Better Business Networking with AI Matchmakers

I've been going to a lot of business networking events in the hopes of finding great people to work with, customers, partnerships, and general support from like-minded people.

But at every event it seems like serendipity is king, and I have to rely on luck to find the right people - it's really more of a random walk. When I ask event hosts for introductions they are often too busy running the event, have a long line of people ahead of me for their time, or they are prioritizing their existing relationships.

I've asked my friends who are great at networking, and their advice is to review the LinkedIn profiles of the attendees before the events. For events with hundreds of people that's a lot of work, and many events don't even publish the info... So it's back to my random walk with my best friend Serendipity.

Wouldn't it be great if at every event the host greeted me as I walked in, took a few minutes to get to know me, and then made introductions?

Yes.

So I spent the last week modifying the Avatar Factory web app and SaaS backend to provide a blended experience - where AI takes the time to get to know you, figures out good matches, and answers a bunch of "what if" questions - and combines that with real people, our matchmakers, who can provide the human touch at events and make warm introductions.

Here's the process in a nutshell from the event organizer perspective:

1. Event organizer clones a Matchmaker Avatar on Avatar Factory (one click of the "clone" button)
2. If the event organizer wants to customize the Avatars behavior (what they ask of the attendee, how the answers are interpreted, etc.) they can do some prompt engineering which is all in English
3. The organizer then shares the Avatar link with the attendees (any web browser can open)
4. Attendees chat with the Avatar before the event and are coached towards good answers
5. At the event, volunteers - the human Matchmakers - use the Avatar Factory app to view all the attendees, see the matches, use AI to answer deeper questions, and then personally introduce people

It's important to note the event doesn't have to have human matchmakers. Any attendee can use the app to list all their matches, ask the AI additional questions about the people, and use profile pictures to find them in the room.

From an attendee perspective the AI matchmaker has so many advantages:

• Talking to an AI matchmaker before the event gives people a mirror for how they are presenting themself, and AI can help coach them towards the best version of themself
• Attendees can customize their profile for that exact event - something that can't be done with LinkedIn with their common profile across all events (some people have days jobs and are there for moonlighting their new startup ;)
• Before the event, attendees can familiarize themselves with who else is going using the deeper and focused descriptions of other attendees. AI can assist the evaluations using the "Ask" feature about specific people.
• Just as spreadsheets provided "what-if" for numbers, AI matchmakers provide "what-if's" for people. You can adjust your profile and see how that affects your matches - fine-tune your event persona!
• AI can help understand how good the matches are (using the "Explain" and "Ask" features). Save time by avoiding the bad connections, and finding the great ones

I am really excited to be releasing these new features today and looking forward to feedback from this week's events!