How To Build A Multi-Million $ Dating App | Shahzad Younas Founder & CEO of Muzmatch
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Hello and welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfilment at work and in life.

My name is Ali and in each episode I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. My guest this week is Shehzad Younis, founder and CEO of Muzmach. If you haven't already heard of Muzmach from their entertaining underground campaigns, it's the revolutionary dating app that's transforming the way Muslims find love and marriage. I thought about this as a man and I thought, why are Muslim men generally quite useless at all this? I'm being a

I'm speaking very generally to cover all the politically correct community out there, but I'm very politically incorrect at times. In our conversation, Shehzad shares with me how he quit his job and built the Muzmach app from the ground up, what it takes to find the perfect match, and the problem with dating app etiquette for Muslims. All right, welcome to the show. Why, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I have a question. Uh-oh. Why are you banned from Hinge?

How does that work? You know what, I think it's because I was overtly doing research on, because I do research on all these platforms. I see what they're all up to, etc, etc. So you've got accounts on multiple dating apps? On many, yes. Most of them just have gibberish on the account. Actually, nearly all of them do. And I think this one did. I actually had memes, I had four memes as my pictures on it. But I think, I can't remember if Hinge has a selfie feature or not, I can't remember.

Anyway, somebody obviously blocked me. I emailed them saying I was just testing it out. I had memes. I clearly had memes on the account. And they just said, no, thanks. So do you think they blocked you for the memes or they blocked you because they Googled your name? I would go with the second one. I think they kind of knew who I was and thought, oh, hold up. No, thank you. Bye. It's interesting. How many dating apps are there? Oh, there's too many. There's too many. You know, I'd say there's probably, I don't know, eight big ones.

I mean, you've got the mainstream ones and we're in the more niche market, but I just think if you're in this space, you need to know what everyone's up to because each app will tackle something in a different way. And it's always, it's just interesting. You know, everyone's kind of learning from each other and just scoping the space out. So what would prompt you to decide, you know what, I want to make, I want to build a company. Let me build an app that caters to the Muslim marriage market. Yeah.

What was the story there? You know, I'll tell you. You know what? And it's one of those things when you look back, it's just many kind of accidents. So, you know, to give you a background, people don't realise Muzz Match is 10 years old. We actually celebrated our 10-year anniversary a couple of weeks ago. It actually started off just as a random side project.

So I was, you know, for those who don't know, whatever, I was an investment banker, one of those, for about nine years. And I think it was 2011, just me and my team were just, you know, my team were just giving me grief about being single. And obviously I'm a Muslim guy, I'm a good Muslim boy. Of course. Which they found hilarious. Yeah.

And I remember they were just cracking jokes and you know, like different platforms for different religions and Muzmach was the Muslim one. And I remember just thinking that name is really good. So I bought the domain and then just randomly-- - Oh wait, so you just randomly decided to come up with the phrase Muzmach just from the bat. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Literally, right? So people think it was a deep story but it literally was Bantz to start off with.

And then I remember thinking, you know, all my friends were all professional Muslims in London. - Professional Muslims. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Making money from being Muslim. - You know how it is, right? And they were all like, "It's really hard to find someone, blah, blah, blah." And I just remember, you know, I've always loved technology and IT and all that kind of stuff.

I remember thinking what's out there was really terrible. The websites were pretty crap. A lot of the Muslim ones were, we were still asking things like what's your body shape and how much you earn? That's where we were at and I thought this is terrible. I can do better than this. So literally side project, I just set up what was a Muslim website. Just had it ticking along. I think it had a couple of thousand people who used it. We actually had a few weddings but nothing crazy. And then it got to like 2013, 2014.

So after the financial crisis, and just as the app store was really kind of taking off, and I remember thinking, hold up, this should be an app. This shouldn't be a website. And then I remember checking Google Analytics and seeing 8% of our traffic was coming from mobile.

It just makes sense. If I'm messaging someone, that's quite a personal thing. I'm not going to go into my laptop, log in and then, "Hey, how are you doing?" And then turn the laptop off. It's got to be on my phone. So for me, it's just a no-brainer. And it's one of those things, once it was in my head, I couldn't get it out. And I thought, "This has to be an app." And I was convinced that somebody else was about to do it.

And it was really eating away at me. So it got to about 2014 and I thought, screw this, I need to do it. So I quit my job. Everyone thought I was mad. My parents thought, what the hell, this guy's having a quarter-life crisis here. I think I was. But I quit my job and I sat there at home and thought, how do I build apps? And in six months, I don't know how I did it, I built Muzzmatch, which was in native Android, native iOS in six months, and the back end and everything. It was literally just me in my bedroom coding away. And it's the only app I've ever built.

And thank God it was successful. It was quite a gamble. But yeah, and then it kind of, it's one of the things once you, for me, I quit my job. So there was no backup plan as such. You know, and I saved up to quit. You know, I always knew that I didn't want a whole career in banking. It didn't really interest me. For me, I just, I always knew I had to have my own business. And it's kind of, like I said, it was, if I look back, it was many accidents. You know, it was, it was just us having bants about,

how on earth Jaz is ever gonna get married, to the name was matched, to me just setting up the website because I thought what was out there was terrible, to obviously apps really taking off, and then me just thinking, hold up, this should just be an app. And then to me, quitting my job and then just going for it. So quite a journey. - So it sounds like the idea came from trying to solve a problem. - Yeah, no doubt. - And recognising the problem of

Getting married as a Muslim is quite hard. Yes. And you in particular were having that problem. So in a way, you were scratching your own itch. Yeah. And I understood the problem. Yeah.

So, you know, because if I look at it now and I think who could do, you know, not in an arrogant way, but, you know, maybe you have to believe it. Who can do a better job than us? And I'm like, I don't think anyone can because I understand the problem. I understand the market, understand tech, understand business. And hopefully I've done a half-decent job of getting the team together. And all of those things, I think, you know, undoubtedly are your edge, right? It's what you bring to the table that somebody else couldn't do or didn't do beforehand. So that's the way I kind of look at it and think about it, which hopefully gets us to where we've got to.

Interesting. So if I can take you back to that time, because a lot of people who are listening or watching to this might be thinking, okay, well, A, there's sort of two places where I find that beginners stumble. Number one is, I don't know what idea to go for. And number two is, once I have an idea, I don't know how to execute on the idea. And it sounds like you had the idea of solving a problem that you had personally. Do you have any other thoughts on this whole thing of like, how do you come up with an idea? You know, that's a hard one. I think...

You know, the big problem we have now is we're so busy. I was talking about this on a podcast yesterday. You know, now more than ever, our free time is like under assault, right? Every ounce of free time that we have, we've got so many reasons to waste it. Netflix, watching stuff, watching TV. There's so much media and stuff to consume that our free time is busy doing stuff.

And we don't intentionally just take the time to think about stuff and think about ideas, right? Like with a piece of paper in your room or whatever outside. And actually thinking about an idea like consciously. Obviously, sometimes ideas come randomly, right? You're going for a walk, you're in the shower, whatever. And sometimes they are the best ideas. But we very rarely actually just sit down and concentrate and think of, you know what, I'm going to think about five problems that I have. And people have asked me this before. And I always say, think just...

Like rather than just thinking generically, focus on your own life. And because that's the stuff that you'll relate to and understand hopefully better than anyone else. So think about problems that you personally face, whether it's through work, whether it's an impersonal situation, whatever, that you, whether you have the answer or not, just identify a problem.

And then once you've, let's say you've found five problems. I'm going to make this up. Imagine you really like non-pasteurized milk. A really random idea. Super random. But imagine you like pasteurized milk. I hate all the milk that gets sent, but I'm not one of these old person. I'm not going to do this old milk stuff, but I really like milk and I don't like what's out there. Right, that's the problem. And maybe you have some weird interest in milk. This is the most random one ever. But fine, that's the problem. Then the next thing I would be looking at is, okay,

What's the alternative to what's out there? What kind of, let's say we maintain it has to be dairy. What dairy alternative, I'm offending all the vegan people who are watching this. But let's say, what's all the dairy alternatives? And then, you know, obviously there'll be some non-pasteurized version. All right, who supplies non-pasteurized milk right now? Is there any mechanism for getting that right now? Probably not. Maybe in London, maybe not. Do I think there's enough people who want it? And actually there's a load of,

I remember watching some stuff about this. There's a lot of people who are convinced of the natural effects of what's in non-pasteurized milk, right? Straight from the udder, almost, right? And they feed it to the kids and stuff because they say there's all this good stuff that comes out of it. I know some, whatever, health stuff anyway, right?

But just going down that whole road of exploring all of that, and maybe you've come across something where you find out, actually, there's a lot of people who are really interested in this, and the big problem is there's no real good supply, and no one's really nailed strong branding around non-pasteurized milk. And maybe your brand is straight from the udder, right? Utterly ridiculous, right? So something like that. I just feel like, you know, and this is a terrible example, but it's just more that journey of something that I'm really interested in, something that maybe I'm passionate about, milk,

and something that you think that no one is solving quite right in the way that you would solve it right now. Okay. And then how you explore all that. And I guess crucially, that's not to say no one is doing it at all. Yeah, no, no, no. Because everyone is doing everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like people always think, oh, someone's doing it, what's the point? Yeah. But you know what? I think most businesses undoubtedly are iterations on others. They're truly...

you know, landmark companies that take over the world are the ones that really break out and invent something completely new that didn't exist. But within reason, if you actually dissect it, it's an iteration on. It really is. And it's just a massive iteration, right? Rather than something incremental, it's this massive gap. And then, oh my God, where did this come from? So I do think within reason, everything's, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. What you're trying to find or trying to identify is,

your country what your contribution is that you think will make this thing successful okay you know so let's say someone's got an idea they think okay i've got this problem i will i love freaking love pasteurized unpasteurized milk yeah and there's no easy way of getting it um at that point it's like okay so this is a problem and it sounds like for you the the idea the idea for mismatch you then were able to execute on it by all right then i'll just build a website as a side project

But you're an investment banker. It's an unusual skill set for an investment banker to be able to just build a website. How did that happen? Yeah, good question. And people have asked me this as well. So there's kind of a few principles that I had in my mind at the time. Number one was...

And it's weird because when I was building it, I never built it with the intent that this would be a big company and that would have a massive team. You're never thinking like that. You have this weird feeling in your head that obviously whatever you're working on, you want it to be successful. But you actually don't know what that means. I didn't know what that means. I had no feeling of what success meant. And if I look...

back, success after one year is to me looks very different to success after five years, six years or whatever we've been doing it. So I would say for me, I always knew that if I was ultimately going to run a tech company, I had to be a techie. I had to be an engineering guy. I had to be able to do all this stuff because I felt it would make me a better CEO or a founder. - So you were an investment banker, like where did the idea of being a techie come from? - So I've always loved tech. I mean my degree way back when was computer science. - Oh. - But then my, so which was I guess was the seed, right? - Yeah.

So I was never scared of coding. But that said, for nine years, I didn't really code. I had a few side projects. I actually had a really interesting project, me and a friend. We set it up. It was called Unicity. And this was early. This is very early Facebook. And not everyone says how I invented Facebook before I came out. But...

- Effectively what it was, it was an academic social network. And we actually built it, and it was kind of interesting as an exercise, 'cause we built it, but then we just didn't stick with it, and it kind of just fell apart. The execution in terms of the marketing and getting it in people's hands and actually testing it and all that, we just never did and it just died as a project. But whereas, so let's say for me, I always loved tech, I always loved coding, but I never really did it for nine years. But then when I started this,

I thought I have to, I had this thing in my head of what it was going to be. And I actually designed it. It's funny. I designed the first version of Muzzmatch in Microsoft Word. I know. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible. You know, the ability to create squares and stuff. It was all in Word. It was horrible. But that's, you know, I wasn't a designer as such, but I designed it in Word. And then...

And then I just learned how to build apps, literally. So the first app was the iOS one. And I learned by doing. - You just Googled how to build an app and you were like, all right, let's just-- - I actually started with the hardest thing first, I remember. So I started with how do I, and it was properly hard actually, how do I build a chat messaging, basically a basic chat app? How do I build an app where two people can chat real time? And it was going down a bunch of libraries and software and we used basically the heart of what

whatsapp is built on so some software called e jabbered um uh which is an xmpp which is a protocol at whatsapp you so that was basically what i used because there were tutorials way back when of how you can kind of do all this and that was painful doing it but then i built that and then built everything else around that um so i went to the heart of what the app was which was chatting and then everything else um and like i said i learned by doing i didn't really so i remember doing one

basic tutorial of Xcode, which is a software on iOS to build apps. I did that one tutorial of how Xcode works and how you do all, you know, how to understand the whole view control and model and all that stuff. And once I learned it, I just got stuck on. And that was the way I did it. And it was weird. It took me about four months to build the iOS app, the Apple app.

Which was horrible because for those who know is in Objective-C, which is a disgusting language It really is now it's Swift, which is a way more friendly, but back then Swift was new It was Objective-C, hated it, nearly gave up because I was getting really stuck on quite a few things doing push notifications on iOS My god, you'll lose a limb doing it, but it was horrible anyway So did that and it took me about four months to do the iOS app and about one month to do the Android one so

I guess the benefit was the backend was done, the endpoints were done, and Android weirdly just seemed to make a lot more sense in terms of, I actually found Android, as difficult as it is because you've got all these devices, I actually think they've solved it in a really good way for how Android works, not to get too technical in it. But anyway, so that took a month, and then, yeah, I guess from start to end, it was October, I sat down at my computer and said, "Right, how on earth do I build apps?"

and it was April when we, actually I think it was end of March, remember? - Yeah. - Or something like that, when we released the iOS app. - And do you think your computer science background particularly helped in the making of the app? Or do you think any old person doing a medicine degree could just sit down and learn? - No, so my thinking is, I mean, I'm sure it would have helped, 'cause maybe I wasn't scared of code. - Yeah. - And maybe I, no doubt, I understood the basic mechanics of coding object-oriented languages, all that kind of stuff.

However, I'm a big, and I've always said this, we're at an age now where knowledge is free and it's everywhere, right? Like you can learn anything on YouTube, right, or on the internet. Everything's free, which is amazing. It genuinely is. I genuinely think anyone can do anything. Obviously, different people are better at some stuff naturally, but...

I genuinely think you put your mind to it and you put the effort in, you can learn it just as good as the next guy. And there's so many coding academies where you got, we actually hired a guy who was a plasterer and he learned himself, he was a junior guy when he joined us. He did a course, I think, in how to build Android apps.

and he just wanted to learn how to do apps because obviously better income and better lifestyle for him and his family. And he started learning it and he grew really well. It was great just seeing someone from a completely different background end up on this road. So I do think anyone can do it.

I think the decision you need to make as an individual is an honest decision of where is my time best spent? Is my time genuinely best spent coding this thing? Or am I stronger with another guy or girl who can code this stuff? If I look back, I do see a benefit of

two really strong different minds early on. I do think you can be stronger. I think you can make a lot more progress in a shorter space of time, which is a good thing. I think for me, I had this very clear idea of what Muzzmat should be. I was very determined to be the first app out there, and that was my kind of plus, I had no money coming in, which is always a great driver. So I literally was just focused on, I want to build this, and I think I can do it, and I just did it. Okay.

The kind of good thing about, if I look at the flip side as well now, you know, in those early days, obviously I've built the app, designed it. I did the backend. I did the website. I did the customer support. I was approving profiles to the point where the customer support and approval profiles were like four hours of my day every day. And I was like, this is killing me. I need to hire someone to do this. So that's why relatively we were late in hiring as such. But the beauty is now,

everyone I talk to in the company, be it in marketing, be it in, in the community management team, be it on the engineering, I genuinely can help everyone out and I have a good insight. I'm not, I'm not at that point where I have no idea what they're talking about and I'm just like, yeah, whatever, you go and do that because I don't know what you're talking about. Not at all. Like, everywhere I'm able to contribute. Yeah. Uh,

and hopefully, I hope guide the company in a better direction. - We're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode and that is Brilliant. I've been using Brilliant for the last two plus years. They're a fantastic platform for learning maths, science and computer science with engaging and interactive

online courses. And the great thing about Brilliant is that they really teach stuff from a very first principles based approach. It's almost like the way that we were taught in places like Oxford and Cambridge, where you learn a concept and then you apply the concept to an interesting problem rather than just being spoon fed stuff like we initially learned in school. My favorite courses on Brilliant are the computer science ones. As some of you guys might know, I was torn between applying to medicine and computer science. I went to medicine in the end, but I always had an affinity to computer science

and taking the courses on Brilliant, like their introduction to algorithms and their introduction to Python, really helped me get more of a grasp of computer science than I've ever had before. It's also great for learning how to code, which is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially if you wanna start a business. And I attribute like 98% of my business success to the fact that I learned how to code when I was in secondary school. So if you wanna check out the courses on math science and computer science, then head over to brilliant.org/deepdive

and the first 200 people to sign up with that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you Brilliant for sponsoring this episode. - So, I mean, around this whole, anyone can learn to code thing, it often seems just like too good to be true, right?

It sounds like what a lot of people say, and I would broadly agree with this, is that basically anyone could just go on the internet, learn how to code, and within a few months to a year, become a proficient enough software engineer to get a ridiculously high-paying job in a tech company. Do you think that's reasonable? I'm genuinely convinced. I'm convinced. Because if you look at it,

I mean, look, even in tech, there's so many new languages, new frameworks coming out. Everyone's having to relearn stuff, right? Obviously, some people are better than others, no doubt. But I think for the most part, at most tech companies, anyone can learn the skills to do it. I'm convinced. And it's one of those roles, I think,

where with experience, with practice and with just forcing yourself to do it every day and to push yourself in terms of coding or building something or building something more adventurous, you can get to that kind of stage. I'm convinced. And I think the problem is people... So if I speak to... If I recall all the conversations I've had with people who are like, "Oh, I'm not a coder, I can't code."

And have you tried? No. Well, how do you know you can't code? Until you try and literally struggle and genuinely struggle and think, you know what, this is impossible. My brain is literally not wired this way. Until you've gone through that process, I just think it's fluff. You don't know what you're talking about. And I think you have to, with anything, you have to force yourself to be uncomfortable. I remember when I was doing the iOS app,

And this was three months in. And I remember there was, one was push notifications that nearly killed me. And another one was a memory leak. It would be, you would swipe about five times and then the app would crash. And I didn't know why. And I spent two weeks just trying to solve this. And two weeks on one single problem that's preventing you making any progress is a killer. And I was very, I remember very close, I was very close to just giving up, saying, this is too hard. Like, I'm not the guy for this. Objective C as a language is,

if anyone is a horrible language, whereas now what's great is languages have modernized, you know, Swift, Java is now caught in Android. These languages are way more programmer friendly. So that even helps you on that perspective. So yeah, I think until you've done it and forced yourself to be so uncomfortable,

Don't assume you can't do it. - Okay. How did you keep it fun for yourself in those sort of five months while you've quit the job at an investment banker, you've lost your huge salary, you're like, right, I'm gonna grind on this app. - I'm not grinding on no app. Good question. You know what? Part of it genuinely is you've committed. So when you quit your job, you tell everyone, I'm gonna fill this app, and everyone thinks you're an idiot.

If you quit four months in, I feel like you will be the idiot. I didn't want to quit. I'm not a quitter, number one. I think number two, there was enough in me to think there was something here that could be big. But I didn't know what big meant. But I thought there was something here. That's probably the second thing. The third thing is I thought that I would be, if anyone to do this, I felt that I would be best suited to solve this. Like if I couldn't solve it, I didn't know who would.

Fifth, I just thought timing was really good. And by timing, I meant the app stores being more popular and apps just being more popular. Apps in the dating sphere and for the Muslim market, you know, there wasn't anyone I could point to. You know, genuinely, I was looking at who's our competition for this and I couldn't point to anyone, which is a great place to be. I remember thinking that. I remember thinking for the Muslim world, you know, be it Muslims in the West and then Muslims in the Muslim world for our product. All, you know, I kind of felt, I thought as a trader, which is what I was in my banking career, which is when you're picking a stock, you...

Sometimes when you're picking a stock, you're picking a company where naturally things are going that way for the company. Yeah, so to give much as much as the example in this actually. So I remember thinking about it, thinking, all right,

Apps are obviously, no doubt, becoming more popular. So I felt that trend was only going to continue. Let's say for the Muslim market, I felt, all right, for the Muslim market, the taboo around finding someone online is only going to lessen over time, no doubt, because it can't get worse than what it was. Number three, in the Muslim market, their ability to, their smartphone devices and the quality of the smartphones is only going to improve.

the internet connectivity in a lot of these Muslim countries is only going to improve. Their ability to pay is only going to improve. And I thought all these things just kind of make sense to ride this wave. So for me, it felt like this was the right place to persevere with. That said, I do remember launching the app

six months after launching the app you're checking i was checking google eyes it's every day you know i'd like go to the bathroom checking how many people are on the app at any one time and it's like three people like me with my youtuber subscriber account and i was like i'm a scroll what's my next milestone yeah and it's like three people and you're like great uh i think it's about 100 and still like great and for ages it wasn't that it was a couple of hundred and you're thinking man i quit my job for this like this is minor and you i remember there was a point where i was like maybe maybe i kind of fluffed this up you know maybe there wasn't

this isn't as big a deal as I thought it would be. But then I do remember this random moment where somebody literally emailed in saying, oh,

"Thank you, Muzzmatch. I found my partner, I got married, blah, blah." I was like, "Wow, okay. This works, like for real." Because there was a phase where the app was out, it wasn't that busy. I wasn't really hearing about it from anyone in terms of the community of what was going on or, you know, there was zero hype, if you will. And it was kind of a moment where I thought, "Okay, like there is something tangible in how this can change people's lives." It definitely gave me an impetus to just carry on. - Okay. - It wasn't like a...

yeah this is it let's carry on you know it's gonna be huge now not at all it was alright let's persevere with this and then progressively actually and I remember it just did start growing a kind of a healthy clip and I think you know kind of combined with that despite it being really difficult and it was still you know for the first one and a half years it was just me

doing it and I think we got to about 50,000 members by the end of that period. But I was enjoying it on a personal level. Like I was enjoying the process of just being in control of my day. I was working stupid hours, 18 hour days. I had no life, I had zero social life. I don't think I was sleeping that great either. But I was enjoying it, I was in it. - What do you think about it that you were, what was it about it that you were enjoying, do you reckon? - The control.

I remember because I still remember being told this in my Morgues Stanley days where I was, so I was a VP, Vice President Webber and I was going, I was up for director, executive director, which is the next level, right? Yeah, exactly right. So big boy territory. And I remember, so I think at that time, and this was just before the financial crisis, I think, or just after, I can't remember.

And there was kind of a, you know, two years was like the minimum you could get to director, but generally it was three. And obviously me being me wanted it after two years. So I was like gunning for that. And I didn't get it after two years and I was fuming. I was like, why? Like I felt, you know, at the desk we were performing, I was doing really well, et cetera. And I remember being told, you know, like your problem basically, Shaz, is,

you're not professionally enough sometimes, which I'm not, and you don't respond well to authority. That line stuck with me because I think it's still true. I don't, and my own problem is, and I'm sure there's some dose of arrogance in there and me being stubborn to some degree. But unless I totally, utterly respect and feel that the person who is leading me is all over this and is super smart and that's the person I look up to, unless I feel that 100%,

I'm always like, what am I doing? Like, you know, maybe in some areas I think I can do better than this. Why am I not at that level? You know, and it's an impatience. It's just a natural impatience, you know? And part of it was that. And I think partly for me, it was that lack of control. I hated, you know, at banks, there's a lot of process. There's a lot of, that's the way things are done. These are the hoops you have to jump through, blah. And I hate all that. I'm just like, why? You know, why am I not just judged on this, which is more black and white? You know, I deliver this, you give me that.

And it never was quite like that. And I hate that kind of stuff. Whereas when you have your own business, if it doesn't fail, if it doesn't succeed, that's on you. You know, like you look back at yourself saying, yeah, I cooked some corn and tea or I didn't really work hard enough. If you're honest with yourself, sometimes you do, you work damn hard and it just doesn't work. But at least then you can honestly say, you know what? I should genuinely 100% gave it my all and it didn't work. And so be it. You can accept that. I think that was my problem that I, or that was the one thing I really liked was I was in total control. And if this succeeded, fantastic. If it failed, it's on me. Got it.

- Got it. - Which is a nice driver. - Yeah, so we're now sort of 10 years into the Muzmash journey. - Yeah. - How are things going at the moment? How big is the app? - Oh my God, so the boring stats are we're, I think we're at four and a half million members now globally.

over 100,000 successes, people around the world. - Really, over 100,000? - Yeah, it is crazy. - Successes in marriages? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Really? - It blows our mind. - Bloody hell. - We have 300 people a day, more than, who leave the app and don't come back and tell us, "Thank you much, I met my partner, "don't need you anymore," which is amazing. And it blows our mind. We've had weddings everywhere. I think we've got members in 190 countries. I think North Korea's one country we don't have members in. I remember, it's an odd point on the maps.

As a team, we're approaching 60 people now. I think we've hired like 25 people in the last year alone over lockdown and over the whole work from home, COVID pandemic, etc. For us,

Thankfully, we've been hitting records. So actually just last week, last Saturday and last Sunday were two record days for us on nearly every metric. Part of that was after Ramadan, all the Muslims wake up and just get back on the app. So we've been crazy busy after Ramadan for sure. So there's part of that. And just for us, what we're doing is clearly working, which is great. There's a lot more to do. And I think I'm forever...

impatient and frustrated you know what do you mean by a lot more to do

- There's so much. - It's a dating app. Surely, like, swipe message, done. - No, it's not. I have one bit in me is always dying to do stuff that's never been done before, to try stuff out, to build stuff that hasn't been done before, and done it at a quality that hasn't been done before, particularly for the Muslim market, or main products I saw offered to the Muslim market. - Yeah, you kind of expect it to be like 10% of the quality of a product offered to the US market. - Exactly. And I'm like, why? I'm like, that's crap. And I never wanted that. And for me, I was always like,

This would never be acceptable for us, right? So for us, the bar has to be high. And I always tell our team, our customers all use Instagram, Snapchat. They all use all these other big apps, and that's where the bar is. And if we're not there, they'll think we're crap. So for us, that's where the bar is. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're quite there, but that's where we strive towards. We've effectively rebuilt, and this is one thing I'm never scared about, rebuilding the app. We've rebuilt it three times now.

and we're approaching our fourth, which, and I would say this, call it fourth rebuild, is probably the only one that's been more of a genuine iteration, whereas the other three were way more of a whipper plaster off. - Yeah, refactoring and stuff. - Yeah, exactly right. Well, you know, to give you an example, August, so we launched the app April 2015,

August 2016, which was Muzzmatch 2.0, we actually started again. So it was a brand new app and everyone started again from scratch. Everyone had to create a new profile. Oh, wow. And it was a bit of a disaster because everyone lost all their previous matches. But it was because all the changes that I had, because I spent that first year just...

learning from everyone, learning about everything they hated, everything that they felt that we lacked, all the features that I thought they were missing. And I remember I put it all in a big Google Sheets document. It was about 8,000 bits of feedback. And I went through it and I categorized it all. And I thought, right, which ones can we do?

which ones will we never do and which ones do I think are really important. Sat there and designed all of what I thought would be much much 2.0, not in word this time. It was in a pirate copy of Balsamiq, if you know what Balsamiq is. It was some kind of design software and I just designed it and then built it. And the changes were so drastic, I thought,

this is easier just to start again rather than trying to somehow budge everyone across. So we did. And then the third one was more of a, we call it UI 3.0, but it was more of a UI revamp. And then, like I said, now we're working on the fourth one, which for me, I think is

I think we're more finding our place of what is Muzzmatch? You know, what is our brand? How should we frame ourself? And where do we want to be longer term? - Okay. - You know? - How did you decide that, you know what, we're just gonna delete everyone's data and just make this stuff again? Surely that must have been a huge-- - It was. - Someone must have been like, you know what, let's redo YouTube from the ground up. We're just gonna delete everyone's channels. - It was, you know what, and it was interesting because we had to send a message out saying, 'cause people were kicking off going, oh my God, my match disappeared. What have you guys done? I had to quit my profile again.

And I was convinced at the time we just take the pain. I felt taking the pain would let us move quicker than trying to find some middle ground of-- - Like importing profiles. - Yeah, because then you have to import the profile and somehow figure out how they could edit the old data and the new data and all that. And I thought, screw that. I want to move quick. And I genuinely felt that this new version is so much better that when they see it,

they will be less offended by it. You know, imagine you did all that and you're like, well, it was the same as before. What the hell do you guys have done? Like, did you just lose the database basically? Whereas here it was like, you do all that and you're like, whoa, okay, this is nice. And I felt that change would justify the pain that we had to inflict. And this was like 150,000 members by that time. I think so, if I remember the numbers right. So it was a decent number. But if I look at the chart, thank God we did it because we overcame that pain and then, you

you know, genuinely the app was more sticky, people liked it and I think we're onboarding people better and I think people just like the app a lot more. Okay. Can you share revenue numbers these days? Is that allowed? No, I can't. I would love to. I would say we do well. So I'll say a few things on it. We do well. We've doubled revenue in the last year. I would say we as a platform, we're up there. I think last year

If I remember, we were in the top, so in the UK, just to give you an example, in the UK, we were one of the top 10, I think we were number seven, if I remember, I can't remember the exact ranking. The top seven, sorry, number seven in the top 10 app-only rankings by top grossing dating apps in the UK. And that's across all dating apps. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, all that.

We're in the big boy league on that perspective. I still think we're small, don't get me wrong, but we've grown nicely. I think for us, everything we make goes straight back into the product and the team and marketing and all of that. We're not remotely cleaning anything out. Everything goes straight back in. We're

despite our growth, I still feel like it's weird. I have this feeling that any day we could die. It's so strange. I genuinely feel it. And I'm like-- - Same with my YouTube channel. - Of course. - The more it grows, the more I'm like, okay, this is a house of cards. It feels like it could come to a point now. - Exactly, and I have this in my head. You get sleepless nights. It was weird. Obviously, we were recording this thing. I was a bit late to this thing because I had some stuff on my mind I had to talk to the team about

How are we going to work post-COVID in the office and all this kind of stuff? Weirdly, last night I got up to pray as you do and then I couldn't go back to sleep. One and a half hours I was in bed with all these thoughts in my mind of how we can solve this office problem and what's the best way to do it. And it was weird. I just couldn't sleep. And I was like, what the hell? This is random. But then compound that with thoughts of, I just hate what we're doing in this particular area or I'm not happy about this or what on earth are we doing? Sometimes I have weird thoughts like that.

I guess it probably keeps me, it probably must annoy my team, I'm sure it does. But hopefully it just keeps us slightly on edge. I feel like I read something about this, I think in one of Paul Graham's essays or some way like that, where he was like, you know, the problems never go away, they just change in their kind of sexiness. Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you're starting out, you're like, why is the memory thing not working for five swipes? And now you're like...

how do I get 50 people into an office? Literally. That is just like a different scale of problems. How do you do a good one-to-one? Yeah. And how do you, I've learned so, I don't think I'm remotely there, how to manage a team, how to manage different teams. You know, one of my early on, I,

You know, we had a very small marketing team and I'm sure I frustrated them so much because I just couldn't figure out how to make marketing work. What does that mean, how to make marketing work? As in, I think for me it was more understanding. Like, I'm, you know, I'm a product...

CEO, whatever, I hate that title, but whatever. I love product. I love that. You know, I'm very into, you know, even now we're designing the new, you know, Muzzmatch, right? And I'm so into every bit of the screen. I'm not like, you guys design it, show me and let's just run with it. Not at all. I mean, don't get me wrong. They design it and they show me stuff, but I'm very in the weeds. You know, if I look right now, I spend more hours of my day consciously because I want to,

with the UX team and with mobile team, just going through every screen of the app that we're trying to redo and rebuild and just our whole thought process. And for me, this obviously is part of where we're headed as a business. But anyway, because A, I enjoy it and I get it and it makes sense. Marketing is a whole different beast. Marketing is not engineering. Marketing, you can't necessarily just have a spec and deliver it and that's that. And the whole creative angle, the whole...

what is a deliverable and to be creative in a good way, shouldn't you have a deadline? I don't know. I was talking about this now, like, to give you a really small example on this, we're filming an ad right now and, you know,

They'd almost set themselves a deadline because they wanted to deliver something, but, oh, we're going to film this next week. Which I get because, you know, it does come from me. I want us to deliver on stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But then I'm like, I feel like the idea of what we're going to film, we haven't nailed yet, you know, to the standard or to the level that we want. And that's where we need to get to. And it's weird. It messes with my mind. So I'm sure it messes with theirs. And we haven't figured it out, no doubt. But for me, it was the appreciation of understanding that

all right, the way you manage marketing people is quite different, or creatives is different, should be different. The way I was managing it wasn't bringing out the best of them, was annoying them, I'm sure was driving them up the wall, did drive them up the wall. And even then, we effectively rebuilt the marketing team, totally. I think they were frustrated with me, but fair enough, right? We rebuilt it. And then even as a team, we figured out how should we work? How does a creative team work differently from the brand people, differently from other people? So you had a famous ad campaign on the London Underground. Yeah.

I love that one. What was the story behind that? You can just kind of tell people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the ad was a whole bunch. We actually did four or five, but it was all mostly Muslim puns, puns around that. So halal, is it me you're looking for? Yeah. You know, Lionel Richie, the OG. Halal from the other side, famous Adele song. You had me at halal, Jerry Maguire. There was another, there was one more halal one. I can't think of it. We had one which was, we timed for just after the, we formally, I think,

when we're leaving Brexit and the Brexit vote happened, et cetera, was it's time to leave the single market. We did that one. Genius. - Really good. - Yeah, yeah. We had one more. There's one that's missing in all this. There was one more. I can't remember what it was now. Oh yeah, halal meat. And it was like a, this one, it was a bit, but it was halal meat, which was a steak with a Cupid steak.

Halal Meat. Yeah, it's a bit risque. Yeah, I think I don't know if that one works. But anyway, great ads went super viral. We had like celebrities, comedians putting on their socials. Really good. I'm going to take the credit for those. The lines were all mine. I always felt that

If we're going to do, especially a Tube campaign. Yeah, it's got to be funny. Yeah, it's got to be good and it's got to be really good. It can't just be average because what's the point, right? It's either really good that you get noticed or forget it. There's no point doing it. And it was weird because it was a bit of a punt because...

As a campaign, did we run it and suddenly get tons of downloads? No. Didn't make a single difference. But what it did do, genuinely, is that intangible brand thing. It got the name out there. People heard of Muzmagic, hadn't heard of Muzmagic before. Exactly. I remember we were hiring, we were interviewing people, engineers, etc. I remember, most of our team aren't Muslim. We've got a lot of non-Muslims in the team, particularly on the engineering side.

And for them to be remotely interested in working for an app like ours, I'm like, it must take something, surely, right? You know, to go and tell your parents or your other half, yeah, I work at this Muslim dating app thing, right? They're probably thinking, what the hell? But they do, right? And I remember asking them, like, have you heard of Muzzmatch before? And so many of them said, oh, yeah, I remember the Tube campaign.

And I'm like, okay. And it was hearing that from so many people where I thought, okay, this thing worked. It did cement the brand. It made it legit, which is good. But I think we only got away with that because the strength of the campaign itself. The idea was good. It was funny. It was viral. It's hard. How much did it cost to run a campaign on the ground? So at the time, this was, when did we run it? I think we ran it.

We ran one every couple of years, but at the time it was about 20, 25 grand. But it depends what you go for. That was, from memory, every other carriage on the Underground. Okay, for how long? Like a week? No, two weeks. Okay. Yeah, so two weeks, every other carriage. So to get a single ad on every other carriage of the Underground for two weeks, around about 25 grand. 25. That was then. I don't know where it is now. The biggest complaint I hear whenever I mention mismatched people is that

Guys on there are really creepy. Yeah. To what extent is this like a problem with the guys vs a problem with the dating industry vs a problem with the app itself? Like, what's the deal? I think I'm still trying to figure out where does the problem lie? Is it us? Is it the community? Is it guys? So,

I think my conclusion is guys are idiots. I think from everything I've seen and if you look at, you know, forget Muzzmatch, if you just look at the general call it dating apps, mainstream dating apps, we've seen the lines. Their biggest problem is the behavior of men, mostly. Really? Okay, wow. I mean, what was the premise of Bumble? It was not that it was anti-men, but really it was not happy with the male dynamic, the way men behave, the way men treat women, talk to women, etc. And their whole

branding was all around the female perspective, right? And it's a great branding talking point, right? And that's for them what sets it apart. If you look at the app itself, I would argue it's actually not massively different to other apps in all honesty. My research showed me that. But yeah, it's not massively different in all honesty.

But obviously, that's their USP to some degree. And I presume, and I'm reading, maybe men hate that feature that women have to go first. I don't know. I quite like it. It means the onus is not on me to start the discussion. It's interesting, right? So we actually built Women Goals First in Muzzmatch in 2016, I think it was, for about a week. So we built it.

Yeah. And most of them were like, I don't want to go first. Why do I have to message the guy? He should message me. And we were like, this community is not ready for it. So we got rid of it after a week. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we tried it, failed it. And there was another app out there for the Muslim market that tried to do it. I think it's a bit dead now, but they tried it. Yeah. Because some things work. So here's another good example. So some things work great in principle, but not in reality. A good example.

I was today just reading about another app, mainstream app, which was saying, oh, you know, like the death of swiping and all this kind of stuff. And they had either a feature or as a central part of the app was that the more you talk to someone, the more their face unblurs. And we were mentioning this article because we allow men and women to blur their photos if they want and control who can see it. Anyway, so that was their principle. So

The principle is great, you know, you're committed, you start talking to someone and obviously the more interest you show in them, the more you talk, the more effort you put in, the more reward in that you'll see who they are. That's a good filtering mechanism surely. Now the problem is, the great in principle, reality. The reality is, within reason, we are time poor, right? The reality is, you know, if you're single and wanting to meet people, let's say you go down this road of talking to people without knowing what they're about and you can't deny that attraction is important. Of course it is, you know, we're...

it's in our DNA, right? It's in our basic human instincts of we're attracted to people and attraction is a valid reason of why people get together, right? So to deny that I think isn't sensible, I think personally. So anyway, so let's say you went down this road and you were talking to five people in a row.

and you invested this time in talking to them and then each one you're like, not my cup of tea, that was a waste of time. Probably after a couple of hours, you're like, this is just not working for me. The converse could be the effect where you speak to five people and they're all amazing and you're attracted to them, great. Maybe you're not fussy, but whatever. So I just think sometimes some things work great in principle and not in reality. I forgot why I was even talking about this. But anyway, to go back to your earlier point,

So I think generally there is a problem with how men particularly, the approach they have online in how they talk to people. I think there's a certain ease in how you can talk to someone. And because of the ease to start a conversation, the ease in how you can end that conversation or choose not to end it, i.e. ghost.

And I think this is just a modern phenomenon now of, you know, just now it's easier than ever to build a connection with someone, be it on Facebook and all your social networks or whatever. You know, a random person that you've never ever met, you can message them and have a conversation and then no one feels like they owe each other anything if that doesn't carry on. There's no like social cost to just ignoring them. Exactly, right? And it's the same here. And I think, you know,

So I think while we're at this juncture where this is relatively new, that's why it's difficult to deal with. So I think part of that, no doubt there's a role of platforms like ours to encourage good behavior and deter bad behavior. And I think one thing Muzzmatch has always tried to be about, we're trying to bring out the good, get rid of the bad. So things like, we were the first app to automatically censor bad language. So if you swear at someone on the app, it's automatically censored.

which other apps didn't have, which baffled me. We were the first app, you know, on a religious perspective, to allow you to have a chaperone in. Just novel. No one else was doing that, right? Exactly, right? No one was doing it. And I remember thinking about it at the time, thinking, this is a no-brainer. Like, why have we not got this? I built it and whatever. We were the first app on the security side to have selfie verification, right? We were actually the first app, I believe, to have an oath that you agree to before you use it. So when you sign up to Muzzmatch...

It will literally, there was a screen that would come up before you chat to anyone that would say Bismillah, which means in the name of God. And it would say, basically, I promise to use the app properly. And if I don't, I'll be blocked and banned. And you have to accept it to continue. Now, of course, I, you know, maybe 90% of people don't even read it and just go whatever, right, next. But,

Just by having that sets the tone of what is and isn't acceptable in this platform. And it's interesting to see other apps begin to introduce some form of oath, some agreement that you as a user agree to, which I found interesting. One thing by having that, and equally we have when you match with someone, we do something really simple and trivial, which is at the start of the chat, we just say, keep it halal. And we'll have a funny line like, God is always watching, or keep it halal.

Yeah, like our team see what you're up to. Whatever, right? We have it. And of course, most people probably ignore it. But for me, it was important that that was always there because I wanted to make sure that we set the tone. Our job is setting the tone. And the flip side of that equally is if something bad does happen, do we turn a blind eye to it or do we take action? And for us, we firmly take action. We get rid of... I even tell the team, we've blocked 100,000 accounts, which is a lot. Wow. Okay.

- Oh, okay. - But because we know what is and isn't acceptable and what we do and don't want on our platform. - So what?

do you have any kind of but sorry just to finish the final point the Muslim men problem yeah yeah sorry what's the deal with that yeah what's the deal with that I actually think so I thought about this as a man and I thought why are Muslim men generally quite useless at all this I'm being I'm speaking very generally to cover all the politically correct community out there but I'm very politically incorrect at times but anyway how and why are men Muslim men generally quite useless when it comes to I think part of it is

our upbringing, right? We're brought up, and maybe slightly less so now, but generally, let's say my generation, whatever. We're brought up generally in a fairly segregated world, right? You didn't really chill with girls. You didn't really, there wasn't, those social settings weren't really there. And probably your only interactions later on were maybe at university. But even then, if I look at, you know, me at university, generally, I had a very male group and a female group, whatever, right?

So we're brought up like that and then you are told by your family you're under pressure to get married and find someone, right? And you're like, what the hell? What do I know about women? And then you meet someone, you chat to them, you get married and you suddenly live with a girl, right? Or you live together. You've never lived with someone before or you've only ever lived at home. So you're navigating all of this. And for some people, you're living at home with this other person, right? That's difficult. And so you undergo no training. And I actually looked at it and I thought, okay,

If you look at the Western world, the non-Muslims, right? How do they meet people and all that stuff? And they obviously, you know, from a young, relatively younger age, wherever, from teenage years onwards, they have relationships, you know, all that kind of stuff. They go through all of that. They live with people, with people of the opposite sex. They do all of this stuff.

And that's an education, right? Relationships that don't work out, they are an education. That's part of you learning about you, about how do I deal with other people? How do I deal with other situations, difficult situations, good, the bad, the ugly, right? And that's how you evolve as a person. And I do think for, as Muslim guys and girls, but you know, let's say guys in this particular scenario, don't have that education.

So I think we're slightly socially illiterate in some ways and we're playing catch up. And I think I would genuinely, not to give them, you know, to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would put some of it to that as a reason, to be fair. I think that's entirely reasonable. I was on a road trip to Cornwall with the boys over the weekend and we were talking about this phenomenon of like, why are Muslim men weird? And we were sort of trying to come up with like pet theories around this.

I think a big part of it is the gender segregation stuff. Because I think, like, if I think back to my experience, coming to university, I wasn't drinking and that sort of barred me from the 98% of the social interaction that was happening at university, especially as a first year, which revolves around alcohol. Then it's like, okay, cool, there are these societies, like the Islamic Society, the Pakistan Society and things. And in the Islamic Society, the first time I had heard that, like,

talking to a girl is bad basically was through the islamic society i was like whoa okay that's rogue but like for most of the people there who had been been brought up in more like sort of surrounded by the muslims and stuff that was just normal of course i'm not going to be friends with a girl that's just ridiculous why how on earth can you possibly imagine that you'd even live with a girl like you know what's what's going on there and it in a way gender sort of

free mixing so so stigmatized you know some people say rightly or wrongly based on like whatever the rules are but i feel like that must have an impact on the kind of development for sure um and i feel like for me i feel thankful now i've got i've got female friends and i live with a girl who can point out be like okay yeah you know in this context you're an idiot the way you said that thing was not sensitive because that person is like oh my god girls are sensitive about stuff what the hell you

Yeah, for sure. It's just not a model that I have. And even like, you know, personal level for me, right? It's an education. I say things I have no idea. I say things that in my head aren't remotely big or aren't remotely major. And then for the other person, it's massive, right? And especially for women. I'm sure I definitely have. And that's an education for me to be like, okay,

Not everyone thinks this way or I need to be sensitive to this or I need to be more accustomed to this or attuned to this or whatever. And I do think you're dead right. You know, you've got the religious angle of the element of remixing and all that kind of stuff, which I won't go into. But I think there's one thing that, you know, I think we as a community have failed somewhat is, and Muzmach is a great example of this actually.

I've often been asked, did you have loads of pushback when we launched Muzmatch? Because at the time, remember, mainstream dating apps were quite taboo, right? It was like, whatever. And they had a bad rep. I think that rep has improved over time and it's become the norm now, obviously. Whereas for us, just the fact that we were an app dating app for Muslims was like, whoa, how haram is this? But then, thankfully, we've been super successful, right? Yeah.

And I think we've been successful because the need was clearly there. And people have asked, "Oh, did you have a lot of pushback?" And I remember thinking I would. And genuinely, I don't think we've had as big a pushback as I thought we would by religious community or whatever. And I think A, because the need is clearly there, number one. But I think B, because no one solved it. They haven't solved it. They haven't figured out... There's a big crisis in the Muslim community of how do you get the young Muslims married and how do they stay married, right?

You can hark on about the old ways of doing things, but unless you come up with something that works and that is approachable for young people and talk to them in a voice that works,

you're wasting your time. And I think up till now, the religious community haven't done this because it's difficult and it's messy. Talking about, I would love for mainstream religious elders and speakers to talk about how to navigate online as a Muslim. - How would they know? - Exactly, that's part of it. How would they know? But even for them to just rightly, and so we're having to fill the gap here. We're having to talk about these things of how do you navigate online? How do you deal with red flags? How do you approach someone online? What should you even talk about?

what is good and isn't good to talk about online, all this kind of stuff, which are gaps, right? But part of me thinks because this is new, you either try and figure it out yourself. You can't just be offended by it or give up because it's hard. It's on us to figure it out. Interesting. So changing gears slightly. Yes. You presumably have access to zillions of data points around preferences, men preferences, women preferences, and so on. Do you have a list of...

What are the things that a Muslim girl is looking for in a Muslim guy asking for a friend? I thought it was a doctor, YouTuber was the top of the list. I thought, no. Profession, probably I would say... Profession is the main one. Yeah, I would say it's probably the biggest one. I don't want to say stroke income.

Oh, okay. But income, no doubt, is important. Okay. And I've heard that and I've seen it. So whether you imply that by profession, it's part of it. But I actually think part of it comes down to, actually, there is a gap between Muslim men and Muslim women. I think Muslim women are academically and professionally...

way ahead almost in men. Definitely. And more serious and more wanting to get married and more mature in every single domain. All of that, right? So we're playing catch up already. And they're like, where's the guys who are at our level? And that's where we get stuck. And that's where they get stuck with that frustration. And I don't know how we solve that. But we're trying our best. But the least we can do is help them identify the people who come at their criteria. But whatever. So I think no doubt they're trying to find people who are... Profession, income. Profession, income. So for the record...

Me posing with a Tesla. Because like income signaling. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Boxing, you might have gone too far. Okay, fine. Me holding up my million subscribers YouTube tag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kill that. Okay, we're going to change. We don't need that. We don't need that. But I would say. Me posting a selfie with my stethoscope at work. It's like, oh, hello. That's not bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stethoscope, the doctor vibes. You know, that's good. You know, the guitar singing. You know,

you know, certain demographic. Yeah, but also like, it's a bit try hard. It's like, you know, music is hard. You know, you've got all the baggage associated with any type of signaling. And your singing voice, you know, needs a bit of work. I know. I was thinking in the shower this morning, I really want to find a singing teacher that I can have two lessons a week with. I was listening to, have you heard these songs by Olivia Rodrigo recently? I've heard, yeah, yeah,

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - A driver's license. - Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. - So her album came out like two days ago. - Yeah. - And I've been listening to that on repeat. And she's just absolutely sick at singing. And I was like, "Damn, how'd you do that?" I was speaking to, complete tangent, I was speaking to a YouTuber friend of mine who's a professional musician. And I was like, "Bloody hell, how are you so good at singing?" She was like, "Well, I've been having singing lessons for 20 years." - Wow. - And I was like, "Damn, okay, lessons do help. Okay, cool, I'm gonna get lessons."

Anyway, that aside. You're going to hit that note. Okay, so income profession. I think income profession and not being weird is probably the final one. How do girls define weird? So you know what? And I've seen this because I have sometimes the misfortune of actually reading most match chats, particularly when something gets reported. Definitely there's an art to a conversation, no doubt, right? There's an art to how to hold a conversation, how to...

ask the right questions, how to carry a conversation. And I think a lot of Muslim men aren't very good at it. It's very either, and don't be wrong, I actually think Muslim women to some degree as well, but sometimes it can be very tick boxy, because you're on a platform like ours, you're out there to find the person you're going to marry. And no doubt, most likely, you have this criteria in your head. And for some people, they're straight on the criteria. So you're like, Salam, I'm looking for ABC. People will be like, weird. Yeah, it's like too much, too soon. Right?

you know, if you look at it, probably the first thing you want to see is kind of just, am I just interested in this person? Forget everything else. Are they just an interesting person that I can talk to? And then you can drip into the other bits, right? Of, oh, what do you do for a living? And blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff.

I think that art of conversation is definitely lacking and I've heard that a lot. I would probably say, and you know, you touched on it earlier, which is generally speaking, Muslim women are way more serious and their intent is way stronger than a lot of Muslim men. Not all, but a lot of Muslim men. So for them, the moment they find a Muslim man where

that he's equally on that same wavelength of being cool with the intent. A Muslim man saying, I'm cool with if you want to get family involved early, no problem. Because it doesn't mean you're getting married, right? But I'm happy to talk to your mum or your dad, whatever. Fine, if that's important to you, cool. I think for a lot of Muslim women, it's a clear marker. The big thing I've heard time and time again, especially by Muslim women where things haven't worked out, is he didn't want to talk to his... It took him three months to tell his family about me.

You know, like things like that, right? Where I'm like... That's not that rogue in like white people dating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not. That's like three years and you're like, oh, by the way, I met someone. Here you go. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas obviously for the Muslim spectrum it's different, right? But whereas I'm like, okay, well, there's, you know, why, right? Because like I said, it doesn't mean you're getting married, but at least it shows that I'm serious and this is what I'm looking for, right? To even remotely involve a family member. Yeah.

So I think, I actually think, and the thing is, which is good for Muslim men is, because that bar is so down low. Yeah, it's being polite. Yeah, I'm not even joking. Like having a remotely sensible profile with just normal photos. So not like eight buttons on top. Yeah, yeah, none of that. One more button there. But like normal photos. And I mean it, just like normal. Just a sensible, normal profile. With nothing too OTT. Nothing too fancy, yeah. And just having a normal, sensible conversation. Yeah.

that's you're in the top 5% I'm telling you and people don't realise that they really don't so I think for most of you if you're half decent you're in good stead you know yeah because so you've got hope there's hope for you alright I need to sort my profile out get rid of all the flexing yeah I was speaking to another friend of mine who this guy actually emailed me because often I joke and I'm like

joke I say joke often I say in my YouTube videos about how I'm single and looking for a wife and so on joking not joking right so he mod me being like look I've helped loads of my mates you know get better with women I'm going to help you out as well hitch exactly and I kind of messaged him the other day because I was asking him like hey Michael any tips on how you have an interesting conversation with someone over

thinking over like hinder or something yeah yeah and he was like you don't need to be fancy about it you can literally just be like say hey hey how's your day going yeah and i was like my mind was blown yeah yeah it's true i thought i had to in the first message you know you know be quirky be witty be funny comment something about the profile not comment on a photo because that's weird come another thing he was just like no man just say hey how's it going and yeah

Start a conversation. Because I'm telling you, and he's right, to be normal sets you apart now. Because so many people think they have to be this thing or act in a certain way, which is abnormal. And I'm sure, particularly for women, it must be tiring. Yeah. Like getting that kind of interest or that. Yeah.

whatever, you know, like, and I think it'll be refreshing. I'm sure I can't speak for women. I'm not one, but I'm sure it was refreshing to just find someone just normal with a head screwed on. Yeah. Who could have, who can hold a good conversation. And you're right. It doesn't have to be like a lot of people don't, you know, asking about their day, um,

it's kind of different to asking about their day and actually being interested in their response, right? And then that going from there, you know, they're going to somewhere. So yeah, you don't want to be tick box questions either. You know, like you want to be genuinely interested. Yeah, just Tanisha. Ding! You know? Yeah, it's just like 4am messages when you hear someone's woke up. Classic. That's like. MashaAllah. Just woke up thinking of you. You know, none of that.

Do you have any thoughts on, for example, a 23 year old Muslim girl and a 23 year old Muslim guy are in very different places when it comes to intent for marriage. Do you have a theory on what is the ideal age gap to get to, you know, what age is the man to be at the same level as like a 25 year old woman, for example?

I think this is hard. Being very general in my opinion here, I would say

I think men did no doubt take longer. We take longer to cook. Even if I just look back at myself, I think it was after about 27, 28, where even I felt that I had matured in some way. People still say I'm not mature by the way, but anyway, where I felt I'd matured, I think job wise, I was in a better place. I felt like I'd figured things out a little bit more of life or whatever, or even about me or what I was doing. And I think I was just a lot more attuned to

you know, not necessarily what it's like to be in a relationship, but this whole dynamic of meeting someone and talking to them and getting to know them, this whole thing. Whereas if I look at myself before then, I think I was very immature. You're not consciously thinking about it with a grown-up mentality. I think you were quite young then. So I do think... What do you mean by a grown-up mentality? As in understanding the, call it, I'd say understanding the longer-term consequences of things that you say and do.

You don't remotely think like that. Everything is now. You just do stuff. Which is kind of good, don't get me wrong, because it's fun, whatever. But I do think, let's say at 23... And this is why I don't think it's a firm rule, because some people do grow together. Let's say two 23-year-olds with a lot of patience grow up together and it's like a beautiful thing with two people and they've evolved together and they become this amazing couple

Either you know in the two individuals or this amazing couple because of the way they've bounced off each other from from then But then probably more often I would say I don't know what statistics are but more often I would say they probably end up going like that right because They grow apart because they're like I did whatever I was whatever reason I thought I was with this person then is not who I am now Yeah, you know and it's your own evolution. I do think now for us

you know let's say in the west here i do think it's like 28-ish where job wise education wise your own mental growth uh you're at a place where you've more figured life out and what you want out of life and and by implication then what you want in a partner okay i think you have a better idea then whereas probably before most likely if you were to be honest about it the person you were with

which is kind of accident. You know, you just, I don't know if you just happen to be from the uni or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is why it's hard. And this is why, you know, so many dating apps have all this science of, we have science of dating and all this kind of stuff. You know, we've got all this personality and we don't have it. And I'm still deep down a little bit cynical of it because I'm genuinely convinced there is no science of why two people work and don't work. There isn't. No one can ever explain why this combination of personalities work, right? And by the same token,

Sometimes, the accident, your friend, right, that you end up getting with, right, it can work really well because the premise of you two getting on was there was no guard, there was no pretense, this was it. And, you know, there obviously was something you liked about that person, which is why you got with them. And you naturally kind of grow because you're patient.

It's hard, it is messy, but that's why it's fascinating. I don't think, for so many things, I think there isn't a rule as such. There's general advice or the general thoughts, but I equally think there's plenty of exceptions, which I guess keep it interesting. So I'd love to have a clear answer. I don't think I have it, but if I had to give you the lazy answer, I would say, yeah, for guys, no doubt, I think it is a bit older, because I think we need time to mature. - Another thing I'm curious about, how popular is the blurred photos feature?

And like, because that's interesting. That was like a novel thing when you guys introduced it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, what's the story with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think when I last checked, something like 20% of women and 5% of men. It used to be a female-only feature. And then we had...

And then we had quite a few men, particularly in the community who were, let's say, well known, who wanted to be private. And I was like, actually, I can understand even as a guy, if you want to be private and use the platform. So therefore, you should be able to have it. So anyway, both genders can decide to choose to blur their photos. And then we went on a whole journey of how do you unblur photos? Do you both unblur when it matches? Does the male photos unblur and then the women can unblur afterwards?

We changed it about 10 times and I don't think we fully... In the end, we resorted to... We just leave it to you guys. You can decide who wants to unblur when. You can blur it back again if you want. And fine. Yeah, so we've been on this whole journey of figuring out how to unblur the photos once you've blurred it, right? But anyway, we actually did some analysis on what's the effect of unblurred photos. Oh, yeah, that'll be my next question. I knew you were itching for this.

- Give me data. So we found statistically with blurred photos, let's say this is from a female perspective 'cause I think we did it when only women had blurred photos. But anyway, statistically you were more likely to get a match

with blurred photos. However, you are more likely to be unmatched straight after. So because I think for men they would be like, she's blurred, whatever. I'll take the pun and like her. And therefore you like them back, you match, whatever. But then the moment I guess he sees your photo and he's like, oh, not my cup of tea, he'd unmatch. So that's what we found in the data. So generally speaking, you would say having blurred photos leads to poorer quality matches.

and not as good conversations. So we actually did a thing, I think about six months ago, where we, because the principle of having blurred photos is great, privacy and all that, but the practicality isn't because, you know, like I said, we are, you know, we're visual creatures, both men and women, right? And, you know, to deny that I think is, is,

is naive personally. So what we did was we educated users better of, alright, if you want blurred photos, this is the effect. You get poor quality matches, you will get seen less, et cetera, et cetera, all these kind of things. The quality will be poorer for you. And so we did all that and generally we found is

which is the intent of the effect, but fewer people decided to blur the photo. So I think now we've got it down to like 15% or something. I think at the peak it was 30% from memory, sorry. I feel like this is one of those very inconvenient truths about life that people are superficial. Yeah, and looks matter. Looks matter, yeah. But the thing is, this is what I find baffling. It's just not very woke to even talk about the fact that looks matter in the slightest. It's completely unacceptable. But it's the whole like...

You know, so let's say you go on the Islamic perspective, right? A woman can be married for four things. Lineage, wealth, beauty and religion, right? Beauty is one. Yeah. Also, wealth and lineage are also not particularly woke. Yeah, yeah. You know, Lord Mountbatten. But yeah, you know, it's like, but beauty is one, right? For a reason. And no doubt, look,

basic human instinct and what's in us, in our innate nature is both men and women, there is an element of attraction to the opposite gender, right? And looks is one. There is an ideal of beauty whether you like it or not, right? And no doubt in the West that ideal is programmed to some extent, but it's there.

So you can't fight it. And no doubt, and don't get me wrong, in this whole situation, women get a hard time because they're being over the head with this vision of beauty and this standard that they're having to be held to. So no doubt, the setup doesn't make it easy for them. But at the heart of it, and we can't deny that, both for men and for women, looks are so important. They are. And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it at all. And like I said, there are apps out there that try and

It was one thing we're trying to do, sorry, to slightly counter that. So let's say you've got blurred photos. So imagine you've got a profile now. And our profiles are quite rich. There's like 22 different data points on the profile. There's a lot that you can put on there. And we're actually adding more. So our goal is...

how can we encourage people to be slightly less superficial? How can we bring out your personality better on the app in different ways, be it with voice, be it with video, et cetera? So we've got some cool stuff that we're looking to build quite soon, especially that will help the blurred profiles, but actually will help everyone. How do I...

How do I get someone attracted to me not just based on a photo? That's the heart of it, right? Exactly. And then the flip side, let's say, most of women is how can we help them determine how serious the guy is? If we can answer those two questions...

Well, if any dating gap, that's like gold. And that is where we're striving towards. And it's hard. This is really hard because you're trying to tackle that in a way that you can solve at scale, that you can solve for men, that you can solve for women, that you can solve using technology. You know, it's a complicated problem. You know, some things, like I said, sound great in principle, but trying to nail that in reality is very difficult. But we haven't finished. We've got a ton of stuff that...

And that's what for me keeps me excited. Like I've got so many ideas where now, thank God, we've got a team where our ideas we can actually build, which is amazing. It's such a great place to be. And that's what keeps me buzzing, you know, genuinely. How does it feel? Because like, you know, 100,000 weddings have happened because of the app. That's a lot. Like you as an individual are having a...

Needle moving impact on The birth weight Yeah Which for the most part Is already high No you're right It is That's gotta be weird right You know what I'll tell you The weirdest Unsatisfying Most satisfying thing I had Was once I was on the DLR The train For those that don't know In Cangal Anyway I was on the train And

the guy on the seat in front of me was on Muzzmatch. And I just happened to just like look over and I was like, hold on, that's Muzzmatch. And trust me, that feeling I had was like, that's when it hit me when I was like, wow, like this is, it sounds weird, but it's real. Like people use it in their own time and they're getting use out of it, they're getting value out of it. And definitely,

I remember once I was at this event and she's like a matchmaker, quite well known in the community. And she came up to me and she was like, "Shaz, you're putting me out of business here." And she was like, for real, she was like, "If I speak to all my clients, the biggest reason they're not using me and practically the biggest reason that people are telling me they're getting married is because Muzz Match is working."

And I was like, great. I was like, that's literally what we're here for. You know, we're putting our business. But I was like, great. It's working. And, you know, yesterday somebody emailed me saying, you know, it was their success story. And they said, by the way, my sister also found someone on your app and my brother also found someone. And I'm like, bloody hell, the whole family. The whole family on the app. And it's really good, you know. It's amazing. It genuinely is. And like our mission is,

You know and I always tell the team our mission is transforming how Muslims meet and marry. Yeah, that's our mission globally It's we want to do, you know, like we've definitely made huge strides in the West for Muslims in the West But now we're looking like to the Muslim world. How are they gonna evolve? You know because no doubt that young Muslims in the Muslim world their perspective on marriage their

their willingness to be empowered to find their own path. It's all changing, right? And we want to be the platform to help them on that journey, right? We've no doubt got tons of work to do on that as well, but that's kind of where, that's what excites me. You know, that's my mark on the world. When all is said and done, I want, you know, Muzzmatch to be genuinely an app or a platform where people look up to it saying, you know, the real world impact in the community of what we did. You know, I think that's major. Yeah, that's really cool.

I feel like that's a good place to end it because our lunch has just arrived. Yes, perfect. And then you can tell me about your thoughts against MVAs. Yeah. And we'll do that offline because I don't think it'll be relevant to it. I can't wait. Nice. All right, but yeah, thanks for coming on. Cool. Anything you'd like to plug? How can people find you? How can people learn more about you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For now, mozmatch.com. Download the app. It's completely free on the app stores. Are you on Twitter now, personally? I am on Twitter. It's just adunis underscore. I had to put an underscore on it. How do you feel about people just getting in touch with you?

you i always yeah welcome it so if you've got let's say you're you want to start a business you want advice on anything i genuinely welcome people to just just reach out i always

Like when I was starting up, I struggled to find a mentor, someone to actually talk to who would actually, there's a lot of people who talk, but there's a few people who've actually been there and done that. And I really struggled. So I try and do my best to, I guess, share any advice or knowledge or whatever I can to help other people get through it. So if I can help, reach out, I'm happy to. Amazing. Thanks for coming on. Fantastic. Yes, thank you. Wicked. Great. Yeah, that's fun. Wicked. Love it. That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you very much for listening. If you did enjoy the episode, please do share it with friends.

And do leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or on the iTunes store. That'll be linked in the show notes. And do let us know in your review who you'd like to see next on the podcast. If you didn't know, we've also got a video version of the podcast that'll be on the Deep Dive YouTube channel. And we also have a Deep Dive Clips YouTube channel. Again, links to those in the show notes and you can check them out if you like. So thank you so much for listening. Have a great rest of day and always remember, journey before destination. See you later.