Ask HN: How would you solve the chicken and egg problem ( Dating Sites )
Not joking here, genetic testing.<p>It&#x27;s a niche. The allure of genetic compatibility might be overwhelming when we consider that the basic purpose of all our emotions and behaviours around dating and sex is reproduction, which is driven by genetics.<p>A community of people who want to have kids ( people who are feeling the urge to reproduce ), further reduced to the niche of those such people who are interested to applying genetic testing and compatibility to assessing matches ( in some suitable legal way that doesn&#x27;t  introduce liabilities for participants in terms of insurance or employment ).<p>An aggressive marketing technique could be that <i>not</i> genetically matching up is introducing a liability.<p>A &quot;lite&quot; version of this could attempt to sidestep some of the legal, ethical or censorious issues around genetics, but still benefit from it, by using &quot;odour&quot; matching. Body odour, reflects immune system markers, which reflect genetics, and is a real way that people subconsciously assess mate fitness.<p>I think anything you do to move into the dating space at this time must include science based signals to some extent. The reason is because there is so much untapped potential of applying science to matching, and it&#x27;s likely going to be an increasing trend ( consider, IMHO, the super cautious, more evidence based, less authority based, natures of Millenials in general for an idea ) in the future.<p>Another riff on using science could be to offer to pair people up randomly for 10 minute conversations in front of a video recorder, and apply some kind of microexpression tagging and analysis, to try to predict if these people are emotionally compatible. I&#x27;m specifically thinking of the assessments used by Dr John Gottman (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gottman.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;research&#x2F;couples&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gottman.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;research&#x2F;couples&#x2F;</a>).