I initially started out by earning my undergrad in biology and an MBA is in finance. I graduated a University Scholar in 4 years total. I ended up doing everything, I “should” be doing which landed me in New York working at a hedge fund, then a fund of funds, then eventually went going into management consulting. However I found myself at a place where I reached all my goals that I had set for myself, but I was extremely unfulfilled emotionally. I thought once I achieved what I set out to that I would be very very happy. I realized that point that the common denominator in everything was myself.

So, then I started looking to time withstanding tools that might help me figure things out. I thought that if they have been around a while and there is some sustaining belief in them, then there might be something to it that I had not discovered yet. That’s when I came across the three platforms, Western astrology, Chinese Zodiac, and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

The tools helped me learn about myself, like how I took that information and how other people saw me, and it allowed me to connect with people in a different way than I had previously. It brought awareness, understanding, and more depth to relationships, both personally and professionally. And upon further research I learned that there was nothing currently out there that brought people together in this intrinsic way. Since it had such an astounding impact on me, then perhaps this was my calling, to bring about enlightenment and awareness to others in this way. Thats when Aligned Signs was borne.

Aligned Signs connects people through psychometrics (Myers-Briggs® personality assessments) and astrology. We have been awarded a patent already, and we have a second provisional patent onthe way, on an exciting part of our business. The first part of our business, is utilizing the first patent to connect people using a combination of the Myers Briggs® and/or Western and Eastern astrology.

We were getting 80 organic signups a day (until we decided to revamp the website in January). We now know that the cost of the customer acquisition through social is approximately 20 cents a for a new customer. We’ve done some initial monetization tests on the business and actually drawn some revenue. So we understand of those aspects. There are a lot of dating apps out there to connect with people with one another. But their biggest problem is that it’s potentially a function of how well you can market yourself. So, this means that at the end of the day algorithmically, people who are good looking and great social communicators, are the ones who end up seeing the most amount of matches. The best marketed profiles get to the top of the algorithms of the company to ensure that those people get the most amount of matches and the best metrics. Meanwhile, the biggest problem behind all of this is that you’re not actually connecting with somebody who you would really want to have a relationship with; you connected with someone who you find attractive or who markets themselves in an attractive manner.

We believe that for people to have a sustainable and meaningful connection on these kinds of platforms, we need to take a different approach. To do that you need to have a prevetting that happens automatically and systematically, or programmatically which we believe is going to happen through a combination of two very interesting addressable markets. Eighty two billion dollars get spent every single year by singles dating in America. It’s a big market. And there are two other really interesting addressable markets. One, most people know what their psychometric assessment for Myers-Briggs® result type is, whether you’re an INTJ or ESTP. Either you were introduced through work or high school or some other sort. And you’ll find that on most of the dating apps people even look at what they are, but nobody’s actually leveraging connections in that manner.

We spend time proving that people connect in a much better way. Why? Because by connecting them through psychometrics and astrology, the right people see the right people. And then those people connect better afterwards because the right people are aligned. There are huge bodies of knowledge around psychometrics and why that works. But on the other side there’s the astrology markets, which is massive and under served market. So we can also use those ways to connect people as well. Or a combination of the two. Our algorithm is geared to connect you depending on your preference by either the psychometric or by the combination of psychometric and astrology. And, of course we can sell products related to psychometric and related to Astrology down the line, which means that there’s a lot of possibility for revenue outside of subscription. Previously we were selling reports, the full 92 question MBTI ® assessment to find out your true result type and get a comprehensive report.  We were also selling natal reports, numerology reports, and couples compatibility reports based.

Our second patent is a programmatic coach that goes and looks at your Myers-Briggs® result type and the Myers-Briggs® result type of the person you are about to get matched together with, and helps you to break the ice by advising you on how to approach that person. Now, this is a module we are actually building up separately. It’s a programmatic artificial intelligence coach which looks at bodies of knowledge, like the of Myers-Briggs® for example, of the two people, and suggests ways to best approach one another. Further than that, during the conversation, it assists in interacting with one another. We haven’t developed this part of the business yet, but we believe that that’s another addition to the subscription part of the business.

To have a programmatic coach which actually tells you how to approach the person and how to get through the conversation correctly so that you can come out the other side, can be a real game changer for some individuals. You can imagine all the people who are awkward and who aren’t great marketing themselves, how useful such a coach like that would be. And, we can build that out as an API that can actually go in to the future to people like LinkedIn to Shapr, or even Bumble, and other kinds companies and license it out.

Our current website is www.AlignedSigns.com. We are launching a rebrand of the website and platform all together. So, we have taken down the android and iOS apps from the play stores for a few reasons.  Every time we would go to update the code, another part of the code would break.  And with the updates begin put out by google and facebook and what not, we made the executive decision at the end of January, that it was time to take it down completely and redo the entire platform.  This way we have the most up to date technology that can handle the changes and be competitive, we can integrate the programatic coach and other new monetization features we have in mind, and have a fresh and easy to use UI and UX to get the most out of the platform for the users.

We are keeping in touch and updating our members as we make progress. 

Our objective at this point is that we have been treating this as a test project for a while because we didn’t want to raise external capital until we actually understood the metrics and how to growth hack. For example, we have been growing organically by 80 people a day and it’s increasing. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is, yes we have an app but it needs to be redone. The capital we’re raising now is to redesign our app to go out in the market in a more efficient way and pursue our vision of having the two modules being developed. This way we have the most up to date technology that can handle the changes (of google and facebook, for example) and be competitive, we can integrate the programatic coach and other new monetization features we have in mind, and have a fresh and easy to use UI and UX to get the most out of the platform for the users.
And, we anticipate that the company basically becomes bifurcated. So that even though we are developing the programmatic coach as part of Aligned Signs, it’s a separate company, which has a perpetual license to the existing company. It’s better that way because that company can then go off and obviously license that product as its main focus. But initially, its test subject number one is Aligned Signs. So what we’re looking to do right now is raise the capital so we can finish the revamp of the website, bring our CTO on board full time, who has been working with us part time. We bootstrapped everything up until now (we put in $370 thousand dollars of our own money into this), and obviously re-build over the next few months into a more scalable staff, redesign everything and relaunch. Then re-launch with the programmatic approach afterwards with a programmatic coach being a subscription feature and then also to sell other products, which can range from initially virtual to the physical products, to people who are interested in psychometrics assessments as well as Astrology.
The first thing to focus on though, is to continue to build community enhancing the subscription part of the business because it produces scalable and predictable revenues based on a fixed model.

We would fall inline with what Tinder charges for say Tinder+, or what Bumble would charge for the extended. So, we would AB test to either do a subscription or people buy some form of tokens or credits in order to be able to use it more often. But that’s something we’ll do in AB testing. Until there is data to show for that, its impossible to say right now.

We have over twenty seven thousand and were growing at 80 organic sign ups daily. So there is definitely a demand and desire for us to be competitive in the market.

About 80 a day, so 2400 monthly. Only 1 unsubscribe per week. There is a lot of demand and a lot of interest and this is all organic signups. We were spending $0 on marketing / ads.

Individuals are connected by intrinsic character results and then personal preferences. This way individuals are matched with the right person(s), not the best marketed profiles.

The algorithm and methodology for connecting people is patented. So, it takes into consideration the patents and it connects almost like a percentage of compatibility based on what your signs / results are. And, obviously takes into consideration preferences as well.

A person can also be matched on all three levels but for some reason if they don’t like one particular area or a specific sign(s), like eastern astrology or the INTJ, for example, they can just be matched with that portion excluded as well.

We’ve been issued the patent for the first one, which is how we match people. And, we have a provisional patent for the programmatic coach. We anticipate we can have full patent probably in about two months to three months.

We are looking to raise one million dollars. That’s the goal.
We initially thought of valuing the business and raising low amounts but it’s unrealistic. We sat down with our actively involved advisors and decided on a note because with a company that has so much promise to do it well in a marketplace where you have so many players who already aesthetically and functionally perform, we need to make sure that we’ve got at least a good 18 month runway. We have to make sure that we don’t under design or under develop here, especially on artificial intelligence coach.

The plan is to rebuild the platform so it easily integrates updates from Google or Facebook, incorporates both of the patents, and additional monetization features. Then, put the rest of the capital towards marketing. Our goal is to make the most of the “recession” situation when people have time on their hands and don’t want to go through tough situations alone. 

We are starting with a 20 percent discount on the note, which is about standard, with a $4.5M cap.

We’ve been very cautious about whom we go out to. We are choosing people who understand consumer and have a little bit of understanding of our type business. Because as we see the initial part of the business grow, we also want to make sure that we have the right people to help us grow into the business part of it.
Initially, we are focusing on the consumer aspects to prove out the programmatic coach. At a later stage once we’ve proven out the programmatic coach with scale, and we are making really great revenues in a predictable way, then we can show those results out as a business unit. And that will allow us to have a business unit to go and to license that coach. We have to make sure that we prove this out very well in a petridish and that’s why we’ve taken so long to figure things out ourselves than approach external capital before this. We just didn’t feel until we had some of these metrics down that it was responsible to take some cash and we do want to take on the right kind of capital.

We have been very conservative with our executive summary and pitchdeck but realistically can see $10M in sales in two years or less. Its a subscription model, which means there are recurring revenues that can be depended on with high margins.  With 27000 active members and a thorough test of the market, we are not a back of the envelope type company.  We are a business that has all the potential of taping into the hug dating and astrology markets with out the risk of a “start up”. We have built a foundation, know the market, and have credentials to serve the demand. 

I am optimistic for a few reasons.  1) This too shall pass and like everything, the market goes in cycles and will come back around.  2) In the meantime, this might be the best time to get in on this opportunity because, like other downturns, there was a spike in the dating industry during a recession.  According to this New York Times article and others like it, the love industry sees an increase because people have more time on their hands and they don’t want to go through hard times alone.