*Please respond to your invite to RSVP or email mark@courtlandbrooks.com with questions after reading this... Â
The Internet Dating Excellence World Summit is on Tuesday 19th July at Huone in Singapore, and is an international gathering of by-invitation-only CEOs and executives of leading Internet dating apps and online social communities.Â
The theme for this Summit is Connecting in Asia.
The Summit is designed to help you get to know other leaders from top companies in the dating industry. This Singapore IDEA SUMMIT is our first time in Singapore. The SUMMIT is led by Violet Lim, the CEO of Lunch Actually Group, and Mark Brooks, President of IDEA.
There is no price we can put on this event, so we do not charge for it. Our venue is at Huone, Singapore and the venue costs and the mixer after the event are kindly supported by the Social Development Network (SDN), and Courtland Brooks, so there is no conference fee. (You just cover your direct costs i.e. hotel, etc.) SDN is the leading public agency which works with partners in the private and public sectors to promote a conducive environment for social interaction and dating.
The Internet Dating Excellence World Summit will be small and focused and like quite different from other industry gatherings. There are 15 places only. You'll meet fellow CEOs and top flight executives from a diversity of leading Internet dating and online social community companies from around the world, and a couple of special guests to help us round out our thinking. Â
The most unusual thing about the Summit is there are no attendees. Just presenters. Everyone is presenting. So please bring one idea on how we can improve our individual apps and communities or grow in effectiveness, or overcome a current challenge. No need for powerpoints. Slides are entirely optional.Â
Presentations will be 10-15 minutes each, on your idea. We'll cover matters currently affecting the growth of the industry, safety, challenging issues worthy of collaboration, opportunities for collective growth, along with your inspirational and informative growth stories.
This event is for C levels, founders, owners, and rising-star leaders who are exceptionally personally and professionally invested in the industry. This will be a unique, uplifting and essential event that will inform your strategy, and help align you and your company with the best of what the industry is, and will become, and help you evolve with the benefit of perspective from your peers.
At each Summit we also try to round out the industry perspective by having a couple start-ups (that we can inspire), an expert on safety, and a couple of supporting vendors-of-interest.
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This is a closed-door session. There will be no reporters, no recording, and no blogging about the details of the event. This is a private gathering focused on the presentation and discussion of opportunities, real issues, and growth ideas.Â
This Summit is kindly sponsored by these technology providers:
 FaceTec - 3D face authentication software used by Tinder and MeetMe
 RealMe - Verification + Background checks. Making dating apps safer and more trusted
 vPaaS by Meet Group - Video at scale
 OneRep - Help daters take charge of their online privacy
Also:
 Courtland Brooks - Internet dating and communities consultancy-agency
Please respond to your invite to RSVP or email mark@courtlandbrooks.com with questions. Â
Douglas Foo is a reputable Singaporean entrepreneur and former Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament. He started Sakae Holdings Ltd, which runs a popular restaurant chain with outlets in Singapore, Malaysia, and across Asia.
In addition to being Chairman of SDN Council, Douglas is Singapore’s Non-Resident High Commissioner to United Republic of Tanzania, Fellow at Eisenhower Fellowship and Vice President of the Singapore National Employers Federation.
Mark runs Courtland Brooks, an agency-consultancy focusing on strategy, marketing and bus dev for Internet dating and online social communities. He's served POF, Meet Group, and 120+ companies since 2005. Prior to this, he worked with Friendster and ran an adventure club in Silicon Valley. Mark has been quoted in press 288 times (18 times in WSJ).Â
He heads IDEA.gp (since 2007) and the executive news summary service Online Personals Watch (since 2004).Â
He also owns Matchmaker.com.
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Mark is a grad of Harvard Business School (PLD, 2014) and London School of Economics (Exec. MSc Behavioral Science, 2017).
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Mark helps dating and social leaders connect, learn and share for an even more effective and prosperous future.
Violet started Lunch Actually with her husband Jamie 16 years ago after a stint at Citigroup.Â
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Today, Lunch Actually is Asia’s biggest premier lunch dating company with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Bangkok with the largest lunch dating membership base.
Together with Jamie, Violet also founded esync and LunchClick to fill the gap in the market for trusted online and offline dating service platforms. Lunch Actually Academy is established to provide singles with Dating and Image Consultancy, and Peerage provides high-end matchmaking services.
Violet has 2500+ media coverages such as The Straits Times, ABC News 20|20, CNBC Asia, BBC, Bloomberg and Radio Australia.
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Violet's life goal is to create 1 million happy marriages through the works of Lunch Actually Group.Â
She studied Law in Manchester and has an MSc in Int'l Relations from London School of Economics.
For the last 21 years he's pioneered matchmaking and online matrimony in India and now employees over 4000 people with 140 locations.
Recently the catalog of Matrimony brands was extended with the introduction of the Matrimony Photography service. This service helps couples find and hire wedding photography services.
Muru is also an angel investor and a member of the Chennai Angels. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program. Muru is the host of this LTR SUMMIT.
(Muru appears in my Indian matrimony vlogumentary here - Mark Brooks)
As the Group CEO of Paktor & Gaigai, Alex oversees online and offline matchmaking brands as well as the associated dating and image coaching businesses in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
In Singapore: Paktor, GaiGai & Fleek. In
Taiwan: Paktor Premium, Heder & IMpossible. In Malaysia: Datesmith and in Hong Kong: HeyDouble.
GaiGai was started for singles to meet at casual settings without the hours of swiping and chatting.
Prior to starting GaiGai, Alex worked as an investment analyst at hedge fund Lionport Capital in Singapore. He graduated with a double degree in Accounting and Business Management.
Jim has worked for internet and technology companies since 2000. He was the CFO of myYearbook from 2007 through 2012.
He rejoined MeetMe in 2016 to lead a Corporate Development effort and serve as the GM of the west coast businesses, Skout and Tagged.
In 2017, he became CFO, and in 2020 he became COO.
Prior to and in between his time at MeetMe, Jim led finance teams at venture backed technology companies such as Rent the Runway, Solve Media, Circulate and TurnTide.
Jim also sat as CFO In-Residence for First Round Capital for 2 years. He’s played a key role in over $1 billion of M&A and fundraising transactions.
Jim earned his CPA during his 7 years with Deloitte where he primarily served public technology companies.
Topic: Attachment, Resilience and Narcissm. Lessons From My Surveys Used For the UK Married At First Sight TV Show
Dr Angela Smith is on the UK Married At First Sight show, and is an expert in resiliency. Â
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If something doesn't kill you, does it always make you stronger? This has been the burning question behind her drive to understand what makes us resilient, and why some people are more resilient than others.
She has coached and counseled hundreds of people and has also spent some time specializing in assessing narcissists in every environment imaginable.
She will talk about surveys she carried out on the topic of attachment, resilience and narcissm, and will translate key findings for the context of Internet dating.
See The Resilient Way for her work on 'moving companies & individuals from survival to growth.
Jamie co-founded Lunch Actually in April 2004, together with his wife, Violet Lim. Lunch Actually is SouthEast Asia’s biggest dating group. He helped expand the businesses from Singapore to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Thailand and broadened the range of products to include Dating Websites and Apps.
Jamie is the business mechanic behind the business who has helped build up the systems and products from nothing to ensure that the matches and operations are efficiently accomplished, and quality is assured. He loves to improve things and strive for the perfect system in all his businesses.
Specialties: Start-Ups, Fund Raising, Product Development, and Building Systems
Taito is Professional Match Maker at IBJ.
After graduating with a degree in international business, he joined IBJ.
In the position, he coaches over 100 dating / matching service providers with sales methods and strategies and dating events operations.
IBJÂ matches over 10,000 married couples all over Japan annually.
Popular online IBJ properties include IBJapan.com, PartyParty, YouBride, and the marriage consulting agency network with 50 offices across Japan, Zwei.
Also, here is the IBJ company profile.
Stephen is a leading DevOps Engineer working for IBJ, Inc.
He has worked with the largest federation of marriage agencies in Japan to provide a great experience on the platform developed by IBJ, Inc. to the members and the matchmakers of the affiliated agencies.
He is currently focused on the mobile platform
He is also involved in improving the international perspective about IBJ and is becoming quite fluent in Japanese.
Here's an overview of Stephen at Nippon.com
Sumesh co-founded U2opia in 2010. U2opia Global is a Singapore-India based mobile tech. company with a portfolio of consumer and enterprise products in 70+ countries. U2opia Global has properties in Telcom, Digital Marketing, Gaming, Fantasy Sports, Dating and Media.
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Within U2opia Sumesh started Woo, in 2015.  Woo is a dating app in India that puts women first. Woo is also in SE Asia & Middle East & Canada. Woo is 'the dating app women love.'
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(Sumesh appears in my Indian dating & matrimony vlogumentary here - Mark Brooks)
Lisa founded the Global Love Institute (previously known as Matchmaking Institute) in 2003 to set a code of ethics and strict quality standards in the matchmaking industry. She also runs the Global Love Conference.Â
Lisa has been a matchmaker for 22 years.
Prior to being a matchmaker Lisa trained in social work at Uo Michigan, and Dramatic Literature at NYU.
Genevieve is Executive Director and media presenter Matchmaker coach, author with 25+ years experience in high level coaching, mentoring, training, supporting businesses through change and challenging times as well as working with single professionals.
She has held senior board level directorships in B2B and B2C companies in service, technology, luxury brand UK, events, new technology and wellbeing start-ups to Plc’s.
Genevieve is passionate about transforming peoples lives.
She is an ICF qualified Transformational Business and Relationship Coach & Mentor and has enjoyed a 30 year career centered around people, and building and developing businesses.
Zach Schleien started Filteroff which has been featured in New York Times, and BBC.
He started his online dating career by launching Top Romp, a dating publication that covered dating hacks and apps for the modern dater. After selling the blog he launched Hinge’s subreddit.
Zach pursued his Masters in Information Management from Syracuse University and then joined Johnson & Johnson as a Product Analyst. At Johnson & Johnson, he built a number of online communities.
Zach launched Filteroff as a way to meet people, not profiles. Filteroff has now raised $2.5M from a Fortune 500 company and has run over 14K virtual speed dating events as well as in-person singles events for a variety of communities.
Zach’s passions lie in technology, health, and creating authentic connections. When he is not working, Zach loves to travel the world, listen to podcasts, and work out.
Tan Chee Hau is Director of Family Engagement and Alliance Division, part of the Family Development Group under the Ministry of Social and Family Development.
An integral part of the Ministry’s mission is to nurture strong families, which are the bedrock of Singapore society and its first line of care and support. Through their work, they hope to make Singapore a conducive place for family life, and for singles to get married.
Prior to joining MSF, Chee Hau had a varied career, with experiences in tech, public policy, community development and sports. He believes that just like with dating, serendipity is important to having a fulfilling life.
Delicia Hoh is Head of Social Development Network (SDN), the leading public agency partnering the private and public sectors to promote a conducive ecosystem to support singles in social networking and dating on their journey towards marriage and parenthood.
Delicia also held various positions in the financial sector prior to joining the Ministry of Social and Family Development.
The official hotel is Hotel Fort Canning which is a 12 minute walk through a park to our venue at Huone
Our May 2022 New York event was diverse in constituents and deep in learning and sharing. Geoff Cook, the CEO of The Meet Group, co-hosted. This event was focused on the topic of Human Connection. The speakers comprised CEOs from Happn, East Meet East, Swell, amnd RealMe, For the World Officers Weekend (WOW) we took in views from multiple skyscrapers, and dined at one of New York's best.
See invitation site here.
We kicked off the new strand of real world events in Dubai. A relatively safe bet for what we hoped would mark about the end of the pandemic. This roundtable was hosted by the CEO/Founder of Matrimony, Murugavel Janakiraman, along with Mark Brooks. Speaker guests included the CEOs of ParshipMeet Group, Happn, The League and Woo.
See invitation site here.
We had grand plans, but the pandemic stopped us in our tracks from 2020 thru 2022 so we started a monthly online conference. We've done ~20 online conferences to keep you satiated.Â
See the June 2022 online conference along with a list of all prior conferences here.
The first NYC SUMMIT was at Harvard Club New York with an all star cast.  The CEOs of The Meet Group, Coffee Meets Bagel, Spark Networks, East Meet East, and Dating Group spoke among others. We also had the head of Match Groups skunkworks speak. On the weekend we walked the Highline in NYC and did a whiskey tasting tour.
See invitation site here.
The second formal event took place in December 2019 in Berlin in the Spark Networks HQ board room and hosted by Jeronimo Folgueira, the outgoing CEO of Spark Networks, along with Eric Eichmann, the new CEO. An all-star group of executives from some of the top dating and matchmaking companies on the planet were present, and presented their growth ideas to the group. See photo below. Â
See invitation site here. Â
The first formal event took place in April 2019 this year in Chennai, India which is the home of Matrimony.com. The weekend prior to the event we held a WOW, World Officers Weekend, where we toured the sights and sounds and culinary delights of Chennai. Then the first IDEA SUMMIT was held in Matrimony's boardroom and hosted by Muru, the CEO of Matrimony.com.Â
See invitation site here.
IDEA mixers have been happening for the last 10 years but the first semi-formal event was in Malta in November 2018. The World Officers Weekend brought together a group of dating executives to learn and share and have a long weekend in Malta.
See invitation site here.
