Startup Keeper Says AI Can Find Your Soulmate, Raises $4 Million: Pitch Deck

Keeper, an AI matchmaking startup, believes it can help bring your “soulmate” to you. If this is not possible, you will be notified.

“We're saying we actually know who might or may not be your soulmate,” Keeper CEO Jake Kozlosky told Business Insider. “We're not going to waste your time and pretend that 100,000 of these people might. We're going to tell you no.”

Founded in 2022, the dating platform uses layers of algorithms and AI models to match people who sign up for its service. The startup has now revealed exclusively to Business Insider that it has raised a $4 million pre-seed investment in October 2024, led by Lightbank and Lakehouse Ventures. Participation in the round included Goodwater Capital and Champion Hill Ventures.

Kozlowski said investors see AI as a “tipping point in the dating app world” and an opportunity to “disrupt the incumbents.”

Keeper isn't the only startup trying to disrupt the online dating market. Other AI matching apps like Sitch and Amata have raised millions of dollars to build the next generation of dating apps. Existing dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are also working on AI-powered experiences.

Kozlowski said the company's values ​​were another selling point that attracted some investors.

Kozlowski said Keeper is “friendly to the birtherist movement,” adding, “They feel like the whole infertility story that Elon Musk is telling is bordering on a crisis in marriage.”

However, Kozlowski added that wanting children is not a prerequisite for using a keeper.

Since its launch, Keeper has had more than 1.5 million sign-ups, with about 300,000 of those creating accounts, Kozlowski said. There were a “few” matches in that pool. Keeper didn't reveal the exact number of matches, but its pitch materials say 10% of dates in the beta ended in marriage. Keeper has used that funding to build out its matchmaking technology over the past year.

Keeper is currently limited to heterosexual couples and does not offer explicit options for different gender identities.

“Essentially we need to build a new algorithm for same-sex relationships, and we're willing to do that and eventually we will do that, but for now, we want to first fit the product market with our core product,” Kozlowski said. “Frankly, it seems like heterosexual relationships, especially relationships for finding a life partnership, are a bigger market for us right now and a stronger market.”

Creating a profile on Keeper is a sit-down process. The first form to create an account asks for the standard details of many dating apps (such as age and height), as well as academic test scores (including the SAT), career ambitions, salary, and net worth. We also encourage students to take external personality tests. After filling out the initial onboarding survey, there are 13 more steps, from uploading a photo to sharing your love philosophy.

“We don't let users create their own profiles,” Kozlosky said. Keeper uses the information we collect to curate profiles.

Kozloski said Keeper initially used non-AI algorithms to streamline potential matches, initially focusing on data points such as age ranges.

“Once we have the top 100 that our other algorithms have identified, we use LLM,” he said. “LLM is trained on the matchmaking insights we've learned over the years, so we can narrow it down to the final 100 and make the final decision of, 'OK, who among these is actually worth making an offer to?'”

Kozlowski said some of the AI ​​matchmaking works by analyzing “general attractiveness” and specific user attributes, such as baldness or hair color. Kozlowski said the startup is also partnering with a team of researchers at Stanford University, who are helping train the LLMs (Keeper provides anonymized data to the research team).

However, Keeper is not fully automated and will involve a human matchmaker in the process for the time being. If there is a match, Keeper will connect the two via text message.

The startup has a complex payment structure with high fees, but only targets men.

Keeper makes male users sign a “marriage bounty” that typically costs $50,000 (if the user gets married) and pays $5,000 for a date from the service (the date fee goes towards the total bounty, Kozlowski said).

Read the latest edition of Keeper's pitch deck.

Note: Keeper has shared an updated version of its pitch deck with new details since the October 2024 funding and is currently being shared with investors. Some details have been redacted.