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• Daily Idea - Pay To Show Up

• Think past TradFi

Skin In The Game Dating

The One Liner

Turn attention into intentional outcomes.

The 140 character tweet (or X) version

What if swiping right cost $5 and you only get it back if you actually show up?

The Longer Story Version

The Problem

Most dating apps don’t have a matching problem.
They have a follow-through problem.

Swiping is free. Ghosting is free. Flaking is free.
So people swipe like they’re scrolling TikTok.

Matches become content.
“Let’s grab a drink sometime” becomes a soft lie.

The real issue isn’t chemistry.
It’s that there’s zero cost to pretending you’re interested.

When there’s no consequence for not showing up, people don’t.

The Solution

Introduce one small thing dating apps have avoided: skin in the game.

Swipe right → stake $5.
If they swipe right too → it’s a match.

To unlock the refund, you meet in real life and bump phones.
That action triggers a smart contract that returns the $5 to both of you.

No meetup within the window?
The platform keeps it.

The money isn’t a penalty.
It’s a signal.

This reframes dating from:
“Do I feel like replying?”
to
“Am I actually willing to show up?”

You don’t punish bad behavior.
You reward real intent.

How We’d Build It

Phase 1: Prove the behavior change
• Simple swipe + stake flow
• Fixed $5 deposit (symbolic, low friction)
• Phone bump = proximity + timestamp verification
• Use a vibe-coded MVP (Lovable / Replit / Supabase stack) to ship fast
• Single city launch with a tight early adopter group

Goal: Do people show up more often when money is on the line?

Phase 2: Make it feel obvious
• Cleaner UX around “commitment” instead of “payment”
• Smart reminders before the meetup window expires
• Lightweight wallet abstraction so it doesn’t feel like crypto
• Position as anti-ghosting, not pay-to-play

Goal: Reduce drop-off and perception friction.

Phase 3: Scale distribution + GTM
• Expand to other cities with the same rules
• Partnerships with bars / venues for “verified first dates”
• Referral loops built around successful meetups, not matches
• Lean into cultural fatigue with flaking

Goal: Own the “serious but modern” dating category.

Why It Needs to Exist

Dating apps optimized for swipes instead of outcomes.
They turned human connection into a numbers game.

This flips the incentive.

It doesn’t promise better dates.
It guarantees effort.

And in a world full of low-stakes interactions,
a tiny stake is enough to change behavior.

You’ll either hate this idea immediately
or think, quietly,
“Yeah… that would work.”

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The Internet Argues With Itself

“This is dystopian.”
Paying to date? Cool, we finally found a way to make romance feel like an Uber cancellation fee. What’s next, a subscription to eye contact? Dating is already exhausting and awkward. Adding money just turns vulnerability into a transaction. This feels like late-stage capitalism speed-running its way into human connection.

“This is overdue.”
No, what’s dystopian is matching with someone, texting for three weeks, and then getting ghosted the day of the date. Dating apps didn’t fail at matching. They failed at follow-through. This doesn’t kill romance. It kills flakiness. If $5 scares you, you weren’t serious anyway.

“You’re monetizing loneliness.”
Of course you are. You’re charging people at their most insecure moment and calling it “commitment.” The app profits when people don’t meet. That incentive is gross. This is just a nicer-looking version of no-show fees, wrapped in startup language.

“No, you’re pricing intent.”
The money isn’t the product. The behavior change is. You get the $5 back if you show up. This isn’t a tax on being single. It’s a filter. We already accept deposits for haircuts, reservations, and dinner tables. Why is dating the only thing where wasting someone’s time is free?

“This won’t scale.”
Congrats, you just built the most niche dating app on earth. Only works for professionals. Only works in cities. Only works for people who already have disposable income. Everyone else goes back to swiping. Network effects die. Growth stalls. End of story.

“It doesn’t need to.”
Neither did Raya. Or early Hinge. Or any product that started by saying no. This isn’t trying to win dating. It’s trying to win seriousness. One city at a time. One cohort at a time. If it creates better outcomes for fewer people, that’s still a win.

“This will get gamed.”
People will meet, bump phones, leave immediately, and cash out. Or fake proximity. Or find loopholes. You’re underestimating how creative humans get when money is involved.

“So will every system.”
That’s not an argument against trying. It’s an argument for iteration. The baseline today is zero accountability. Even a leaky system with consequences beats a perfect system with none.

“This ruins the vibe.”
Dating is supposed to be fun. Light. Low pressure. This makes every swipe feel heavy.

“Only because we trained ourselves to waste time.”
Low pressure turned into low effort. Low effort turned into no effort. This doesn’t make dating intense. It makes it honest.

Someone’s going to build this.
Half the internet will hate it.
The other half will quietly think, “I’d try that.”

These Should’ve Stayed Private

These should’ve stayed private.

The SaaS that tracks exec divorces to predict exits.
The local service quietly replacing college counselors with AI.
The Chrome extension recruiters hope you never install.

They’re all inside NTE Pro.
See what slipped out → NTE Pro

Something that caught our attention.

Dan Koe dropped an essay on X this week and it blew up, not because it promised hacks, but because it put language to something people already feel but rarely confront: most change doesn’t fail at the habit level. It fails at the identity level.

Most people read it, agree with it, repost it, and move on.

We were curious what would happen if someone didn’t.

So we took the core structure of the essay and turned it into a guided experience. It helps you surface the patterns, then tracks what you actually do, and nudges you toward acting in alignment instead of slipping back into autopilot.

Not a course. Not advice. No motivation theater.
Just clarity, followed by pressure in the right direction.

It’s a small, independent experiment called IdentShift.
Full credit to Dan for the original thinking.

If you want to apply the idea instead of just agreeing with it, it’s here: identshift.com

One More Meme

Last Time the Market Was This Expensive, Investors Waited 14 Years to Break Even

In 1999, the S&P 500 peaked. Then it took 14 years to gradually recover by 2013.

Today? Goldman Sachs sounds crazy forecasting 3% returns for 2024 to 2034.

But we’re currently seeing the highest price for the S&P 500 compared to earnings since the dot-com boom.

So, maybe that’s why they’re not alone; Vanguard projects about 5%.

In fact, now just about everything seems priced near all time highs. Equities, gold, crypto, etc.

But billionaires have long diversified a slice of their portfolios with one asset class that is poised to rebound.

It’s post war and contemporary art.

Sounds crazy, but over 70,000 investors have followed suit since 2019—with Masterworks.

You can invest in shares of artworks featuring Banksy, Basquiat, Picasso, and more.

24 exits later, results speak for themselves: net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.*

My subscribers can skip the waitlist.

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_{*Investing involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd.}