Israeli start-up helps users make a better match

The objective of most social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is to get people to interact online – and keep those relationships online, and on the platform through which the relationship was formed. But for Petah Tikvah-based EveryMatch, an online relationship is just a means to an end – getting people together offline.

“Our objective is to take people from an online to an offline relationship,” said CEO Aviram Ganot. “We offer the most comprehensive and thorough system available to help people find partners with whom they can run, walk, play ball, study, or do just about anything else together.”

Online matching has been around for a long time, but until EveryMatch, it’s been applied strictly to helping people find dates or marriage mates; no one thought to apply technology to areas such as helping musicians in a geographical area find bandmates. “Until now that has been done mostly via bulletin boards and message centers, whether in a community center or on a community website,” said Ganot. “It sounds strange, because the market for matches in areas other than dating is so big, but EveryMatch is the first system that applies advanced data intelligence technology to search for matches.”

According to Ganot, there’s a good reason why date-matching tech has not been used for other matching verticals: Most of it isn’t very good, or as good as the tech his firm has developed. “Other matching platforms work mostly with text and location, matching up individuals based on keywords in questionnaires, biographies, or even video presentations. We have a comprehensive questionnaire that gives us enough information to mine using specially developed big data algorithms that are much more advanced than what is being used in matching apps today.”

As evidence, Ganot pointed to the plethora of activity apps, like walking and running apps, that try to match up users to compete against. “It’s all based on the results of your activity and your location. That’s a very limited system, and very few people using these apps make use of that feature because of those limitations. For example, the app might recommend a partner who really prefers to run alone, but they are on your list because they are approximately the same age, in a nearby location, and run at the same pace. But it’s irrelevant because they don’t want to run with you.”

To really make a successful match you need more information, and the very comprehensive questionnaire that runners, joggers, soccer players, golfers, and anyone else using the EveryMatch system fills out ensures that they get the ideal partners in their results list, said Ganot. “We make sure that the parameters match as closely as possible before making a recommendation, and we rate them in order of how compatible they are, so both partners know what they are getting.

It’s a big data solution that could be used in almost any vertical,” including dating, which is the one area EveryMatch hasn’t been deployed for, said Ganot. “There is a lot of competition there, but there is no one else doing matching in the 100 other areas we are working in. We started with soccer, and now we’ve moved into almost all sports, as well as helping people find partners for music, travel, study, roommates, and even business partners.”

That comprehensive scope is what enables EveryMatch to monetize its solution. “We offer a white-label solution for all sorts of groups, clubs, and organizations, and it’s been embraced by many groups already,” said Ganot. One good example involves a health club in the US that was experiencing very high dropout rates. “That’s a big problem for health clubs, and they encourage members to team up to increase their motivation, but they don’t have the facilities to do that. With our system, we were able to help them cut their lost members by more than half.” EveryMatch is already in use in Israel, the US, and several European countries, and was recently adopted by Shvoong, Israel’s largest leisure activity site.

In business for two years, EveryMatch, with 18 employees, has raised about $4 million, a testimony to the faith investors have in its solution, Ganot said. “We have a lot of plans for the future. This platform can be used by voluntary organizations to match up volunteers with missions, or even by corporate human resource departments, to find the most appropriate person for a job. And who knows,” said Ganot, “maybe we will eventually go into the dating business. We certainly can offer a novel and advanced solution there as well.”