How is the Ashley Madison of today different from the Ashley Madison of 10 years ago? What motivated you to drop the affair angle?
On one level, we're completely different and have almost no connection to our past, but at the same time, at our core, we haven't changed one iota. What I mean by that is in 2001 we launched and were one of the first disruptive brands in the digital world, launching with “Life Is Short, Have An Affair.” Over 20-plus years we were the preeminent app in business in that space, all the good and bad that comes with that. This past year, we've decided to make a considerable shift in our business model.
We are now in the business of discreet dating, because what we've noticed over the past year is that 57% of all our new sign-ups were actually single people. They weren't coming to us for our original reason. But what has been at our core is discretion. That's what enabled us to be successful for all these years, and it's the reason why so many other single people were coming to us because they were tired of their traditional dating app experience, asking you to put all your pictures and content online for anyone who has access to that platform to see regardless of your interests, and creating a really uninspiring experience for a lot of people, particularly women, so we've made a decision to shift.
So what exactly is ethical discretion?
The idea that one who comes to a dating app should have a little bit more control over who has access to their content, their images, their identity, and the conversations they have. It's not born out of shame or guilt; it’s more born out of what I do in my business is simply mine and it's not yours until such time you're invited into it.
The way I try to explain it to people, to understand how our shift has occurred and what it really means is, imagine this: a woman puts up her profile on a traditional dating app, she puts up her pictures, she's flirty, she's got a great dress on, she looks fantastic. She spends time and energy putting that profile together, and then Bob in accounting sees her profile and he's not the intended target — not that he intends to be cruel or malicious, but he makes a comment to her in the office and that feels awkward to her. He's not the person she’s looking to attract, but yet there he has the capacity to interact, screen capture on a lot of these different apps, pictures, and use them for his own, you know, interests and needs.
Not to suggest that everyone is doing it in a bad way, but nonetheless, it creates a really poor experience for a lot of women, and I think they're fatigued with it. And so we're giving people a place where they can have a little bit more control over their content… and give people a chance to date with ethics between them and the person they're intending to, and not dating the whole world.
So Ashley Madison could still be used as an app to carry out affairs with?
People could do that in the office — we saw Coldplay. People can do that on every other single traditional dating app. We've seen lots of data that suggests that a significant percentage of people on traditional dating apps are in fact pretending to be single. What I've found is that our members tend to be a little bit more honest about what they're really there for.
With the change in strategy, was there any discussion ever in changing the name Ashley Madison because of its past?
That’s a conversation I've had more than once with different parties. Obviously, our past is what it is, and there's times and moments where that conversation was probably more predominant in terms of people's desires. But what I'd say is the name Ashley Madison carries a lot of weight. It is a cultural touchstone for a lot of different people. Think about it from this perspective: there's a whole episode of The Simpsons based on Ashley Madison. There aren’t a lot of brands that have that recognition. So to walk away from Ashley Madison. would basically say we're going to start from scratch, start from zero, and that's not really great. Plus, we're incredibly proud of the business we've built.
The other thing Ashley Madison is well known for is a massive data breach that exposed all its users' information. With your emphasis now on privacy and discretion, how are you going about getting users to trust you with their information?
That event was about 11 years ago, and so I think the work to rebuild that trust occurred a long time ago. I don't think we'd be able to make this shift if we hadn't addressed all those questions and concerns. But to your point, I'll say this: who better to understand the value and privacy and discretion than a company that went through what we went through. And so we now look at security and privacy as core to our DNA. It's the backend of discretion. It is the responsibility of every single employee at Ashley Madison to ensure that privacy and security are baked into everything we do. And so security is not a checkbox that we can tick and say, ‘Oh, we're done for today. We don't need to worry about it for a while.’ It's a Sisyphean task — we have to push that boulder up the hill, if not every day, every hour, because it's constant in a digital world.
The online dating market is much more saturated now than 10 or 15 years ago. How does Ashley Madison distinguish itself from other apps and services that also lean into more niche interests and dating subcultures, like Feeld, for example?
So Feeld, we look at as sort of our loud and braggadocio uncle at the table, if you have ever been to a large family dinner. That's really designed for people who are not just proud, they want the world to know what they're doing and see all their activities. I don't know their business inside and out, but I would bet you dollars for doughnuts that their audience is probably a little bit younger than ours, if not significantly younger. We generally approach a slightly older audience, 30-35-plus people who've built up lives and careers and families. These are people who are tired of the online life, tired of exposing all the facets of their life to complete strangers, and they want a little bit more control.
What trends are you seeing in the dating app sector?
I think there's two core things that are really going to be driving dating in general. Authenticity is one, and I think that's one of the interesting aspects of Ashley. Even in our past, people, ironically, were more honest about who they were and what they were looking for, because they weren't necessarily at that time looking for the white picket fence and happily-ever-after.
And then I think discretion, whether that's privacy or security or however you want to frame it. It's more about I want to control who sees my content, who I connect with, and a little bit more control over that, because I don't want to be exposed to the whole world.
On the other hand there’s more general acceptance about, let's say, non-traditional relationships. Do you see that as a positive factor because it creates more potential customers?
There was a memoir put out a couple of years ago by Molly Rhoden Winter. She was a married woman, strong career, journalism, and she wanted to open up her marriage, and she actually chose Ashley Madison as one of her first forays. Discretion was her core goal because she wasn't sure how far she was going to take this — it was an unknown entity to her. And so we gave her a platform that allowed her to explore that. But I think it's beyond just people looking for [ethical non-monogamy] or kink. Certainly that's a function of it, but I think the larger scale trend that we're seeing is ‘I can be incredibly proud of what I do, but I don't need the whole world to be involved in it.’
I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that Ashley Madison is a Canadian company. What's it like building and expanding a business like this in the Canadian ecosystem?
One of the factors that did help build our brand was the fact that we're Canadian, because we have such a diverse set of voices and experiences who've been brought into our company from around the world. Canada is an immigrant nation; our whole country's built on that, and it's one that we're incredibly proud of — us Gen Xers growing up in school learning the difference between the melting pot and the mosaic. All those different ethnic voices, those different cultures, how people view dating is really interesting around the world, and those voices really helped guide us as we launched in country after country after country.
You’ve been at Ashley Madison since 2013. Was there any trepidation about joining the company given its mission statement?
At that time, I was, in fact, married, and so that precipitated a few interesting conversations with my spouse. But what we both saw at the time, and it’s still true to this day, is: 1) Here's this really unique Canadian company that is very honest about what business it's in. You may not have liked what we previously were, but we were very straightforward about the nature of our business. I appreciate it. 2) There's not a lot of consumer brand companies in Canada that are rooted here, built here, headquartered here, that have exposure around the world. We're often either subsidiaries of American or European conglomerations, or we're uniquely Canadian but only speak to a Canadian audience. And here was this international company based in Canada, built in Canada, headquartered in Canada with the opportunity to have this international experience. I thought, ‘Wow, that's an amazing, interesting space to be in. I'm going to learn a lot from it.’ I've worked with telecom, I've worked with consumer goods, I've worked with banking. This was exciting. This was interesting. This was dynamic. And I don't regret it in the slightest, 13 years on.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
