Thompson Aderinkomi believes texting could save your marriage.
His new venture, Relate, provides relationship coaching based on highly-cited research, all via text message.
Users receive messages with challenges, tips and questions based on their relationship type, determined by a proprietary relationship management algorithm his team is developing. Users can work through the prompts at their own pace, and for as long as they’d like—there’s no set program, curriculum or end date.
“The goal is to help you spend time on your relationship without spending time in front of a screen,” he said. “We don’t want to suck you into another app. We want you focused outward.”
"We don’t want to suck you into another app"
It’s also the latest project from Aderinkomi, who made headlines last November after investors fired him from his CEO role at his first startup RetraceHealth, which has since shut down. The lessons learned from that experience are defining how he plans to build this time around, he said.
“We’re focused on profitability, focused on maintaining control, and focused on maximizing return for founders and seed investors,” he said.
The idea for Relate came from Aderinkomi’s curiosity over relationship apathy. While friends would describe their marriages as “good” no one would ever do a “cartwheel and backflip and jump and say, ‘My relationship is great,’” he said.
Aderinkomi, along with cofounder Genevieve Swenson (also formerly of Retrace Health) started digging into relationship research, and began developing text-message sized challenges, tips and question prompts based on the science.
A challenge, for example, could be to frame something negative in a positive light, or pick up the slack on household chores that your partner usually covers. Users can text back "done" when they've finished a task, "remind me" if they need more time, or "skip" to try something else (see image below).
At the moment, the platform is designed less to solve for a specific problem a couple is having, and more for general relationship upkeep.
“I tell people, look, Michael Jordan had a coach,” he said. “Those coaches play a very important role in helping someone be the best they can be at whatever they’re trying to be. That’s the idea of Relate. It’s to make a coach available to everybody, to make sure relationships are the best they can be.”
Relate is currently in “data collection mode” as they build out their relationship algorithm and design challenges, Aderinkomi said. While he declined to share user numbers just yet, he said he’s been pleased with the engagement of those on the platform, which he considers the key measurement of success.
“If someone’s relationship isn’t improving, they’re either not going to engage very often or they’re just going to drop out,” he said. “And based on our early data, most people are sticking with it.”
While they’re currently just offering Relate for romantic relationships, they hope to expand to work and family relationships next, as well as curriculum for more specific relationships problems.
Aderinkomi has been working on the startup since December, about a month after he was let go from RetraceHealth. While that’s a pretty quick dive back into the startup world after an intense end to his first venture, Aderinkomi said they’re taking the lessons learned from RetraceHealth into growing this venture.
His biggest shift is to focus on growth over product (a luxury he didn’t have in the highly regulated medtech space) and look at alternative funding methods, such as Indie.VC, rather than jumping back into traditional venture capital. They’re bootstrapped at the moment, and are currently exploring revenue models.
“We’re not building a company dependent on multiple return of funding, or at least [we’ll] maintain optionality,” Aderinkomi noted.
He added his relationships outside Retrace Health are what helped him move onto Relate.
“Without my wife, without my parents, without the Minneapolis- St.Paul startup community, I don’t think I would have had it in me to start up again,” Aderinkomi said.
“I’ve always been about the relationships,” he said. “That’s why Relate is so exciting to me.”
