Late last week, a pair of Stanford graduates announced the public release of their startup, Blindr, which has been described by co-founder Marissa Seagrass ’18 as “a bit like Uber for blind people, if Uber were Tinder”. (We at the Flipside note that Seagrass isn’t blind, but during an interview yesterday was wearing a fantastic cashmere sweater of which we are quite jealous). Already, Blindr has been absolutely devoured by the vast populations of horny blind people across the United States, and Seagrass has indicated interest in expanding internationally.
“Everyone knows that blind people can’t see,” added The Other Co-Founder Tim Mordif ’43, who is also not blind but really loves saltine crackers. “But Blindr doesn’t fix that. Instead, when the user opens the app they’re connected to one of our agents at HQ, who then proceeds to describe the appearance of the person whose profile they’re viewing—or if they don’t have any pictures, what the agent thinks they would look like.”
Mordif was happy to demonstrate the use of Blindr for us, and we were greeted by the voice of a cranky old woman— “Grandma’s helping us out with this,” Mordif explained—who proceeded to tell us first about a “lovely young woman, but a bit tall for my tastes, and is that hair dye? You know that stuff ruins your hair. Oh, it says that she’s not looking for anything serious, that’s not very Christian of her, is it? Sorry, but you can do better. Swipe left, dearie.”
We were a little alarmed to find that this description of the profile didn’t actually correspond to the one we saw in front of us, which was a 31-year-old Japanese man who professed a particular loathing for California roll sushi. Mordif, however, reassured us that all was working as intended, which upon further reflection seems reasonable considering that they’re a startup in the Bay Area made by Stanford alumni. At press time, the company’s investors were asking Seagrass and Mordif to verbally explain the growth projections displayed on the screen, as none of them could see it.
