We were lucky to catch up with Elle Wilson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Elle, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
I held my first singles event in 2022, when New Yorkers’ IRL social lives had yet to recover from the impacts of the pandemic, and when dating apps felt like the only viable option for finding romantic connection. Their day-to-day routines often felt lonely, and they were burnt out by the lack of accountability or intentionality on dating apps. Many of them frequently exclaimed, “I just want to meet someone through friends!”
For much of the last century, that has indeed been the most common way that people have met romantic partners, followed by other community-oriented avenues such as family or school. This has been disrupted by dating apps, the pandemic, and a variety of other cultural factors, but people seemed to be craving a return to dating that felt more social and accountable. I gave my company its name to speak to that desire.
Elle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Met Through Friends hosts friends-of-friends dating and social events to help people connect IRL in a way that feels authentic, accountable, and fun. We also offer dating coaching for individuals looking for support on their journey to find connection. I started Met Through Friends after a year and a half of hosting friends-of-friends singles parties for my own friends who were frustrated with the state of dating, and became a certified dating coach to provide further support to those who found themselves struggling to get “un-stuck.”
I hosted my first singles party for my own friends back in 2022, with the insight that I had lots of wonderful, “dateable” friends who, confusingly, weren’t finding any success on dating apps. What would happen if I got them and the other great people they knew offline and into a room full of others looking for the same thing? After a series of increasingly popular events, I founded the company with the core belief that we all know great people and can make more meaningful connections by leaning back into our IRL networks.
Each month, I get to see hundreds of people show up in person to make new connections. It never gets old! I’ve seen romantic relationships start, new friendships form, and old friendships strengthen. Whether or not someone ends up meeting the “love of their life” at my events or during our coaching engagement, it’s been my honor to watch people take brave steps in pursuit of meaningful relationships, and I’m proud to be setting the stage and providing support for it to happen.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I started my business by hosting events for my own network on an invite/referral-only basis, believing that this was the best way to ensure the quality and character of events. I quickly realized that this was neither scalable nor necessary for events to succeed. Instead, I required attendees to bring a friend of the orientation they were interested in dating in order to gain admission, and learned that this was a sufficiently high bar for ensuring that people were a good fit for what I was intending to create. Bringing a friend is a challenge but can (hopefully) elicit meaningful reflection: Do you have strong friendships across gender lines? Do you cultivate relationships with people you would vouch for, and who would vouch for you? Are you brave and resilient enough to take a chance on inviting someone to come to an event with you? While I’m certain there are people who would be a great fit who don’t currently have a good +1 to bring, I’ve found that requiring this action from guests results in consistently aligned groups of people showing up. Ultimately, my mission has evolved from something that impacted my own smaller circle of friends to something broader: I want to stand for the value of investing in brave, meaningful, joyful connection wherever you are.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
I’ve always loved hosting and gathering friends together, and held my first singles event a year and a half before I considered turning it into a business. I had jokingly suggested to my single friends that we get them all together in one room to bypass the dating apps, and enough of them insisted that they would be willing to attend that I actually organized it. After the success of the first one, I hosted several more that routinely filled up quickly. In fact, the last one I organized at home reached 60 RSVPs before I remembered to shut them off–far more than I could comfortably fit in my NYC apartment! It was at that moment that I realized I was onto something.
By complete coincidence, I founded the company on Valentine’s day in 2024. After getting some initial traction during the spring, I dropped down from full-time to part-time work at my prior company so I could give myself some runway to build the business while freeing up my time to invest more heavily in it. By the end of the summer, I was regularly welcoming hundreds of guests per month to events and working with established coaching clients, so I decided it was time to take the leap to full-time work on the company.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.met-through-friends.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/met_through_friends
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/102602644/
Image Credits
Sophie Orlich