On the 176th episode of Speedify LIVE we’re joined by NASA JPL engineer and founder of Nanaya, Rashied Amini, to talk about the service that may have figured out the science of love!

We chat about how Nanaya came to be, how it actually works in predicting romantic outcomes, as well as what may be next for Rashied and Nanaya.

Here are our 5 takeaways from our Valentine’s Day Special:

1. Nanaya started out as a personal project for Rashied inspired by one of his past relationships! He started by making a prototype in Excel, consulting a lot of literature, personality tests, and eventually, after interviewing a number of people, he ended up being able to consistently predict the correct decisions the participants should have made in their love lives.
2. Nanaya’s tests include questions about money for a reason! Based on where people live, they may be asked things like whether it matters how much a partner makes, to help figure out their romantic probabilities. In addition, Nanaya also does research on this data to come up with conclusions on what the outcomes and experiences of people of different wealth statuses are. 
3. When it comes to marketing, Rashied says that while they rarely advertise, whenever they do new data studies, a lot of people want to cover it! While Nanaya is anonymous, they do research for third parties too, so they end up with a bit of advertising. Additionally, part of their marketing strategy is to aim for things like Valentine’s Day when they can get more coverage, which has led to a Wired article, as well as several podcast appearances. 
4. Nanaya consists of a Personality test and a Prediction test. The Personality Test is shorter and determines which Romantic Personality Type you have, while the Prediction Test is longer, as it uses all the information Nanaya needs for the algorithm to predict your love life.   
5. Rashied says that privacy is very important to him personally, so it’s a big part of Nanaya as well! While they used to have a Facebook login option, they no longer do, and the only personal information they collect is an email address. Everything else is anonymous, and just basic demographic data.