Romance in the AI Age, with Eric McHugh

Eric McHugh, a digital entrepreneur, President of ShopX, and Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer of Dataing.io AI powered matchmaking, talks about researching dark matter, shaking up Web3, finding romance using AI matchmakers (the first of their kind), and being the #1 Eric in the world.

About Eric:

Eric’s experience includes ad optimization for Snap Inc, consulting for Fortune 500 through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, Dark Matter research at Carnegie Melon University, and helping found CartRev, a social commerce platform that had over 100 Shopify Brands. Eric is a 30-year-old entrepreneur whose philosophy emphasizes the importance of simplicity, adaptability, and a clear mind, which has translated well into the world of web3 entrepreneurship. Eric specializes in leveraging his strategic thinking and adaptability to create innovative and effective solutions to the challenges facing this cutting industry.

Eric’s fierce independence and commitment to self-mastery made him a natural leader and role model for those seeking to live a life of purpose and freedom in the digital age. As a staunch individualist, Eric is a vocal advocate for decentralizing power and control, promoting the democratization of access and opportunity in the digital world.

Eric has an IQ of over 140, enjoys playing chess and fine cuisine, and his main hobbies include fighting, chess, reading, and meditation.

Presently he is President of SHOPX web3 ecommerce, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Dataing and AI powered matchmaking. In the past, he founded a Saas platform that replaced affiliate codes for ecommerce brands, worked as a constant for Fortune 500 companies, helped Snap optimize their ad algorithm, supported the research team at Carnegie Mellon University in their dark matter research, and interned abroad in Barcelona, Spain.

Learn more at ShopX.co and Dataing.io.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
We are joined today by Eric McHugh, a digital entrepreneur with time spent at Snapchat cart, rev and others. Eric is now the president of shop X, a web three powered e commerce platform, as well as the co founder and chief sales officer of data in AI powered matchmaking. Eric looking at your profile, I see roles like chief growth officer, corporate restructuring consultant, it seems like you excel at shaking up the status quo and things need to change. That’s when you get to call.

Eric McHugh
Yeah, pretty much. Um, honestly, I just kind of fall on my intellectual curiosity. wherever it leads me, that leads me up to at least disruption. That’s disruption for positive reasons, then so be it.

Host
Before we really dive in. I’ve got to ask you were a dark matter researcher at Carnegie Mellon University for a while, no big deal, right?

Eric McHugh
That was super cool. And as long as things were, the universe just presents itself. So I’m very fortunate I have a very smart family, both my brother and my dad went to Carnegie Mellon, like after I was in college, my brother was still there, the senior research team, researching the Dark Matter thing. So they needed someone on the business side just to like, write the reports to research. So I gotta go there, hang out with a team, write the research reports, like make it presentable. And all that jazz on this thing was we got it. So they would use a supercomputer called the lustrous to kind of map out stars, like map out where everything is to find the dark matter, which is honestly nothing, no one really knows what it is still. But we got to like mess around with like, some supercomputer late and I was like, just mapping out faraway galaxies. Like what do you think, again, this is all guesswork, because it’s all based on equations. But it was just fun. There’s a fun thing, just playing around with that just like networking and talking with all these really cool science people who happen to have a lot of overlap with crypto. So we bought all that. But it was an amazing experience.

Host
Man, we were really hoping you’d gotten to the bottom of that dark matter business.

Eric McHugh
There is no bottom.

Host
So your area of focus is with web three powered businesses, briefly explained for those of us less technologically inclined what web three is.

Eric McHugh
I would say the key differences, ownership. And if we go back to web one versus web two, web, web three, all those are just convenient sounding names for the progression they’re not. I mean, it makes logical sense for web one to go to web two to web three. And so what web one is, is I would think of read only. So in web one, we could read content. And that’s all we could do web to read and write. So let’s frame it as like social media like Instagram, YouTube, even those podcasts where we posted, I can post something that’s me writing content, you as a listener can read that content. The only issue is neither of us on the content. So if I did a post on Instagram, Instagram owns the content based on my data, they make money from the parents purposes, or they can retroactively canceling and take away your content. And web three, I would say it’s a read, write and own some what I can write content, you can read the content, the only difference and the key thing is we can own the content. And that’s in the form of an NF t. So let’s say hypothetically, I create an NF T, I now own this NF t, then you purchase enough t right? gifted to you, however, however we decide to do that deal. Now there’s a connection between me and you, and no one else is involved. So you’re in complete control. And I like to joke about Web Board web five. So I would say web four is NF T’s ai o and the metaverse all incorporated into one web. And then as a joke, it’s like web five is I think we just kind of all go back outdoors. There’s like enough of this. And web three, I mean, with ownership comes responsibility. Like for example, if I own the content, I’m responsible for the content. And so that’s where the biggest gap is. And that’s what we’re doing right now. There are two main reasons web three hasn’t fully taken off. The first is incentives, meaning like, why would anyone interact with web three? Why would anyone interact with cryptocurrency? There hasn’t been too many incentives, shop X is trying to fix that by adding e commerce incentives for that new product. But the bigger I guess barrier would be the user interface meaning like, I personally would never send my mom or my grandma to do what the product was like, Where’s my money? I don’t know. How do I find? Who do I ask? Well, there’s no customer support, because as a budget, okay, it looks like you have to go on Reddit and find a very specific solution that some guy came up like five years ago, it’ll get fixed once the larger brands come in. And once they come in, they have the capital and the resources and now the incentive to make the system usable for the customers.

Host
So what sets shop X apart in the web three space?

Eric McHugh
Yeah, so in terms of what sets us apart from other ecommerce platform for the brand side, we’re we’re the full service solutions for like brands, and that T projects. But the bigger thing is where the simplest and easiest to use for their customers, customer wanting to purchase an IoT they can do with credit card. So what Shopify is, is I want you to think of that Google or Apple, but three long term are going to be a suite of solutions for Brad to download a simple app, and then interact within the web three space, getting different benefits depending on their business need or the product. Right now we have two products live. The first is reserve x. So that’s an NFT powered loyalty program. If you’re a Shopify store, and you want to enter that web three space, all you have to do is download the shop X app, get their programmatic tokenized software licenses, you can launch a NFT collection with less than five minutes by filling out two simple forms. And then from there err, you can add ecommerce benefits to this to that collection for your customers. Our second product which is squat X, the first ever blockchain based ambassador program, so just like Twitter pays its creators in revenue from their from their ad revenue we pay our community from for helping our ecosystem grow from our reserve X revenue. The logic behind that is it’s a better to give than receive. And so every time a brand makes a sale, our community makes money. They obviously they make theory and they’re happy about their posting about their like bombarding brands like Twitter pages, creating authentic organic content, thus attracting more and more brands, thus getting them more more money that’s attracting more more brands. I think it’s an important concept because I believe in powerful relationships, not force relationships. So in a forced relationship, one party wins, one party loses. And it’s unsustainable, because like, we’re in a forced relationship eventually, like, the person’s like, Nah, dude, I’m out. But in a powerful relationship, which is what this podcast is, like, relative winning, we’re both gonna do we’re keeping our list and the listeners and everyone involved as a winning over powerful relationship is like a mutual beneficial relationship. So with our shopping ecosystem, we designed that in mind, so we’re just like, Okay, who’s part of this deal? Shop acts as part of it are we win because we burn money, the brands part of it, they win because they increase customer lifetime value. They lower customer acquisition costs, they earn revenue, okay? Brands customers part of this deal, too. They have to win too. And they’re winning because they’re going to ecommerce benefits. And if they weren’t winning, they wouldn’t obviously pay for it. So there’s that part. But an important part of this is the shopping ecosystem ourselves, like our license holders, how do we get them to win? Okay, every time we make money, they make money. So it just creates like, there’s no losers here.

Host
Let’s talk about your other venture Dataing, an AI powered matchmaker with the goal of matching 1 billion happy couples. Ai matchmaking… is romance dead?

Eric McHugh
Okay, this is kind of funny. So it’s the first ever AI powered matchmaker. So I would say most people will try to meet online right now. And I think that trend is generally gonna increase. So it solves a bunch of the problems that’s presented by Tinder hinge and all the dating apps. The first issue with like dating apps right now is the top 5% of users get access to like 100% of the users on the app, creating a skewed marketplace. The second issue is a it’s just all based on physicality, let’s be honest, like most dating apps, it’s like Hot or Not hot swipe, not swipe left. And the third issue, which most people don’t know about is the incentive structure behind each dating app. I like to think of it as a company that we put our users in the position for them to succeed. I mean, it’s dating, you have to meet the person in person, and you have to be friendly yet, you can’t just completely rely on AI. So as a dating user, you would sign up link your social media accounts, and then it would auto generate a profile for you based on your digital footprint, then it shows you three matches per day. So you’re not going to be bombarded with like messages not going like 1000s or whatever. So to match with people who have similar digital footprints. And our goal is for you to learn more about the person who you want to match with. So let’s say I get Ashley Kimberly Jane as matches like, okay, James, interesting, please someone world Jane. It’s like an AI will read your social media. It’s like, oh, did you know that in your top three, Spotify listens? You both listened to this one random artist? Oh, did you know this random artist has a concert coming up in the month halfway between both of you? Would you like me suggest this day with Jane. The more you’re on our app, the smarter our AI gets, the better imagining you get so the line more likely, and you’ll take it off. So what we want to do is be the app where everyone plans the date. So like, let’s say hypothetically and the J an example of the concert, we want, we’re going to do partnerships like taking baths or restaurants and places where people can just suggest the date plan everything that looks on both our calendars. And then that point of time, we would take a commission based on dates.

Host
And virtual dates are also a part of this, right?

Eric McHugh
So, we want to be one of the first apps in the VR system just so we’re ready to go. And so let’s say hypothetically you match with a user, you have the option to either have a FaceTime call, or if you want to be more comfortable, you can meet in virtual reality. But again, the goal is always to get that in all the data in real life. We don’t want people just kind of wasting people’s time just like chit chatting aimlessly for hours. It’s like, no.

Host
So the waitlist is open to sign up for the app, where should listeners go?

Eric McHugh
Dataing.io. And then you can just sign up for the waitlist, we are manually selecting new users first. So if you listen to this podcast to see Kate for this podcast, shoot our Instagram DM saying I came from the podcast and then we’ll probably bump you up faster than everyone else.

Host
Awesome. Well, Eric, any parting thoughts?

Eric McHugh
Just be your authentic self. I’m the number one Eric in the world. So if you try to be me, you can’t you’re the number one you in the world. Yes, try to be you you can’t and I think whatever the Creator God, the universe, whatever you want to call it. I think he blesses everyone with each individual with very specific gifts with the goal of being a service to the community. So the best way to be a service community is just be yourself and just be positive if you’re a conscious creator. Don’t take anything away from anyone and don’t harm anyone and use it gets.

Host
There you have it. You’ve all been listening to the number one Eric in the world.

Eric McHugh
Awesome dude, thank you so much, I had a blast. Your podcast is extremely well run. Yeah.