LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and is the online event for leaders of companies that bring people together for love and relationships, via technology.
Welcome to Edition 17 of the LTR online conference experience. This edition is on Asian/European time, for a change, so it will be convenient for our Asian members in the afternoon, and our European members in the morning.
In this edition we will hear from Alex Tam, CEO of Paktor and GaiGai, on the topic of "How Paktor Has Brought Asia Together." Followed by Delbert Ty, who is CMO of Coffee Meets Bagel and will speak on the topic "Dating Industry Maturity - How Regional Disparities in Maturity Can Help us Predict the Future." Â
LTR is a fast-paced 90 minutes and starts on Friday, September 16th at 4pm Singapore time / 9am London time. There's a half hour of networking followed by 50 mins of presentations, and another networking session.
LTR is designed to help you get to know other CXOs and fellow leaders of vertical online social communities and dating companies, and inspire you to further business growth. This event is small, focused, and by-invite-only. You'll meet a diverse group of CEOs and top flight executives. We have some brilliant speakers, and attendees, that can help you think outside the box and inspire you about the future.
The LTR conference is hosted and attended by the Internet Dating Excellence Association (IDEA) and the Online Social Community Association (OSCA). If you got an email invite, you're in the group, and very welcome to join us. (Email mark@courtlandbrooks.com to inquire about joining IDEA or OSCA).
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Presentations are typically ~18 minutes each and will reveal a core idea. You'll hear ideas on growth opportunities and user experience, challenging issues worthy of collaboration, interesting new technology and inspirational and informative stories to help enhance your understanding and sharpen up your strategy. After each presentation you'll have the opportunity to ask questions.
LTR is a unique and uplifting and essential event that will help you and your company align with the best of what the dating and online social community industries will become. LTR will help you evolve and help you connect with and get more perspective from your peers.
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This is a closed-door session and is by direct-invite-only from your host and organizer Mark Brooks. Â
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Please reply to Mark's email invitation or email mark@courtlandbrooks.com to RSVP. Â
This LTR is kindly sponsored by these technology providers:
  RealMe - Verification + Background checks. Making dating apps & communities more trusted
  vPaaS by Meet Group - Video at scale
Also supported by:
  Courtland Brooks - Internet dating and communities consultancy-agency
  Matchmaker.com - Make money by referring users to experienced matchmakersÂ
Mark runs the niche agency-consultancy Courtland Brooks focusing on strategy, marketing and business development for Internet dating companies and online social communities. He's served POF, The Meet Group, and 120+ companies since 2005. Prior to this, he worked with Friendster, and ran an adventure club in Silicon Valley. Mark has been quoted in press 288 times (18 times in WSJ).Â
He heads IDEA.gp (since 2007) & OSCA.gp, hosts LTR, and publishes the executive news summary services Online Personals Watch (since 2004) and Very Social Network (since 2006). He also runs BehavioralEconomist.com (130k+ community).
Mark is a graduate of Harvard Business School (PLD) and London School of Economics (Exec. MSc, Behavioral Science).
Mark is committed to helping dating and social industry executives connect, learn and share, and get inspired for an even more effective and prosperous future.
As the Group CEO of Paktor & Gaigai, Alex oversees online and offline matchmaking brands as well as the associated dating and image coaching businesses in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
In Singapore: Paktor, GaiGai & Fleek. In
Taiwan: Paktor Premium, Heder & IMpossible. In Malaysia: Datesmith and in Hong Kong: HeyDouble.
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GaiGai was started for singles to meet at casual settings without the hours of swiping and chatting.
Prior to starting GaiGai, Alex worked as an investment analyst at hedge fund Lionport Capital in Singapore. He graduated with a double degree in Accounting and Business Management.
Topic:Â Dating Industry Maturity - How Regional Disparities in Maturity Can Help us Predict the Future
Delbert has been building businesses and making impactful brands for the last 15+ years.
He started his career in P&G working on its most iconic brands such as Tide, Pantene and Duracell. He then took his talent to the world of technology and startups taking a then unknown telco disruptor, Circles.Life to new heights. It is now the world’s foremost telco technology company.
Now he is the CMO for Coffee Meets Bagel, the world leading dating app for daters looking for serious relationships.
- Ayo Olatoye, co-Founder, Trueflutter
- Bruno Mustone, MD, Forcespenpals.co.uk
- Carsten Böltz, MD, Insparx
- Catherine Cook Connelly, SVP Marketing & Co-Founder, The Meet Group *
- Christian Mercer, Founder & CEO, Positive Plus One
- Dániel Farkas, Head of Product, Dating Central Europe Zrt.
- Eddy Ankrett, President, DatingAgencyAssociation
- Fabian Foo, Founder, Matchmde
- Firas Abdallah, Founder, Ur My Type
- Gail De Souza, Dating Coach
- Geoff Cook, CEO, The Meet Group & co-CEO, ParshipMeet Group *
- Guillaume Asselot, Founder, Seeders
- Henning Wiechers, CEO, Metaflake
- Jeffrey Tinsley, Founder & CEO, RealMe *
- Jon Werry, Founder, NZDating.com
- Julia Chang, Head of Business Development, RealMe *
- Michele Tobin, VP Partnerships, The Meet Group *
- Mitchell Wapner, Communications Manager, RealMe *
- Murugavel Janakiraman, Founder & CEO, Martimony.com
- Nadav Mills, Director of Product, DOWN
- Neil Davis, Chief Business Officer, RealMe *
- Norman Petty, Head of Trust & Safety , The Meet Group *
- Ritesh Bhatnagar, CMO, Woo
- Sai Swaminathan, Chief Portal & Mobile Officer, Matrimony
- Sarah Louise Ryan, Co-Director, Tailor Matched
- Shalini Singh, Founder, Andwemet.com
- Dr Song Li, Founder, Zhenai
- Sumesh Menon, co-Founder & MD, U2pia Mobile
- Trea Tijmens, CEO, SuccessMatch.ch
- Udit Shah, Founder, Ador
- Unnur Aldis, CMO, Smitten
Dr Haluk Akin gave us an overview of how to manage multiple dating products with unified technology. Dr Akin is CEO/Founder of the 'meaningful relationships' focused dating service in Turkey: Pembe Panjur. Then Adam Cohen-Aslatei, CEO/Founder of S'More presented why community is so important for dating apps in the future.
See invitation site here: shows speakers and attendees
Paul Larsen has been focused on payment processing for 30 years now, and has advised the dating and social industries. He gave us a crucial update on new challenges, opportunities and a recommended list of providers for dating and online social communities.
See invitation site here, with attendees
Bill Alena gave us his and Dating Group's vision of the future for dating and social tech. specifically on how 'digital intimacy' will transform the space. Bill is Chief Investment Officer at Dating Group and actively acquiring and investing. We also had Courtney Kovacevich give us an overview of the Women In Dating initiative
See invitation here, with speakers and attendees
Hal Burg gave us an overview of how product placement works, and walked us through some examples in the dating and social space. David Siegel clarified on the meaning of Metaverse, and how it will warp and advance the way we experience social and dating. LTR online is now only 90 mins long. A networking session. plus two presentations.Â
This time we focused on interesting and inspiring startups. The CEO / Co-Founders of Fika, The Sauce and Himoon presented their founding and growth stories. Six co-founders in all. Denis Sandquist and Oscar Luo from Asian dating app Fika presented "How 'Real' is Better Than 'Perfect'". Emma Clark and Sachin Karia gave an overview of how they had integrated video profiles into The Sauce. Louis Dresse and Michael Couvreur from Himoon shared their founding story, challenges and vision.Â
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
At LTR 11 Geoff Cook, CEO/Co-Founder of The Meet Group gave us an overview of the creator economy and how The Meet Group is enabling companies to open up in one-to-many social/dating video. Then Neil Davis, CBO of The Real Me presented the year so far for advances in safety. We were then able to capture veteran Eddy Ankrett's personal story, and his thoughts on why the dating industry should work more closely with the matchmaking industry.Â
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
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All LTR events are diverse. LTR 10 was no exception. At LTR edition 10 we heard from the amazing Professor Pepper Schwartz on the science of matching.  Then Sean Lawrence from The Meet Group gave us an overview of how The Meet Group made video fun with gamification. Finally we got clued in some current issues and growth opportunities on Facebook and Instagram marketing with expert Dennis Yu, who formerly worked in the dating industry many years ago at Yahoo Personals. Â
We enjoyed a phenomenal presentation by Yu-kai Chou, a gamification and behavioral design master, and author of Actionable Gamification. Then Dr Timothy Sexton gave us an overview of how he is on a mission to use DNA to forecast 'romantic chemistry.' Finally, Simon Corbett and Mark Brooks introduced the calendar of IRL GDI conferences and LTR Summits in 2021-2022, an entire year of events pre-planned, and then interviewed each other about their involvement with the dating and social industries.
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
LTR Edition 8 welcomed author Jon Birger to speak about his latest book "Make Your Move" and the key relevant points for dating communities. Then Barbara Soltysinkska, the CEO of International influencer network Indahash, gave us the inside track on how to work with influencer networks.. Shauny Ullman then gave us an overview of her new service, Clean Bill of Health, (CBOH). There's a need for communicating covid status and other health information, and her platform is an example of one that fulfills that need.
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
Another sold-out LTR, we were super thrilled to hear Dr Helen Fisher, a powerhouse top-flight anthropologist with a long history in Internet dating. She is Chief Scientific Officer at Match since 2005, and is Senior Research Fellow at Kinsey Institute. Then Carsten Boltz presented on growth strategy. He's CEO of Online Personals Group with properties in 37 countries and a team of 160. Carsten is a member of IDEA Ten Year Club, Anthony Volpe, CMO at Tawkify, overviewed how Tawkify has done well despite the pandemic.
Gitte Bendzilla, the MD of public company, Spark Networks was interviewed by Mark Brooks about her 2 years at Spark. Alex Durrant, the CEO/Founder of Jigsaw talked about the rise and recent raise of Jigsaw. They just raised $3.7m. Henning Wiechers is a long term mega-affiliate in Germany who is an expert on the DACH market and he gave us the benefit of his insights on the DACH markets. All in all, another diverse and fascinating line up, enjoyed by a packed room of online community leaders and luminaries.Â
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
Edition 5 in Feb 2021 featured celebrity matchmaker Patti Stanger, a.k.a. the millionaire matchmaker. Patti produced and starred in "The Millionaire Matchmaker" for 7 years and is probably the world's most famous matchmaker. Geoff Cook gave us an overview of the vPaaS product which enables PlentyoffFish and is opening up to work with more dating and online social communities. Zach Zhleien is a startup CEO with a penchant for data and video, and gave us his thoughts on video dating.
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
Our 4th LTR featured noted conversions and digital design specialist Tim Ash talking through some fascinating pricing model designs. Ross Williams from White Label Dating appealed to the industry to work together more and gave some examples of lucrative ways to do that. David Minns of Platform Dating talked us through some of his extreme niche products and gave us insight on why the products work, and how well they're doing.
See invitation site here with speakers and attendees
LTR #3 was another landmark event. Harvard Business School's Professor Ashley Whillans gave us an overview of her findings from behavioral science on how our time can be used in a more personally fulfilling way. Dr Mari-Sanna Paukkerri, CEO of Utopia Analytics, shared how advanced language independent AI is being used for UGC review. Then Catherine Connelly, a notable long termer in the dating industry started her company at age 15, and has guided The Meet Group to it's current $360m a year.
See invitation site here: shows speakers and attendees
Once again, LTR filled to capacity within 72 hours of invitations being sent out. The CEO/Founder of Hornet explained how he transitioned Hornet from being a dating app to being an online social community. The CEO of RealMe defined how reputation data is making users safer. Professor Robert Metcalfe walked us through how we can measure consumer value. We also got a half hour networking session before and after the speakers session, so attendees could meet fellow industry leaders on small tables of six. Â
See invitation site here: shows speakers and attendees
The very first LTR online conference happened September 10th, 2020 and was attended by 99 leaders and luminaries (including 72 CEO/Founders of dating and online social communities). Professor Iyengar of Columbia University spoke about the Art of Decision Making. Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group gave us the inside-track on the rise of video. The Godfather of reality TV, Jon Murray, was interviewed. Â
See invitation site here:Â shows speakers and attendeesÂ