It Started With a Teammate

This week we’ve been writing about friends who become something more. The research says it’s the most common way relationships start, and that science spent decades mostly ignoring it. I want to tell you about a different kind of friends-to-something-more story. It’s the one that built this site.

Before it was a company, it was a teammate

Pat and I played on the same high school basketball team in Woodstock. We weren’t business partners. We were two guys who spent a lot of hours in the same gym, on the same bus, losing and winning the same games. After college we reconnected, the way you do with the people you logged real time with when you were young.

I didn’t know it then, but those hours were the whole foundation. You can’t fake a decade of trust. You build it one practice at a time.

The phone call

Around 2010, Pat was a Marine officer stationed in Hawaii. I was teaching high school English. One Tuesday night he called me, and the conversation went almost exactly like this:

“You said you could make a dating site for gamers, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll need your help, but yes — we can do it.”

“Alright — we’re doing it then.”

Pat and Casey, roughly 2010

I will never forget that phone call. I also want to be honest about what it was: two friends saying yes to each other before either of us knew what we were saying yes to. That only works when you already trust the person on the other end of the line.

4,200 miles is a long way to build anything

For the first stretch, Pat and I were roughly 4,200 miles apart. We built LFGdating on scheduled calls and late-night work sessions across time zones. My days looked like this:

“Wake up at 5:30 A.M., workout until 6:15, shower, dress, eat, and out the door by 7:15 to get to school by 7:30. Then, home by 4:30 or 5, eat an early dinner and grade papers or prep classes until about 7. Then I went into LFGdating creation mode until 11 or midnight.”

Casey

I turned down two coaching jobs, including a varsity boys basketball head coaching spot, and an offer to teach a higher-level curriculum, which was close to career suicide for a young, non-tenured teacher. I didn’t do that for an idea. I did it for an idea I was building with someone I trusted completely.

By 2012 Pat was back home, and we met in person every week, sometimes three or four days in a row, at coffee shops over sandwiches (tuna, for the record), hammering out roles and timelines. That’s the part nobody puts in a pitch deck. Most of building something is just two people showing up, again and again, and not giving up on each other.

What friendship does that strategy can’t

When people ask how LFGdating has lasted since our beta in 2012, they expect an answer about product or marketing. The real answer is that the friendship was load-bearing. We’ve disagreed. We’ve been exhausted. I’ve walked out of a date night to answer a member’s email, and Pat has given face time to his computer during family holidays to do the same. Honestly, Pat and I work every day, and it has at times led to disputes with our significant others.

None of that survives without a foundation. Ours was poured in a high school gym, years before either of us wrote a line of code.

That’s why this week’s research hit home for me. When people say “friends first,” they usually mean romance. But the lesson is bigger: the relationships that hold under pressure are usually the ones built on a lot of unglamorous time together.

Why we named it LFG

LFG means “Looking For Group.” Every gamer knows the feeling of typing it and waiting to see who answers. It’s hopeful and a little vulnerable. You’re admitting you can’t do this run alone.

We picked that name on purpose. We didn’t want a site where you hide the thing you love until date three and hope it goes over well. We wanted a place where the thing you could talk about for hours is the first thing on the table, because everyone here is a gamer too. That shared starting point is the closest thing we can offer to the head start friends get.

Here’s what we can’t promise: we can’t promise you’ll meet the love of your life next week. Nobody honest can. Here’s what we can promise: the people you meet are real, because a human on our team reviews and approves every new profile. And if you ever need us, you’ll hear back from the actual founders, not a ticket queue.

And here’s my favorite part of the job. When a paying member cancels because they met someone, that’s basically every great holiday wrapped up into one email notification. Two people who started as strangers, logged some hours, and didn’t need us anymore. That’s the whole point.

If you’re still looking for your group, create your free profile or grab the LFGdating app. Start with the thing you love. See who answers.

Stay Classy,
Casey and Pat