Caroline
Chamberlain
Jon Cousins
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When Caroline Chamberlain and Jon Cousins set up Cybersuitors both had had
first-hand experience of dating agencies: in fact Caroline met her partner
Rodger through one - and it obviously worked out for them as their son Toby
testifies.
On swapping stories they began to see the limitations of existing services.
Historically, personal introduction agencies had offered personalised
matching services. But they were limited by the number of people they had on
their books. And they were expensive.
Online dating services overcame the numbers problem by gathering massive
memberships. Their challenge however was in actually matching people. Beyond
putting people together through superficial preferences (hair color etc)
they generally relied on the luck of the draw when it came to picking a
partner.
Caroline and Jon felt sure there had to be a better way, and began to wonder
if psychological profiling might hold the key to the problem.
To explore this they sought the advice of Dr Glenn Wilson - Reader in
Personality at the University of London Institute of Psychiatry - and a
world authority on the science of love and attraction. He did indeed have
the answer.
Years earlier he'd devised a romantic-compatibility testing program for one
of the very first home computers. It enabled potential couples to predict
how well they'd get on long-term. Recently he'd used a more sophisticated
'psychometric matching' process in a British TV show pitting psychologists
against psychics to see who'd do a better job of working out which of a
group of couples were most likely to get on together long-term.
Convinced they were now on to something, Jon and Caroline trialed an updated
'CQ Test' with a group of friends and were immediately encouraged by its
results. "It really worked," said Caroline. "People we knew, but who didn't
know each other, could easily be divided between those we genuinely thought
might hit it off (they scored highly) and those who probably wouldn't (they
got low scores)."
Suitably motivated, Caroline and Jon explored a list of nearly 50,000 names
before settling on Cybersuitors, then in a leafy English village, working on
one huge sheet of paper, they developed the structure of Cybersuitors -
establishing its headquarters in the town of Peterborough, near the large
concentration of computer-science talent centred on Cambridge.
In the summer of 2001 Cybersuitors went live on a test basis, providing a
free service which enabled groups of friends to see how compatible they
were. An instant hit, it matched over 30,000 couples in just one month.
During the winter of 2001/2 the CQ Test was scientifically tested on a
sample of 125 couples in long-term relationships: each answered the Test's
questions then completed a questionnaire which explored the degree to which
they were happy in their relationship. A strong correlation was discovered,
leading to the submission of the research results to a leading scientific
journal.
Cybersuitors was officially launched in the spring of 2002.
Caroline Chamberlain says the company has some unusual objectives in its
business plan: "We can't wait to introduce our first couple who get married:
I've already bought the hat".
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