotcha. That's a good question. Yeah, like, I will quote my dad, because my dad has a lot of funny quotes. And he said like, it's funny now, we need up to, to have dinners with people. And actually, that's true. I think we need, like we talk about loneliness, but loneliness is not the problem. The problem is we don't spend time in real-life with people. We just get, so we are self-isolated, you know, with technology. But if we don't use technologies, there is no way we're going to bring people together. We need to use technology to be able to bring people together again. And so that's why we just grew our space, like in real-life tech space, technology to try to solve loneliness. Do you see any kind of divide by age, in terms of the use, the way people use the app, like, for example, 40 plus versus 20 somethings? If you have to guess, like, what is the percentage of women against men, you know, you know, dinners. What do you think is the most? Over 40, you're going to have a minority of women. Actually, majority of women, rather. In the 20s, you're going to have a majority of, of guys. Yeah, we can, we can make every dating up status because we have 70% of women on the red on our projects, any going down a bit now because we have where more people, but on, on the younger generation, let's say before like 30, 35, it's pretty like 50, 50, 55 women. We see that a lot, you're going to the age, age groups. So now we have people like, my dad is 71 and he goes every month, but the more we go down, the more we get all in all generation, the more we have women. And I think it's, I really like a book about entrepreneurship and how people connect. And actually, women are way more social than guys. They are really more open to meet, you know, one in group setup, right? And we have more women. And I think also women are more tired from dating apps. And so they look for, you know, so a new option to try to, to meet new people. How do you dealing with a dating aspect? Because if you go, one, you know, is it, Bill, my son, is this a dating app? I mean, how do you answer that? For two years, we, and there's a lot of marketing to say to people, we are not a dating apps. And we don't want to be a dating apps for many reasons. One, because personally, a dating apps make, make use to make my life more miserable than I have a fancy and everything is great. But I saw the dating fatigue coming pretty early age on this, on this aspect. And that in dating is a huge market, that's for sure. But the friendship is, is even bigger because I believe every date starts with a friend. So if you want to be in love with someone, you have to be friend first. So the need of human connection is the biggest market overall. And I want to address this market first. And I think, along the way, maybe we're going to talk about dating, but not for now. And actually, we have our first wedding of time left, a couple meeting to time left in Taiwan. And they send us a picture like, thank you, time left. Are we going to, we are engaged? Or because of you? So of course, there is dating aspect in time left. Of course, there is single people. And of course, because people are single, if they like each other and they are both single, they're going to date. And that's okay. But I think the key of time left is two things. One is like, we don't show faces. So because we don't show the faces of the people, there is less expectation is less, is just like, okay, it's just short, right? And because we don't ask what people want, they are more open to what's coming. And I think that's the biggest difference with dating apps, dating apps. If you think about it, the built expectation, tell me everything you want, like, pay premium features to get access to filter and what height, 10 this and that and so you beat the huge expectation. And you see this person, you're like, I don't think so. And then you move on, right? Time left is the opposite. You don't know anything about people and you need to show up, spend three hours on the dinners and say, okay, maybe this person has something interesting. And I would love to see this person again. And so we flip the script. And you also have the hook of personality profiling. So you are some of the introducing people who are compatible. Can tell us more about the compatibility profiling? Yeah, so now we have over three million users. We sit down close to 800,000 unique people in real life within the next three years. Every month, now we sit 120,000 people. And everything starts with a personality test. So they do a personality test. And based on that, we kind of know who they are, based on some criteria. Of course, when we do the matching and now we have our recipe of a good dinners. So I'm gonna use some, some things. So one is, sex is a perfect number for dinners. Like for it is too intense. 80s, you have, it's big groups. It's not the great for conversation. We know you need at least two women because one woman, five men is not great for the woman. And actually the opposite. One guy for like five women is not also great. We, you know, you need to be a mix of introvert, extrovert. Now we have a lot of options. So you can choose the language, you want to speak at the dinners. What price do you want for the restaurant? At the beginning, we didn't ask for the price, for example. And if people want to pay less, and if people want to pay more, I can put a lot of pressure on people who want to pay less. And so we have all this criteria. And then we do the matching. So to give you an idea, we are, we are choosing tomorrow. We have like 30,000 people who are going to have dinners in 2,500 restaurants by group of six. And so they are going to take the, they could, all the people who want to participate. And based on that, do the basic and to maximize the change of success. And these run hosted. So there's no, there's a host present. No, no, no, actually, yeah. So when we launched this thing two years ago in Lisbon and in Paris, it was really analog. So I went, I was going into every restaurant on Wednesday morning to see the restaurant. And, and please put this on the table. I was printing Christian card. Like it was really, and I'm like, okay, but there's a problem because it's not scalable at all. And then we say, okay, you know what? Let's try to launch Barcelona, but we're not going to be there. Let's, you know, let's do ads. Let's see if you want to do people want to do great. Let's book restaurant and let's send people and in the up, you can just know if it's table one and table two. So I call the restaurant and I say, can you make a table one and a table two? And when people show up, please, you know, see them table one, table two. And at the time, I was doing the customer support or with my person, what's up? So he was only like 200 people per night. And then we send the people and nothing happened. I was like, hmm, interesting. And I call the restaurant the next day. And the guy is just right. And he said, so people find table one and they find table two. And he said, but they're not stupid. Of course, they find table one and table two. And I was like, people are not stupid. People are not stupid. Okay. Then let's go. And so last year, we opened one city every day of the years. We risked to 325 city based on that. Like, if you think about it, the dinners, it's something you know how to do. You know, you need to open the doors. You need to talk to the waiter and say, Oh, I'm timelift. Can I have a table? Yes. You need to hire for like appetizers and main. And at the end, you know there is a bill and you know you need to pay your speed. So it's kind of a board game. Everybody know how to play. So no host. Yeah. Great. You don't need it. No. Not for that. It's like the lowest common denominator, isn't it? The atomic network. Yes. You just need six people to start and timelift experience. Yes. Then just kill it's a different problem. But yes, it was that is easy. Hey there, data industry. Looking to level up your data and apps user experience. Look no further than GetStream.io. They are revolutionizing connections with their powerful chat API. Picture this seamless real-time chat, engaging multimedia sharing and user-friendly interface. GetStream.io makes it easy for you to bring people together. Head to GetStream.io now and supercharge your data and apps chat experience. Unleash the magic of connection. GetStream.io. Where love meets technology. I actually was a member as many years ago of a group called Table for Six in Silicon Valley. Yeah. It's called Table for Six. Run by Julie Piver. They used to charge. What are they charged? I mean, back then, I was looking 25 years, it gets $1,000 a year in Silicon Valley. So it was probably about $4,000. So yeah, that did quite well for a while. Habitized all over. So on that point, how do you promote it? I imagine there's quite a bit of word of mouth around this people. What did you do last night? I went for a time left. Well, I think like every successful business, we are lucky with tuning. I think last year was a great tuning for us because loneliness start to be a big thing into the media space and we are like by far the biggest in our space. And so we have a lot of press, a lot of word of mouth. We create this thing, you know, with strangers. Now it's a thing, but before I was not a thing, so people get super excited about trying this for the first time. We have an amazing marketing team. So we are really good in performance marketing also. Yeah, it was really easy to scale on the last two years to be honest. And the organic word of mouth was crazy. And also because I think we have so many women, also women are way more organic people than to talk about the things they like. I know you're going to buy. Happy going further east. Happy going to Asia? Yeah, we went to Asia. Asia is our big market for us. So actually our biggest city, you're not going to guess, but it's type, type is, we are cessation there. It's bigger than New York and Paris. Now we are living in India, in Japan, in Taiwan, in Malaysia, we're like pretty much everywhere. We are live now in 53 countries. Amazing. Well done. Congratulations. What was the toughest country? At the beginning, it was Germany. I don't know. Like I don't know. Every country starts really high and super gross, but Germany was we struggled a bit. And then India and Turkey was the only market when we have way more men than women. And so it's a bit more challenging in this aspect. So tell me your troubles. What else is challenging? And so now we make a lot of progress on it, but at the beginning was the no show. So people who don't show up, I was kind of damaging their experience. Like let's say you wanted to know with six and you end up with three, it can be damaging. So we fixed that by a lot of new features into that. So that's great. I'm managing the restaurant. Managing the restaurant is it's it's kind of hard. So you know like you used to happen less and less, but sometimes the restaurant decided to close and you didn't tell us and so you know I can in real life experiences is like the events and just you know like you can't you come you come fucked up because like if you send people to the restaurant it's closed. It's not like an online experience is like it's offline. So if people shop at the international school is really bad. So now we try to to have a lot of things to to try to protect that. What is really challenging? The scanning like scanning like we are like 100 employees now in one in two years. So yeah it's it's something the wave can be can be exhausting, but I'm really not complaining. I'm not complaining. It's a great it's a great place to be to be honest. Yeah I'm seeing offices as well. So the photographs look very nice. Beautiful offices and paradise. Yeah, yeah, where else can I come from. So you know the GDI audience is predominantly and OPW is predominantly seat yours of dating companies. Is there anything? Is there any way that we can work with you? Is there any particular thing that we can help you with? Anything that people can reach out to you about? And I would say we could also have this as an agenda muse. Probably need to sleep on this. And I think I think we create so much fatigue for people, minds and people be able to be like people are really tired of the new up. They're really tired of this endless online kind of thing, right? And so that's why there is a big movement in real life and there is so many initiatives to try to connect people in real life. And it's not only about dating. It's like we need in real life connection and we are like fed up of just being on our phone. And so at one point, I believe the dating space will also move to this in real life space. Like for example, Thursday, maybe you know them Thursday. It's a great example. They do like events for single people or this kind of thing. But I think one day there will be maybe like a dating for like a timely version of dating. I just believe it's too soon now to work in the dating industry for us because people are so connected to the old pattern of dating and they want to know the pictures. They want to filter. I think when people understand they don't know what they want. And then we're going to be able to work on the thing else. But my biggest learning in the last two years is like three. Like people have no idea what they want. And when you ask them what they want, they get even more confused. Like if you're the example of my one of my best friend is single since four years. And I say, okay, show me your filter on them. And you show me his filter. And I's like like none of your ex much any of these filters. Like and it's not possible. Like you need to be more open. Yes, but I have the option. Yes, you have the option to choose everything you want. But life is not like this or one before I was single, I love this story. So I met a girl like a model really beautiful woman. And we talk about dating and she saw me up. And I saw she was paying for Bumble Premium. And I was like, but you're super beautiful. Like you have all the guys you want. Why do you pay for Bumble Premium? And she said, oh, because me, if the guy is not six foot two. So if not one, one meter, eighty nine, I will never die the guy. And then I love. And I was like, yeah, I put one in a nine, but I'm one eighty eight. And I live because I know six two are option. And you know, six one. And she said, yeah, but you it's okay. Yeah, but that's the reality. Like, if you meet a guy in the bar, you're not going to, you know, like, oh, sorry, can you just wait a second? I'm just going to measure you. I'm so sorry. You're just disclosed to be able to date me. And so it's funny. But I think it's it's an extreme, maybe an extreme case. But I think it's it's this right now. We believe we have the illusion of choosing everything we want. But ideally, the one doesn't walk like this. Yeah, I think that's what's left me about what you're doing is people get to learn more about themselves by interacting with people that are new to them. And that's just the way matchmakers work, really. They get to do a lot of their work from, uh, from post take feedback, they get feedback from people they learn who they are. And they, the people learn who they are, what they want better as well. And yeah, it's always a bit scary, bringing a long, long list of things that they want to the day. We just we just find a way to easily scale serendipity. And you go to time left and you click on one button and that's it. And next Wednesday, you're going to meet five people. So you're going to find a lot of your life. I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. I just need no, you're going to have a good time with people. It's going to be fun. It's going to be my best friend. I don't know, but I did 70 dinners and I meet really cool people. I have really shitty dinners. I can say it online. Like I really have really shitty dinners, but that's life. Like, I don't know, like, not every party in the bar or on your friend's home can be amazing, once you go and sometimes you go home and you're like, oh, I should have stay home. And I think it's, it's, I mean, it's life. And there is beauty. There is beauty in it. I think you're also putting out a certain character type. People who are fairly adventurous, or at least they will be in an adventurous mood when they show up. So yes, I think what is cool with time left is we have a lot of different type of people. And some people come to meet new people in dining perspective, right? But there is also some people who are in relationship who come, like, I think when you used to ask the question, we don't have the question anymore. But back then, it was like 25, 25% of the people are in relationship in time left. And I believe it's kind of the same now. You already have the same friend, you own some new friend, or you know, you walk all the time and you just, you don't have any social life, or you want to go to the restaurant that your friend don't want to the restaurant, or you have a divorce and so do you need to make a new friend again? Or, you know, all this kind of thing lead to a time left in years. So that's why we have so much acquisition is amazing on time left because we can, we can touch any people. And the same concept is working in Tokyo, Bogota, Peru, Munich, Berlin, Paris and it's exactly the same thing is bringing people for a dinner. Let's touch on your brand. Why time left? It's, it's, it's, it's a tattoo on my arm. So when I was 30, I asked Google how much time I get left to leave. And I realized, oh, I'm going to die one day. Oh, by the way, if I die at 83, I have 660 months to leave. Oh, that's not, that's not a lot. And so I start to really embrace this and I create every years, a bucket list. And I was going every year to try to achieve all of my dreams. And so between my two company, I make a list of 100 dreams and I achieve almost all of them in one years. And when I create time left, the first idea was what do you want with the time you got left? You know, this dream stuff. And so we keep the name because it's tattoo on my arm now. So it's like it's dot. So every year I make a dot. And and and and I can see the time is going, it's going, it's going well, the most time left. And so it can be, it can make people anxious, but me, it's a huge drive on my life. Like, you're going to die one day. So what are you going to do about it? Other dreams that you achieved in the year, which one was the most meaningful for you? There's one of the biggest dreams when he was not on my bucket list. He was to find love. And I find love. And I'm going to have my waging in one. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Great. Good start. I did a lot of them. I ran 100k. I did a boxing match. I read like 200 books. I do that choreo guy. I learned Spanish. All this kind of, you know, it's kind of thing that he was a great it was a great great years of my life. Single with no kid and, you know, just traveling and doing all this kind of thing. He was a great school of life. That's it. Oh, you travel quite a lot during that period. What was your favorite place? Mexico by far. Mexico, I'm interested. Yeah, but now I'm back in Paris. And I love Paris. And Paris is a great city, also in business perspective and life perspectives and health perspective. And I'm just going to be. So cast your mind to the future. Think two years into the future. What does time left look like in two years? And how many people will be on it? How would it look a bit different? The vision is not to be enough. You use ones are like dating or you use it when you find love your charm. And because, you know, that's that's what it is. In time left now, yes, people when they find find their charm. That's like the same thing as ending ups. But I truly believe we have a piece of the puzzle to find and not to be a map you use when you need friend, but to have an up when you need friend, but also when you have friend. Actually, it's hard to see your own friend. And I believe time left can be like something who can take care of your social life. And say, hey, Max, you know, like, I don't know, like a Nea who talks to you and say, Hey, Max, like, did you meet Hugo and Julia recently? No, you didn't. Okay, let me take care of it. And then she can just book a genius for you because we have all this infrastructure of like all this restaurant in the planet already we walk with. So we can we can do that because friendship is about time spent. If you don't spend time with your friend, your friendship died. And so I truly believe time left can help you to find new people if you don't have friends. But I think one day we're going to help you also to keep your friends close to you because you're going to help us to see your friends more fun and more fun. I'll drink to that. That's fantastic. Maxine Barbier, you're the CEO and founder of Time Left. Thank you very much for your time today. My pleasure. That's what we've got time for on this episode of the GDI podcast. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you can join us next time where we'll be speaking to another fantastic guest from the online dating industry. Goodbye.