Finding long-term partners to embark on life’s missions with is a random, beautiful melting pot of Brownian motion.

We are thrown into new environments, new communities, schools, universities, and jobs. We introduce ourselves to new people, and we hear people introduce themselves to us countless times. And sometimes, if we are lucky, when someone introduces themselves to us, something resonates.

Sometimes you build friendships with these people. Sometimes you fall in love with them, other times you commit to building projects, bands, businesses, families, and expeditions.

I’m not sure about you all, but for me, when someone shares something about themselves or explains a belief they have about the world, it sometimes resonates so profoundly that I feel a profound connection with them in that instant.

I have always thought that it is an imperfect experience of reintroducing yourself for one person to listen, and then ultimately figuring out if you’re going to have a strong connection to keep in touch.

It’s always a game of not sharing everything you believe about the world for fear of ridicule, criticism, and ostracisation. But sometimes I wish it were possible to just not play this game entirely and see how people perceive the world, figure out if we could have great conversations, and then get introduced to each other.

I recently had an incredible experience while researching an idea I had. The idea, as I built a prototype for here, enables you to hold a button and ask a question of your computer, which would then guide you to the desired action. Like someone looking over your shoulder and helping you out in the moment.

I did a Deep Research with ChatGPT on this idea, and I found some projects that thought on similar lines. One being AppHug, created by a guy called Nicolas in Belgium. In the spirit of reaching out to people on the Internet, I emailed him, and we set up a time to call. We had a fantastic conversation very quickly because we both saw the potential in such an idea. We quickly reached the point where we could imagine starting projects and even co-founding companies together, because we shared a common belief and conviction about something in the world.

This made me realise that there must be many people in the world who could create amazing things if they just shared a common belief and conviction about something. Ultimately, making people feel less alone, especially in this increasingly remote-driven world.

It seems strange that as we grow up through school and university, we meet so many new people and are able to form these spontaneous connections based on shared perspectives, beliefs, and values. But as we grow up with responsibilities, routines, kids, jobs, and everything that comes with them, we lose the ability to make those connections because our surface area of spontaneity ultimately decreases.

The challenge of a system where everybody shares their beliefs on a front page for everyone to see is that some beliefs come with social costs to other people who may not fully understand them, or they may be caricatured and criticised. It’s one of the reasons why we aren’t always fully open with our beliefs, because of the amount of time it would take to really get someone to understand the nuance and to ensure that you were not mischaracterised or misconstrued in a damaging way.

The great shame in this is that it misses out on many possible connections where people could share a connection based on a belief if they only knew that the other person held the same belief.

What if you could just share a belief anonymously into the void and have it matched to you by an AI that would not reveal your identity, only making that mutual connection based on that shared belief?

It was then that I realised that a swiping UI experience would be perfect for the situation. If you do not share a belief that someone has, you can always disagree with it (swipe left). However, if I share my belief and people disagree with it, there is no social cost to me because there is no way of knowing that it was I who held that belief.