Interview with Dateability, Me, and Johnathon (Part 1)
Hi, I am Jennifer Purcell and welcome to my podcast, Living with an Invisible Learning Challenge, where we will discuss, discover, and learn more about the challenges and triumphs of those with NLD and other learning challenges. I do have a website for this podcast and it is called livingwithnld.com. I also have a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter account for the podcast.
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I'm Jennifer Purcell, the host of Living with an Invisible Learning Challenge, and I'm here today with. Jacqueline, Alexa and Jonathan, and I'm going to interview them on their datability app and, about their work with, dating apps. So, I'll begin by having you introduce yourself. Hi, everyone. I am Jacqueline. I am 30 years old, and I am living in Denver, Colorado. I founded Datability with my sister, Alexa. After years of ableism and discrimination and just overall negative experiences that I had on the mainstream dating apps.
Jacqueline: I live with physical disabilities and chronic illnesses and, really, just couldn't believe that there wasn't a safe and inclusive place out there for the world's largest minority to date. And we decided to change that.
Alexa: And I'm Alexa. I'm Jacqueline's older sister. I'm a public interest attorney as well as the co-founder. And co CEO of Datability. I am not disabled, but I am an ally and an advocate and Jacqueline's really opened up my eyes to what it's like to date with a disability and I'm happy to be here. Happy to have you guys.
Johnathon: And I'm Jonathan. I am Jennifer's sibling. But she asked me to be on this because I have spent my work, in trust and safety. So advising tech companies on how to build safer, more inclusive platforms. I've done that for about 10 years working within tech companies. And among those, set numerous dating apps, , underneath the match group portfolio, which has a lot of dating apps. I'm sure you're familiar with Tinder hinge, plenty of fish, math. com, et cetera. But now I work as an independent consultant helping any tech company that requires, to build a safer platform.
Jennifer: So I chatted with you all. Yeah. It's a nice sibling episode. Yeah. I thought that was cool. So I was curious. Sounds like, for you, Jacqueline, it sounds like, Was it, I mean, Alexa was Jacqueline who inspired you to create the ability, right?
Jacqueline and Alexa: Yeah. And watching her experiences and how different they were from mine, even though we're so similar and just watching her go through this, we were, it was the beginning of the pandemic. And so there was kind of this lull in life and. A lull in my career because I was laid off due to budget cuts due to the pandemic. And so it was kind of like the time is now I see a problem. You know, coping makes it harder for me to compromise people to date too. So, like, the environment we were in in the time at the time. Also really made it make sense. And so, yeah, Jacqueline together, we did, we did together, but Jacqueline's experiences. I knew that we weren't alone and that she wasn't alone in what she was going through.
Jennifer: That makes sense to me. Jonathan, what inspired you to do your work?
Johnathon: I was inspired to get into trust and safety early on in my career because I wanted to make a difference. I believed that tech platforms had immense reach and impacted numerous people and became instrumental in just about every part of our lives. And I was of the mind that There needs to be people working on the inside to make those platforms better, and to make them safer, to make them more inclusive. And so it was a desire to do that and do that at scale. And I felt that tech platforms were the avenue to accomplish it.
Jennifer: Jacqueline, I don't know if you're comfortable with kind of introducing yourself in terms of what you, uh, what you live with and what makes it challenging.
Jacqueline and Alexa: Yeah, so the, I was diagnosed with chronic illnesses when I was a young teenager, dysautonomia, gastroparesis, Ehlers Danlos, and then that sort of spiraled into trigeminal neuralgia and, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. And I've undergone over 40 surgeries. And so really from, Every reflection from my head to my feet. I and I live with chronic pain and a lot of chronic fatigue and I live with a feeding tube as well due to the gastroparesis and the, the. Catalyst for datability was getting the feeding tube because food is such a big part of our society. And what, what, what do people do on first dates? Usually they go out to eat and that was really anxiety inducing. And to think that I had to, on top of everything, explain this, this whole scenario, it was, I was really worried. And, it just, yeah, it, it seemed like. It would be impossible to find someone who was understanding without having to go through all of these people who are not understanding. And I just like, was, was really sick of having to, to weed all these people. bad people out, just to, you know, go on one date with someone who wasn't ableist. , and, yeah. And so, I mean, I live with a lot of symptoms, just day to day, but I've really learned to adapt and to find what makes me happy and what I can do, rather than focusing on what I can't.
Jennifer: That makes sense to me. I'll give a little background of myself for those who are not familiar, who are listening. I have a nonverbal learning disability or NVLD. And basically it, for me, it's hard to, Comprehend body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and, social cues, kind of like autism almost, and some other challenges I have are with visual spatial, so driving is challenging for me actually, I'm taking a break from that, and , Like picture doing the big picture versus details is also hard. Usually I'm better with details and big pictures, and I tend to be more literal and black and white., And so what made me interested in interviewing you all is because of the app date ability. And, I think I found it when I was reading a blog, actually. I think I saw it at the bottom of the blog. I thought that was cool. , And, I wanted to ask you guys basically how long you've been in this line of work. And, , if you have ever done it with other companies or just, you know, by working for yourself, basically.
Jacquline and Alexa: I have no tech experience. I think I said before, I'm a public interest attorney. So I do work with vulnerable and marginalized populations. And I always have throughout my legal career, but I mean, beyond copying and pasting, I'm not tech savvy at all. And Jacqueline, you can, you know, talk about your background. I also didn't have any background in tech. I had, degree in psychology and got my master's in family and human development, and, had lots of other plans until my health took a toll, really after graduating college, and realized that, you know, the, the typical nine to five lifestyle probably wasn't conducive for someone living with my sort of chronic illnesses and we just. Like when we had, we had this idea to create datability and we just went with our gut instinct about what we needed to do next. And that's really what has gotten us here. We started, we came up with the idea in October of 2021. Then we started building it, and learned. A lot with like, you know, experimenting with different developers and all that. And then we launched a year later in October of 2022. And so we're, you know, we're about to hit our two year mark and that's really exciting. And all of this has re, yeah, really just been completed by instinct. And, um, you know, we've got some help here, here and there from people that we can find who are willing to help us.
But I, yeah, I mean, I think at the beginning we literally Googled how to build a dating app , because, or like where to find a coder, you were in the hospital and I was in the waiting room. Waiting for them to let me go back into your room. And I think I remember like Like who likes how to build an app like how to find someone who can build an app for you And and that is probably not the best way to do it because we didn't find the greatest people at first but now We're all good. We know the right questions to ask , but yeah, it's, I think that I can speak for both of us that we thought it would be a lot easier than it is. And I'm not really sure why we thought that, nothing is really easy these days and especially when it comes to tech, it's not easy. I think I thought it was going to be easy cause we were the only legitimate ones in this space.
And so I thought it was going to be easy to get funding. And then the people would come on board and we could pay them and we wouldn't have to convince them to come on for a sweat equity. So I thought that. I didn't realize the discrimination against female and disabled founders is still so pervasive and I was, and like that people would say, oh, the dating app market is already so saturated. And I'm like, that's fair. And there's somebody who's non disabled. Like, I have a plethora of dating apps that I could choose from , too many to think about, but for this, for the largest minority, there is nothing out there. And so, like, and you're just discounting and discrediting their experiences. But that is the reality and like what we've been faced with. And so that's why I thought it was easy. Gonna be easy. I really thought once we took off, once we launched, that investors would be running, you know, coming to us, giving us money. Also the economy really changed in that year. So it's like a totally different landscape now. But, um, yeah, it has been a lot harder. That is for sure.
Jennifer: That makes sense to me. I can understand why you thought it might be easier in the beginning and then, finding that it wasn't. And, I kind of chuckled when you said you Googled stuff because I do that too. I work in, uh, tech actually quite a bit, with the company that I work for. And , it's a nonprofit, so I basically help with managing their website and managing the app as well. I can understand where you guys are coming from. , So for you, Jonathan, you were working for other companies before creating your own, right?
Johnathon: I was, most of my career has been working for other companies, all in the same trust and safety space and all in tech. And working in tech, I can empathize with the experience of, oh, I'm not very technical. I'm not a coder. I'm not a programmer. And so if anyone tries to say, Hey, build me something, I'm like, I, I have no idea. I can, I can tell you about the market dynamics. I can tell you why it's so hard to get people to get on your app and why it's hard for gating apps especially, but. No, I'm not the one to build the app for you. But yeah, most of my career working in, for other companies and then I decided I wanted to be my own boss. I thought that there was an opportunity for tech companies to do more. Even though the economy has not been great recently, I think that there's an opportunity for them to bring in part time expertise, and save Healthcare costs and all those things that are related to a full time employee and to bring in specialized expertise as regulations are coming down the pipeline.
So there's a lot of new tech and safety oriented regulations. And so that's the opportunity that I'm, I'm jumping on with, with my latest venture.
Jennifer: Okay. Basically what I was going to mention as well. I live with chronic migraine, so I can understand chronic pain a little bit. For me, I think, what also drew me to interviewing, Jacqueline and Alexa was because of that, your platform seems to want to help chronically ill individuals and, , disabled individuals as well. And I was wondering if you could, describe some of the important qualities and values that you feel like your, app has for people.
Jacquline and Alexa: Yeah, something that I really struggled with when dating was because I'm invisibly disabled, I was disclosing and I didn't know when and how to disclose, , I didn't know how much to disclose in the beginning. And so I did try to experiment with that. You know, sometimes I would try to tell someone even before we went on a first date. , and then sometimes I would tell them on a first date or I wouldn't mention it at all until, you know, I actually began to trust the person. And unfortunately, none of those experiences ended up working out for me because people were just. They could not see past my chronic illness and hearing the word disability, it was like, Ooh, like people automatically think people are weak or unattractive. And it's just really hard for people who don't have any relationship with disability. To see that we are whole human beings and that we are like everyone else and it's just I just we are disabled. And that is something we wanted to combat on datability And so we created the datability deets profile section, which is an extensive list of broad terms where people can select like immunocompromised neurodivergent Wheelchair user and that just gives people a nice You little snippet of what you got going on.
And we have had a lot of positive feedback about that because people say it's just a relief. They can put that on their profile and, and so people know what, what they're getting when they look at your profile. Um, and I think that has made people feel more comfortable and, , just like included like, Oh, I see something on a dating app that fits me. And that's definitely for, yeah, like made, made for me. I think that's something that the other dating apps really miss. And we're inclusive of gender, you know, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, 48 percent of our users identify as queer. And so we really are trying to welcome everyone.
About 10 percent of our user base is not disabled. They're allies and advocates , like myself. And, yeah, it's been really nice to see this accommodating place. Now, not everyone, I can't guarantee that every single user, we have almost 21, 000 users on Datability. I can't guarantee that all of them are nice, good people. That's just not the way the world works, unfortunately. And I mean, even disabled. Yes, correct. Jerks. Yes. But I do think that overall, there is this sense of accommodation and acceptance and inclusion. And I think it's just. You know, it's just easier to find someone whose values match yours. I think we always try to stress, we're not trying to silo disabled people and say like disabled people should only date disabled people.
But I, I will say from my experience, I haven't been on a dating app in a long time, but it was, it's a lot. Like when you go on, there's , and so many people that choose from and if so many of those people that I'm seeing, like, don't, like, I just know right off the bat, like our values aren't going to match, I get defeated by like the fifth profile I'm viewing and it's like each one, like, no, no, no, I'm like, I don't want to be on here anymore and so narrowing it down to like, okay, disability or race or, you know, sexuality or what you're looking for, you know, even single parents, like stuff like that, I really actually think there is like, that's the future of dating and online dating, it's going to make it easier and less overwhelming and.
Less options. Yeah, I think like less options is good on that note like It, it sort of tries to bring back the old ways of dating. Like when you go to a bar there, you, you, those people are the only people that you're going to meet in that period of time. Um, you know, like when our parents are getting married, like they didn't have every option in the world.
It was really just who they came into contact with , and so grandparents, they met at a dance. Yeah. And so they've been married since. Five years. Yeah. So like if you narrow that down and just like, I think you have better chances because it is overwhelming. Like me, I always compare it to going into a Forever 21. Like that's always so overwhelming to go and see like a thousand tank tops. You just need one black tank top to pick out and choose from. And you're like, this is too much. I need to, I need to go somewhere else. Yeah. You just need a smaller store with what you're looking for. Yeah, uh, and that makes sense to me.
Jennifer: And I like how, you were saying that, neurodivergent people can basically date anybody that they want and same for, chronically ill as well. And, for the race and ethnicity to peace. And then, for you, Jonathan, have you, experienced?
Johnathon: I don't know if you experienced the neurodiverse part, but you probably experienced the LGBTQ piece in the dating apps that I've been a part of. Yes, and I think that what you've said, Jack about the paradox of choice, like dating apps, introduced unlimited choice, and we thought that was the best thing in the world. And I think for a time it was until it became too much choice. And now you see all the dating apps going back to creating niches, right?
Like Match Group, they launched their single. Parents Dating App story, right? They recently launched a LGBTQ focused and even more specifically that gay men focused app, uh, Archer, where they're trying to help you narrow back down again. I think we had this massive expansion of more is better. And then it's no, not so much. And I think that. The apps that have a niche focus, but are inclusive, you're an ally, come in. We love that. But it's, it's, it does have a niche audience. I think that's where the future is a hundred percent. I agree with that. And you're, you're not the only ones, the big players are making that bet too. You know, they, they have the benefit of scale right now, but I think they have the drawback of everyone just kind of sees them as a catch all Versus A tailored specific, we heard the same thing, uh, at, at match group. We did a lot of interviews with the trans community, LGBTQ, community. And we heard them say, this app isn't built for me. You know, I went through the flow and it took. The app's long enough to be able to choose between more than two different gender identities, but then suddenly they did, and that was great. But then the next question is, what are you interested in? And it's again, a binary as opposed to give me everybody or, hey, I prefer this leaning or that leaning. So I think being able to have something that is niche, but inclusive is. Is the future. We agree and we hope that all the big players are watching. Because one day we would love to be acquired. So we're, yeah, but no, I agree. And I think part of what Jacqueline was running into is like, you're wonderful.
Jacquline and Alexa: And you have so much to offer your catch, but somebody would hear you're disabled or see it on your profile. If you chose to disclose that way. And then just be like, I can't swipe to the next person who is going to be. Just as great as Jacqueline. Oh, and not disabled because that's just the way it is. It's unfortunate that that's how discriminatory our society is. And so the fact that there are so many options that they know there's a Jacqueline 2. 0 waiting just a few swipes away. It's so hard, but I think it's really datability that highlights everyone's uniqueness and individuality and lets them shine as a person. And it's so much better. Yeah, and, and, like, the disability market is a huge market, as you know, , and so we're not worried about, like, not having enough people joining, but we also see that, like, we don't need to have a two million So we're You like people user base, um, to be successful. Like we've already heard of success stories, even within the first month of launching, these two people started dating and they've been, you know, they're going to be hitting their two year anniversary this year. And that it just shows that like, I think at that point, we probably had 1500 people and on, on the app. And. These two people found each other and they decided to stay together, even though more people were joining and they could swipe. , You know, it's just, it's, it's really great to see.
Jennifer: I hope that episode was well worth it for you to listen to and that you were able to take something away from it. Even if you don't have a learning challenge or if you do, I hope it was extra worthwhile for you so that you are able to Learn something and maybe journal and jot down some few takeaways so that the next time You experience that challenge challenge yourself, you're able to, , learn how to breathe through it more easily, or maybe not have a meltdown or a tantrum, or be able to take away more learning from it and not make the same mistake twice, you know, and be able to also help somebody else go through that experience. If you have a friend who has a learning difference and you are neurotypical. So I hope you will be able to have those experiences in your life now that you have listened to this episode.
