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02/14/12 | Uncategorized

Making Every Day Valentine’s Day With Kahnoodle

By Zuhairah Scott Washington (Founder & CEO, Kahnoodle)
With Valentine’s Day around the corner everyone’s got love and relationships on the brain. So much so that #IfWeAreInARelationship was a trending topic on Twitter. My favorite tweet was:

“#IfWeAreInARelationship I would make that person feel like everyday is Valentines Day.

That in a nutshell encompasses our mission at my startup, Kahnoodle, the mobile app for couples.

Technology is often thought of as a barrier to romance because it can interfere with the limited time busy couples have together. Think about it, how many times have you and your beau sat in the bed watching TV with your laptops open or i-Phones in hand? In reality, however, technology is no more to blame for bad relationships than food is to blame for obesity.

Love is a verb. It requires action. Gadgets don’t take action, people do. So here’s a novel idea, instead of blaming technology for our tech obsession, how about we use technology to actually make it easier for couples to become better partners and give each other what they need to feel loved more often?

This is exactly what I set out to do when building Kahnoodle. As a newlywed, I became frustrated that the likelihood of being successful at my marriage was no better than flipping a coin and getting tails. Frustrated that there were online tools that allowed you to proactively achieve other life goals like losing weight or saving money but nothing available that helped good couples become and stay great, I decided to build a tool that could help other committed couples more proactively manage their relationship success.

Kahnoodle uses positive reinforcement and game mechanics to inspire couples to disconnect so they can reconnect and show their love more often. The app builds empathy and awareness within romantic relationships by making each member of the couple more conscious of their partner’s most important relationship needs (using our “Seven Love Signs”) and positively affirming them with “kudos” whenever they take action to meet those needs.

Kahnoodle is meant to enhance, not replace offline communication by recording actions taken in real life so that couples can use this data to become better partners and achieve their overall relationship goals.

For couples, Kahnoodle is a fun way to rack up “kudos” (i.e. brownie points) for showing their partner love and to create a virtual gratitude journal of sorts. To brands and advertisers, Kahnoodle aspires to be a platform that encourages and rewards couples for participating in real world experiences that enhance their relationship (i.e. vacations away from the kids, etc).

Intrigued? Sign up for access to our invite-only beta.

In the meantime, to further encourage couples to show their love, we’re giving away $500 to an awesome couple that tells us something sweet (big or small) their partner did for them lately and something sweet they’d like to do for their partner, just because.

Editor’s note: Got a question for our guest blogger? Leave a message in the comments below.
About the guest blogger: Zuhairah Scott Washington is the Founder and CEO of Kahnoodle. She is passionate about leveraging technology to build profitable and useful products that improve human well-being. Previously she was the UK Director of Business Development for the European equivalent of Yelp and the youngest Regional Vice President at a private equity firm with $20B in AUM. She holds a JD/MBA from Harvard and a BA magna cum laude from UCLA. Follow her on Twitter at @zuhairah.

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