“We were told not to waste our time, no one will use our service.”
From the Co-Founder and CEO of Viola.AI, Violet Lim
Violet invites you to join her in changing the world, one relationship at a time.
Here is the transcript of her heartfelt message:
We were told not to waste our time, no one will use our service.
Advice. We love to give it and many times we even want to receive it. I was very familiar with ‘advice’ even at a young age. I was the Aunt Agony of all my friends when I was growing up. Every time my friends had a relationship problem, they would call me and I would be juggling 2 phones, one of the guy and one for the girl to give them advice.
This was taken to the next level when I entered the dating industry and I was constantly bombarded to give advice, especially dating advice…. for example, I will always tell them that the best way to know your date is to ask them the first school they went to, their mom’s maiden name, their email login and password & read all their emails… guys, you got it right? It’s just a joke.
So… over a decade ago, when we wanted to start an offline dating business and we too were avalanche with advice.
“You are taking too much risk!”
“Both of you should not go into the business together! What if you break up?”
“Why would anyone want to use a dating service?”
“I see this friend who doing this but not you.”
These were just some well-meaning advice we received.
Nevertheless, with borrowed money from family and using up all of our life savings, we put in around USD50,000 to start the company. From that 2 people initial start-up, we have grown it to a regional dating powerhouse with 10 online and offline services, in 6 countries and 110 people.
When we were raising money, we were advised by several VCs that they wouldn’t invest as a husband and wife team was too risky. We were told we were too nice and not cut-throat enough. We were told it’s a tough industry and we would only go so far.
We continued and soldiered on despite the skepticism and doom slayers. Presently the last valuation of the business was over USD20 Million giving our investors a huge return and our own initial shares we had were now worth over 180 times more.
Along the way, our reputation and success record have started to speak for themselves, and we were approached by a prestigious VC who wanted us to merge with another company that they were funding. The incentive was huge. However, after meeting with the company, we realized that we did not share the same mission and culture, and as tempting as it was to just say “yes” and receive tens of millions of funding, we didn’t feel that it was right.
Just like the easy revenue we could have made if we had resorted to the dirty cat-fishing tricks that many industry players engaged in, we refused to compromise on our mission and integrity.
One of our core values that is still true to this day is, “always do the right thing”.
It was an eerily similar situation when we first shared our preliminary plan for Viola.AI a few years ago. The same VCs mocked us by saying, “Who in the world would want to use that?” and “The problems that you want to solve are not big enough, you’re too niche”.
Well, tell that to the 1,300 people who have supported us, believed in our vision and contributed to our project when we launched our pre-sale with no product built yet.
Did you know — From the time you started to listen to my talk until now, over USD26,600 have been lost to love scammers, and around 374 marriages have ended in divorce?
The “state of love” is not a niche problem, it’s a USD 800 Billion market, a big problem with billions lost to scams, increasing hundreds of millions of unwilling singles, increasing hundreds of millions of marriages breaking down all over the world and a confused generation whom witnessed much misery from their parents’ divorces. We believe our vision for Viola.AI can help combat these disturbing trends.
Now that we are about to start our Public Sale, many people advised us against it due to challenging market conditions. “Now is not a good time”, and “Who would participate in this bearish market?”, they say.
Challenging market conditions is far from a new experience for us. Over the decade, we have witnessed many down cycles that affected our business. Throughout all these down cycles we have fought harder and never gave up. We have only emerged stronger, better and often out of the challenging times emerged new opportunities that took us to the next level.
Like what American baseball player Babe Ruth said…“You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.”
We would do the same for Viola.AI. We fight and fight and fight from start to end, we would grow ether by ether, version to version, user to user, we would keep pushing forward no matter the obstacles until…Viola.AI is a success.
Viola.AI is our most ambitious and important project. And we feel, in many sense, that starting all over again from the beginning but this time, it is not with just 2 people, but with the entire Viola.AI team, our parent company Lunch Actually Group’s support and most importantly, we have you — our amazing community of supporters!
We hear your words of affirmation, and we thank you for your dedication and passion. You have reaffirmed us that Viola.AI is a project that the world needs.
We invite you to join the journey and work with us. Let’s show them that a world filled with love and happy relationships, are worth fighting for. Let’s change the world, one relationship at a time.
Sincerely,
Violet
