Matchmaking is an industry that requires managing a lot of complex data and communications. However, without affordable, effective software designed for their needs, matchmakers have historically been stuck using spreadsheets, emails, texts, and even social media platforms to organize their work. This was the problem that inspired Nick Cobb to build HoneyBee. HoneyBee is an AI-powered CRM for matchmakers in the dating industry, powered by Glide. It serves the dual purpose of being an organizational tool for matchmakers and a secure, private community platform where they can collaborate to find better matches for their clients.
“Glide allowed me to build this system specifically for matchmaking workflows. It is tailored for how they interact with their clients and members, how they share profiles with those members, and how they collaborate inside the industry.”
Nick built the entire software system himself using Glide. Today, it is growing quickly and finding a huge demand for the privacy and efficiency it provides its clients.
The problem
Nick observed that matchmakers were spending a lot of their time on administrative tasks, which was getting in the way of the human-to-human work that made them effective. “The challenges that matchmakers typically encounter are staying organized, making sure there's a good audit trail of the actions they've taken on behalf of a client, and collaborating securely and easily between themselves and other matchmakers,” he explained.
The tools available aren’t designed for their unique workflows, are expensive, and are either over-featured or lack specific needs, forcing them to patchwork multiple software solutions into a system.
“Matchmakers typically had to spend anywhere between $500 and $900 a month for multiple software tools.”
Secure collaboration was also difficult. To find the right pairing in a large pool, matchmakers often reach out to their peers who might have a well-suited match. “Prior to Honeybee, matchmakers were posting profiles for collaboration matches in semi-public ways, like in social media channels and other places where data privacy and the access to that profile information was too broad,” he explained.
The solution
HoneyBee’s AI-powered CRM has grown quickly, gaining more than 50 agencies and more than 100 matchmakers in the first year of operations. “Matchmakers have started to reach out and refer each other to use Honeybee because of the ease of use and the scalability of the platform. We now have tens of thousands of dating profiles in our system with hundreds of match proposals generated through our marketplace.”
“The Honeybee platform is just over a year old. I've been able to build the entire software myself using Glide.”
The platform solves critical business problems for HoneyBee’s clients, which range from solo entrepreneurs to large agencies. It reduces admin overhead significantly. “We estimate we saved them 10 to 15 hours a week,” said Nick. It also keeps communications private and secure while simultaneously expanding their pool of matches.
Glide helps him provide these benefits while reducing software costs for matchmakers by providing everything they need, including advanced AI abilities, in one focused platform. “Glide has allowed me to keep the footprint of tooling small, which allows me to keep prices reasonable for the matchmaking customers. Glide’s AI functionality and other features have allowed us to basically bring all of those different software bills into one system so they can consolidate their expenditures.”
How they did it
HoneyBee is both a CRM and a community network that centralizes all of its clients' work on a single platform. Here’s what Nick had to say about the HoneyBee app and how Glide made it so successful, in his own words:
Centralized matchmaking profiles
Honeybee allows matchmakers to store an audit trail of their communications, profile shares, and even client and member feedback. They can easily track updated information and communicate directly with clients via email or SMS right within the platform. When they have a match to propose, they can share a profile through a variety of means, including Glide’s generate PDF feature and integrations.”
We can set up very simple forms for the matchmaker to fill out, and we can even integrate AI to save additional time on tasks like content generation, summaries, and document uploads.
The Pollinator Marketplace
The Pollinator Marketplace is a referral marketplace within HoneyBee where matchmakers can share profiles in a secure environment. Unlike social platforms, they can dictate who has access to that profile and choose who they want to work with. It allows matchmakers on HoneyBee to expand their matchable network, finding more people who might match with their clients or members outside their immediate network.
They can advertise referrals and send match proposals with other matchmakers to propose matches. There's an audit trail, and they can see the responses, have follow-up communications, and even plan dates through the tool. It has built-in messaging and chat, so they don't have to leave the application to work with other matchmakers.
We also have a community feed inside the platform so matchmakers can network, share problems, ask questions, and get likes or comments on those posts.
AI features
Glide’s AI integrations allow us to bring AI directly into the application.
Matchmakers can save time by using AI to summarize and transcribe documents, notes, and audio and video recordings of meetings. We were able to implement profile summaries that capture the information that goes into a dating profile from onboarding interviews. So the matchmaker can always surface relevant information directly on the profile without any manual intervention.
“Glide allows us to implement AI interactions, including even generating text for bios from the profiles with a click of a button.”
Doing that for a matchmaker individually would require them to span multiple tools and pay for different services. We include that in one plan thanks to Glide.
Security
Glide allowed me to build the app securely and use their role-based permissions tools to give matchmakers segmented, private databases. When you fill out a dating profile, the information that you share needs to be secure. Glide supports that security through SOC 2 compliance, row-level security, and other mechanisms that help us provide greater peace of mind to our clients. We even launched a trust center to showcase our focus on data privacy, in partnership with Glide.
Customized onboarding
Glide’s tooling has enabled us to design an onboarding process tailored to each customer. Matchmakers can import their existing profiles and networks from any other platform and participate in a dedicated onboarding process, at no cost. We help them get set up, we do training calls, and the user interface is very approachable, so they're able to accomplish all of their tasks very easily. On day one, we integrate forms, clean their data, and import it very easily with Glide, which allows us to spend important time making sure each customer is going to be successful when they join.
Design and iteration
Glide has enabled HoneyBee to respond to customer feedback, ideas, and suggestions within minutes and keep the platform updated weekly, or even daily, based on my clients' needs.
Glide’s Big Tables enabled us to scale storage for dating profiles, records, and other system data. Matchmakers leave many comments or internal notes on profiles, and we can host a near-unlimited number of them without slowing down the interface or the application.
“Glide allows us to iterate on requests very seamlessly, very quickly.”
Out of the box, Glide’s tools and components are very well designed, which means I don't have to spend a lot of time on user interface design and can adapt things to the customer’s needs.
Many of our customers are non-technical, and Glide’s interface has enabled us to deliver a very functional, accessible design. They can use the application very easily to accomplish tasks and quickly get through their administrative overhead. When a matchmaker wants to send a message, we can easily create a button or user interface specifically tailored for sending it. If we want them to upload a file or provide additional inputs, Glide’s interface makes that easy to do in a straightforward way through forms and components.
Final thoughts
“If you're looking to stay competitive, iterate quickly on your idea, or onboard customers easily, Glide allows you to do that.”
All the tools they provide make it possible to start an idea, build a prototype, and validate it within a matter of days. The platform is easy to use, there are plenty of training resources, and the community is incredibly supportive.
If you have data in a spreadsheet, you can move that into Glide very quickly. You're able to wrap an interface around it within minutes. Bring your data, get it imported into Glide, and from there, the sky's the limit. You can build anything very quickly.
We're excited to be building on Glide, and we are growing rapidly year over year. Honeybee is here to change dating going forward. We're going to continue growing, adding customers, and really changing the face of the dating industry.
Next up, we plan to expand beyond just matchmaking to serve the larger dating industry. We want to be known as the OpenTable of the dating industry. If the dating apps are not successful for you, you can come to HoneyBee, find a matchmaker to work with, and be matched with somebody in their database.