be a podcast is actually sponsored by dating across the pond in celebration of the launch of their new dating platform. And while Ben chose the topic, we have full editorial control and our plan is to have a fun discussion on this topic. We're going to talk about the history of his website, how it got started, and transatlantic dating in general. And now, as a happily married man, this is a topic I know absolutely nothing about. So I'm excited to learn how Brits and Americans are different when it comes to dating.

Welcome, Ben. Thank you for having me, Jonathan. So Ben, give us some background. Tell us about the history of date British guys and how it got started.

And so one thing led to another and we decided, you know what, let's just make a website and let's see what could happen. And that led to us getting a whole bunch of press really quickly. and we didn't really have the website perfectly built that, you know, it was like it was just about working and we just had a community that we just started. And then suddenly we just had like all this attention in the space of like two weeks.

And that attention basically sustained the business for, you know, well over a decade. And then basically we decided to pivot the business in order to go onto the app store and build an Android app. because basically the business itself, I mean, it sounds bit sexist because it's date British guys. But of course, like, we had people of all backgrounds that were members. So, but we had to change the name and we decided to pivot to be a more global audience.

And so we shifted to being dating across the pond, which is still basically like 90% Brits and Americans. But it also means, hey, if you want to meet someone from a different part of the world, and they are looking to meet someone from your country or your nationality, then this is a community for international travelers, basically.

So it was actually kind of really amazing watching, you know, at this point. point, we've had about 200,000 people come through the platform. And it was always an issue getting men because I think they, you know, either the name of the website was off putting or confusing to them, like date British guys. So why would a guy join unless they were gay, right, to join a date British guy's website? So that was part of the issue, I think.

And also it was like, hey, is this for real? Is there really a website where there's like more women than men from this platform? But like, fortunately, you know, the numbers are not ridiculous in one side or the other, and it's, and somehow it's, you know, it's sustained that can be.

The actual apps will be coming out about six months after the desktop version, but the experience won't really be that much different versus the two. But the big difference is we really wanted to build more credibility into international dating. Like we obviously have some credibility, but it's still a thin credibility, because we're Because, like, you know, the idea of dating someone from another country, I think it concerns people. You know, it's like, well, I don't know, it's a long way, it's a lot of money.

Like, are they real? And so we really wanted to make sure credibility was like a central part of this. And obviously, we've been in the news. You know, we've got credibility in terms of we were in the New York Times. We were in the BBC News. We were in Time.com. We've had a lot of that press. But we wanted to make it so that when you're on the platform, you feel like there's more credibility. So what we've done is.

we've introduced something that no other dating platform has at the moment, which is video interviews. So we have this software basically built into the website where you click a button and then it will ask you a series of questions. You know, there's like a pool of like 200 questions and it will randomly ask you a question. And if you don't like it, you can skip it. But if you do like it or you're willing to answer it, then you can record up to a minute or a minute and 15 seconds of your answer.

And I think this is going to really differentiate from most of the other players out there because you can really get to know someone from hearing their voice and seeing them on camera.

So I think one of the things that, you know, differentiates us is that the other the other websites out there and apps that do international dating have got bad reputations, you know, because if you, you know, I've tested out all of these, you know, I want to know my competition, right? And what you find when you go on these other platforms is they're just like not real people. There are so many like, you know, mail order bride platforms, right?

There are so many sort of scammer platforms where everyone's free, you know, on the women female side, but like the guys have to pay. And obviously we're the other way, we were the other way around for a long time. We had like free men in the UK. And we charged people outside of the UK, which, you know, wasn't fair. But we had to do it because we just, we needed to attract more men to the, to the, to the platform.

So I think where we're different from these other international dating platforms is just that they're just not trustworthy. There's just, you know, you get a poor experience. You just get harassed by these models, you know, male or female or any gender. And they suck people in. And it's just kind of like, unfortunately, there's just not a lot of trustworthy places at a global level that cater specifically for international connections. And obviously we're also not a marriage brokerage.

You know, like our goal is not to get you a green card or get married. You know, our goal is to connect people, to have romantic relationships, to fall in love. And whatever that may be in the end as to where you end up, where you end up living, that's up to you. But we want to create a platform which is like centered around love and centered around relationships. It's what I believe in. It's my, you know, I went through this myself.

I've met, you know, I've met people online. Like, I was in a relationship with my ex-wife. We were together. That was the beginning of this website, day British guys. And we were together for 17 years. And, you know, sadly, it didn't work out, but we have a beautiful child that came out of it. His name's Teddy. And I have absolutely no regrets about that. And maybe we were a bit young, you know, but when we got together.

But, In the end, like, I've seen the benefits of being in relationships with people from different countries. And it's a fascinating experience. And I've learned so much new things from the different places and the different people that I've been in relationships with. And now I'm dating a beautiful Hungarian lady who's based out here in the US. And, you know, she's also got French nationality and she's American citizen. And there's a lot of people like that in the world that have, you know, a desire and a need to be living and working in different places.

We also have a photo verification where you'll have to like put up your hand or make a funny face or whatever, very similar to like the way Bumble does it. So in that sense, if you just, that eliminates the people that are just taking photos off of the internet and creating a profile because now we're expecting you to actually do a special hand gesture or whatever. So between the location map, between the photo verification and the, well, there's also, if you're going to pay, so this is, I'd say probably the largest verification we have is the paywall.

So this is a bit of a controversial thing in the online dating community because there's so many platforms that offer free service. And then maybe they offer an upgrade facility for like people that use it a lot. But, you know, when you've got millions and millions of members, that makes sense as a business model. But when you've got hundreds of thousands of members, it doesn't make sense to offer completely free service because you're just constantly dealing with scammers.

You're constantly dealing with fake users, like wherever, you know, I always like to say that, you know, think of a nightclub that has free entrance, you know, versus a nightclub that actually, like, you have to pay to go in. You're going to get people that are a little bit more serious. You're going to eliminate a lot of the garbage just by having a paywall. And so from a security standpoint, because you asked me about security, if they're paying, they have to use a card.

And if that card is going to be attached to their phone, it's going to reduce the risk factor by a significant, like a massive amount. You know, obviously from an activity standpoint on the platform, it does reduce some of the activity, but it increases the quality of the members. It increases the security. So you can feel confident that on dating across the pond, anybody who actually messages you will have paid. And so that eliminates, you know, most of the problems.

So anyone can check that out on dating across the pond. You can click on success stories. We actually, the last five success stories that we've had, we have created video interviews with them. I always wanted to do video interviews. I think in my head I thought I'd actually go and see them and like you know do some kind of documentary thing and in the end we just never got round to doing it and so we would previously have people sending photos of them getting married or like just them together and then they would tell us their story and we'd interview them over email and so if you go on the date british guys website you will see about 12 years worth of success stories and obviously not everybody that falls in love is going to tell us that they want to be featured on the success story page personally i would be hesitant to do it because i don't want to like give it the kiss of death right tell everyone how happy i am and then something goes wrong but but but people did do it and you can see there's you know probably four or five success stories every year would publish so out so you can imagine if there's four or five people willing to tell their story you know there's probably another 400 or 500 people that don't really want to publish it but are still matching up but they're from all backgrounds and so the most recent are on video there's like half an hour interviews with each couple so you can really listen to those videos and hear about all the challenges they faced and the ups and downs and you know like more recently there was a story that one of these videos was about a female journalist who was in england a lot for work and she had a real british sense of of humor i think that's something that a lot of anglophiles have in common is they actually they really appreciate british humor and they don't always expect the joke to be spelled out to them and they appreciate sort of some dark humor occasionally where it's like on the edge of acceptable might be canceled in five years time when people don't really understand the inner workings of the joke but in her case you know her friends explained to her that like maybe she should look outside of her network because there just wasn't enough fish in her pond you know like i know that's like the the connection really to the name dating across the pond because like there are there are only so many fish you know in your in your local community in your local pond and i think at some point you say well what do i do i do i run out of those people you know do i go look for people in the next town and it's like well if you're going to if it's already going to be an inconvenience and you're going to have to travel one hour to go and you know if you're saying well i'll just make it bigger search area yeah but like it's still going to be impractical for you to go and date that person if they're an hour away or two hours away like so it's just as impractical to meet someone who's a thousand miles away in my in my opinion and and so therefore like why not cast the net wider and actually chat with people from places that you're really interested in you've been to before and that's basically what she did so she connected she just someone i think she looked it up on google and somehow we appeared on the first page under British guys and then the next thing you know she knows she's chatting with a with a guy and um i think she had a few different guys she was chatting with and then one thing led to another and he i think flew out or she flew out and then they went back and forth you know this is kind of what happens you don't it doesn't happen overnight and actually that's a kind of a nice little other element of international dating is like you pretty much can't meet someone tonight or tomorrow so when you talk about safety and security like that's a big safety thing right there like you end up having to get to know them because you can't unless you happen to be in england tomorrow or you happen to be in new york or whatever tomorrow you're probably not going to meet these people immediately so i think what's kind of nice about it is you end up being forced into this like back and forth chat for a long time maybe a week or two weeks and then suddenly you're onto video and you're chatting on video with this person and then you're making phone calls and it's like five-hour difference or a six-hour difference or a four-hour difference and it's just a very different way of forming a relationship in in some ways it's the way it used to be you know maybe without the video part but like you met people you had phone calls with them you went out on a date maybe with them after or you know a week or something and there was just a slower more kind of chivalry romantic kind of process that came out of it and i think like not that we planned it like that

And I was like, look, I'm British, you know, I don't like a lot of drama. We, we like to kind of like keep our emotions under the rug a little bit. So, you know, just there, it was my sort of first entrance into what does it like to date someone from somewhere else. And an American woman, are different as well from, you know, from Italians. And I think I also think the other girl that I was thinking about was from Iran.

Um, and, but I didn't really date her long enough to, to really know what that culture was like. And I dated a girl from India once, uh, in London. And that was different too because she had a very traditional, uh, community. And I think, um, you know, I think long term she was probably going to end up with someone who was India. living in London. But I got a different experience with her. And then when I was with, when I was dating an American and I ended up marrying an American, I really got a taste of American culture because I moved here.

And of course, I spent a lot of time with her friends and so forth. And I would say like the big difference between Americans and Brits in terms of, in terms of dating was that I think in the US, there is, it's a little bit weird because of course, we're talking about an American meeting a Brit. So there's like this, I wouldn't say fantasy, but there's more of a glorification of Brits in the US, as you know, which your platform, you know, is a community about.

But I think that that glorification kind of gives, it creates this like extra bit of romance, much like when an anglofile goes to the UK and it's a romantic experience for them to connect to that land for whatever their reason is. I think like British men in the US, they're sort of given this pedestal already where that does add pressure, I suppose, to the, to the relationship. But there is this kind of assumption that it's going to be romantic.

Whereas, you know, when I hear about US couples meeting, they hope it leads to romance, but initially it's more about just chemistry and like convenience and friendship. And those are all important to have, I think, in a relationship. But I think that the American connection to the UK means that already, right at the beginning, there's this, like, goal of romance and love and this sort of interest level is higher in the other person's culture. And I think that that's a dimension that you don't really get when you have within your own culture, two people from your own culture.

They know, you know each other. There is just like old habits, good or bad. You bring the old baggage. from that community with you. Like, I always say Brits are bit pessimistic, and they're, you know, maybe they'd argue they're optimistic, they're realistic, excuse me. But I think in America, you have a lot of optimistic people. You have a lot of people that are excited by a different culture, because pretty much everybody in America has come from somewhere else.

And I think there's a real appreciation for other cultures in the U.S., even though many people don't leave the U.S., the people that are in it are usually. from somewhere else, and everyone's a third, a third Irish or 20% Italian or, you know, 50% British. And that just makes it a much more welcoming place for people of different backgrounds, I think.

it's your body language and it's your tone. So those are elements all over the world. But I think in the UK, you can say the same thing in 10 different ways. And it could mean at least five to 10 different things. And I think that in America, they are much, like, whatever they say is what they mean, usually. There's, like, there's not a lot in between the lines with Americans because it's, you know, they've taken the language from the British.

And they've said, you know what? Some of this language doesn't make any sense. Like, let's just streamline it. Let's just keep it simple. And apart from, like, obviously the pronunciation differences of certain words and certain misunderstandings around terminology. Like, for example, if I said to you, if I came to your house and I said, your house is homely, in the US, how would you respond to that? How would you feel I'm, what am I saying about your home?

I'd take it as a compliment. You would take it as a compliment. Okay. And what if I say it's homey? Is there any difference? There's a difference. But if you look at it up, there is a difference, right? Because I've, I said, someone said this to me in the US and my mom would say it to me in the UK. And like, in the UK, um, if you say something is homely, people think of warm and like nourishing and like kind of family time festivities, you know, just like, like, a nice place to be.

But in America, like, the reaction I got was like, that's a negative thing to say about someone's home. So there are some, like, silly little small word differences that can be, you know, can lead to people not understanding each other. But at the end of the day, like, we're the same, we're still, we're still speaking English, whether it's American English or British English. I would say maybe the comedy is a bit different. Like, you have to explain, you have to really be sure the punchline is, out there and, and explained, not in all American humor, but I think anyone listening who's an Anglophile will relate to this.

Like, you watch British humor, and it's what's not said that is really funny. And it's where it could be two meanings, and that's where it's, and that's funny. And I think, like, in a way, like, Seinfeld gets that in the U.S. And obviously, like, curb your enthusiasm, right? Like, those are written by the same person. But that's an example. and I suppose also the office in the U.S. And there are some other comedian, uh, comedians and TV shows that take the same approach.

But I think that is a, that's a major language difference between the UK and the U.S. It's like this need to really explain and dumb down things. There's a much bigger audience in America and so therefore it makes sense for them to want to dumb it down. They just don't want to lose any people. Whereas in the UK, I feel like they'd be. They create a comedy or they have a conversation and they take more risk and they are willing to have people not understand them and they don't care because they're serving an audience.

And in this case, you know, there'll be British guys or British women or any gender that is communicating with people from America or Canada or anywhere else in the world. And they will use phrases that are not understood and they will say things that have multiple meanings. So in that sense, it could be, there could be some misunderstandings in the first kind of six months, I would say, until they, until they're face to face and they can iron out some of those differences.

He was just, like, really, like, was reserved. I mean, he kind of checked a lot of boxes in terms of British stereotype, right? And I remember chatting with him, and I was with my girlfriend. And for, like, a second, I was thinking, like, this guy, you know, she knows me, but, like, you know, if she lived in England, she'd meet millions of Brits. And so, you know, like, this guy's obviously, like, got a smoother accent. He's like, more, um, he just comes across as posher than me.

And I remember after he was chatting about it, I wasn't really, like, you know, I wasn't, like, threatened in the situation because we're very tight. My, my girlfriend and I, but it was just kind of a funny thing. And she's, and I, I, I really thought she would notice the difference, right? I really thought she would notice difference between my accent and his accent, because I could certainly tell the difference. But what I realized, and she said, and she said, said to me after, she's like, I mean, English accent, English accent, you know, like, she couldn't tell the difference.

And I'm sure some people can. Obviously, you know, if you've got a lot of knowledge of the UK, you are going to pick up the different accents. But she didn't care. And she couldn't tell the difference. And I, so I think sometimes it's like, in our heads as to, like, how powerful and how differentiated the accents are. I've met Americans who are as interested in Irish accents as they are Scottish accents as they are Welsh accents, as they are different areas of England accents, they're just like, or even Australian, right, or New Zealand, they're just curious.

They want something different and they find it, you know, there's some, it's not, I don't know whether it adds more, like it sounds more intelligent sometimes, or whether it's just different. And there's just something about it that's pulling people in. But these period dramas and these movies, and these movies, that have a British lead character, you know, or the bad guy's British or the bad woman's British, right? Like, those things are always helping us. Those sources of like British media appearing in America and influencing America, whether it's music or whether it's art, you know, whether it's TV, whether it's film, those are not going to go away.

And there's a reason why people continuously want people from this part of the world. And it's not just the accent. It is the culture behind the accent. It is the, it's the thought process, the attitude of Brits that I think comes out in the speech along with the accent. And in the end, it's about the character, the stereotypes around British people and their culture and their character and their integrity and their honesty and their bluntness. And I think they're risk-taking.

And those things are I think are probably attractive to people from outside of the UK. But I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

And he's like, can you understand him? I'm like, yeah, I understand it. I might speak British person. I just thought it was hilarious that I could understand it, but he could have. That's funny.

And they are created in these regions where mainly people from that region are watching it. And so they don't care. Someone doesn't understand them, you know, but, but that's the authentic nature of some of these. TV shows and whereas in the US, I mean, maybe those things exist on cable networks, but the chances of it getting on mainstream are really low. Whereas in the UK, like, they are willing to give a pedestal to comedy and to art and that is from a region where, you know, maybe you can't understand them very well, but you can always put on the subtitles.