Why I Chose to Work on Saige

Today is May 20th, 2026. Exactly 2 years ago, on Monday May 20th, 2024, I started in Gaida. (I left Meta the Friday before.)

In other words, today is the 2nd anniversary of my 2nd startup.

I have always been more interested in building consumer products.

• 2012-2015 at Google, I led the first effort to incorporate ads in Knowledge Graph, and build units to answer user queries about cars.

• 2016-2019, I co-founded Leap.ai to use AI to help people find jobs.

• 2019-2024 at Meta, I led various products in Facebook app, including Jobs, Services, Faith, and Marketplace.

When starting Gaida, I listed various consumer must-have needs, like the following:

I quickly realized that every row, no exception, has “Yes” in the “Needs Mostly Met?” column. This is very different from the first time I co-founded Leap.ai. 10+ years of mobile app development has changed the landscape drastically.

Then I added one more column, and had an “aha” moment.

For all other needs, users are mostly positive towards the dominant players. Yes, they certainly have complaints about where things are not perfect and need improvement, but users will happily open the app.

Except dating. Users will use the dominant players, but the negative connotation can’t be ignored. Users feel FORCED to use the dating apps, instead of WILLINGLY.

That is an opportunity for disruption.

It also matches my general criteria for startup ideas (covered with more details in this post):

• General Demand

• Social Good

• Monetizability

• Personal Passion

The last point, Personal Passion, deserves extra explanation. I’m an old guy, and have never used any dating apps in my life up to that point. So why do I have personal passion for this problem space?

I have 2 teenage daughters, one is a sophomore in college, and one is a sophomore in high school. They grew up in the mobile era, with phones and addicting social media being a daily thing. I have first-hand experienced the challenge they are facing when it comes to building genuine human-to-human relationships. I’d like to build a product that could help them.

When I first approached this idea to my daughters and their close friends, they eagerly supported me, and happily served as my “product council”. Any time I had a doubt about how Gen Z would react to a certain feature, I called upon them, and they gave me unfiltered feedback. This really helps me focus on problems, and more importantly, solutions that resonate with Gen Z.

One example of how they influenced the product: along this way, I learned from my “product council” that Gen Z users have a bigger “friending” problem than “dating” problem. This helps us pivot our product focus on “relationship discovery”.

Today, we introduce Saige, a relationship discovery app. It’s available on both App Store and Google Play. (I don’t want you to feel this is a soft-promotion post, so I won’t provide direct links to the app here. If anyone is curious, please search “saige app” on App Store or Google Play, and you can find our app. Here I will only mention our website is saige.app.)

P.S. You might have noticed that I took a hiatus on this blog since Dec 2024. I realized then talk is too cheap, and action speaks louder. Instead of talking about what I planned to build, it felt much better to focus on building first, and then talk about it. Now I’ll be more regular in sharing my thoughts around various topics.

P.P.S. Nowadays in China, May 20th is treated like Valentine’s Day, since 5-2-0 sounds like “I love you” in Chinese. How fitting for a “relationship discovery” app.

P.P.P.S. It’s purely coincidental that today is also Meta’s massive layoff day. I wish all my former colleagues a peaceful day.