How To Build A Really Terrible Dating App

by Lawrence Krubner

"But now he was down to his final $25,000. None of his old tricks were working, none of his gimmicks were finding new partners who understood his unique visionary genius. Just the opposite, the last several venture capital firms he'd spoken to had actually said some very mean things. As if hurting his feelings was ever justified in a professional setting. As if a genuine visionary investor ever looked a genuine visionary entrepreneur in the eye and said "We ran a criminal background check on you and we didn't like what we found." That's not how visionaries talk to visionaries!"The Most Hilarious Comedy of 2021Maria was breaking up with Michael. She'd broken up with him before, but he sensed that this time was different. At a deep level, she was tired of tolerating his many, many flaws, which she listed for he was a bit selfish, a bit greedy, a liar, a bit xenophobic towards Armenians, which came up often since the leader of his tech team was Armenian. And yet Michael was aware that the only shred of happiness in his life was Maria. He loved her. But did he love her enough to change? Could he win her back if he sincerely made an effort to evolve past his flaws?On some level, Michael knew he was a terrible person. He took no joy in this. Like a man who’d been planning a diet, yet never getting to it, he went on, year after year, waiting for the moment when he’d finally be able to turn his life around. Someday he would be a better lover. Someday he would pay everyone who worked for him. Someday he’d be authentic, kind, forgiving, gentle, at peace with the world and with himself. Someday.Distracting him was the failure of his dating app, which absorbed enormous amounts of money without ever sparking the interest of a critical mass of people looking for a date. Could it be that he didn't know how to win an audience for his dating app because he didn't understand the real committments of romance? If he became the kind of man that Maria could respect, would he also learn something that would be useful to the often disappointed users of his app?Out of money, almost bankrupt, facing multiple lawsuits, with the courts ready to seize his assets, he urgently needed to find one more investor stupid enough to give him a million dollars, and he needed to somehow do this even though he had no real successes that he could point to. Increasingly locked out of the world of respectable venture capital firms, he found himself dealing with the eccentric wealthy individuals who hung around the fringes of any investment scene.Here then, is a man who is forced to take a hard look at himself, and in doing so he realizes that he does not like himself much. His story is the tale of a fake Love Guru, an entrepreneur of romance who knows nothing about romance but is desperate to learn, to save himself, to save his startup, and to save the only relationship that matters to him.

217 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2021