We Like Humans

Host training.

Six people, one table, ninety minutes.

Overview

What we'll cover.

The mission. Why any of this matters.
The theories. Why the format is shaped this way.
Before the gathering. What to set up.
Running it. Step by step, including what goes wrong.
Closing and follow-up. The part most people skip.

01 Part one

The mission.

We like humans.

Our anthropology: every human has inherent worth, irrespective of their accomplishments.

The problem

For most people, life will become harder than ever in the next few decades.

"Along with those wonderful things comes some scary things, and I don't think people are putting enough work into how we can mitigate those scary things."

Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate, 2026

AI is coming for a large share of the work people locate their dignity in. Whatever you think of the timelines, the next twenty years will move more people between roles, cities and identities than the last fifty. Hinton's other line, if you want something concrete: in a few years it will do software engineering projects that are months long, "and then there'll be very few people needed". He has gone from optimism about job creation to warning about massive unemployment, and he is not selling anything. A caution if somebody quotes the famous numbers back at you. Dario Amodei's "half of entry-level white-collar jobs in five years" and Sam Altman's similar warnings were both softened during 2026 as their companies approached IPOs. Do not lean on those two. Hinton has not walked anything back, which is why he is the one on the slide. Say the honest version: nobody knows the timeline. What we do know is that when people lose the work they located their worth in, they need other humans more, not fewer.

The problem

But we're becoming more disconnected.

6 hrs

spent alone each day - up 50% since 2010.

American Time Use Survey, 2023

Between 2014 and 2019, the time Americans spent alone rose by more than it did during the pandemic.

The isolation was not lockdown. It arrived with the phone.

The freshest numbers, and they are worse than the older ones. Young Americans spent about four hours a day alone in 2010. By 2023 it was six. And socialising across everyone is down to 35 minutes a day in 2025 from 41 a decade earlier. For 15 to 24 year olds it roughly halved, from an hour to 35 minutes. Then the quote, which is the one that lands: between 2014 and 2019, before anybody had heard of lockdowns, time spent alone rose by MORE than it later did during the pandemic. That is the smartphone window, not the pandemic. Putnam saw the beginning of this in the 1960s and named the causes: television, sprawl, the pressure of time and money. Every one of them was something more convenient than a person. Which is the pattern. Feeds instead of friends, delivery instead of a market, and now a synthetic companion instead of a difficult conversation. Each is reasonable on its own and each is a substitute. Substitutes are frictionless by design, which is exactly what makes them deadening, because humans grow by friction. A gathering is engineered friction. Unlikeminded, anticurated, inconvenient, buy your own coffee.

Social stupidity

Platforms turned communal problems into individual problems.

Lonely? Network more.
Single? Swipe more.
Struggling? Hustle harder.

Our mission

Maximise social velocity.

Tech gets you 90% of the way - generosity does the rest.

Definition first: the speed and ease with which people reach the humans they really should meet. Then the picture, and the point is the two different lines on the right. Today, you can only reach the people adjacent to you. The person who could change your year is four or five hops away, which in practice means unreachable, because nobody walks a chain of five introductions. You do not even know they exist. What we do is hop you to somebody who already knows them. That dashed line is the machine, and it is the boring ninety percent: reading every ask, remembering every name, finding the route. The last link is solid, and a human makes it. Somebody has to decide to introduce you, and want to. We never touch that part. The Fairy Godmother gets you to the ball; she does not make the prince fall in love. Measured two ways, and hosts get asked this. Reach: of all the needs a person has, what share ever find their person. Latency: from the need existing to sitting across from them, how long. And what it is NOT: the number of encounters. Maximising meetings gives you networking events, which is the thing we are replacing.

How

Our magic formula.

One

Small gatherings

Two to ten people. Never bigger than one conversation.

Two

Two questions

"What's your life story?"
"How can I help you be more awesome?"

Three

Fairy Godmothers

Personal superconnectors who understand your goals and find the people you need to meet.

Press right three times. One card at a time. Small gatherings, because a conversation caps out at about four people and a room of forty is ten conversations you have to audition for. Two questions, and the order matters. The life story earns the right to ask the second one. Ask "how can I help you" cold and you get a warm nothing; ask it after forty minutes of somebody's actual life and you get the truth. And the second question is what changes the room: if everybody arrives pushing their agenda we find each other annoying. Generosity is not a personality type, it is a room with the right question in it. Fairy Godmothers, because one table can only hold six people. The division of labour that matters most to you: the machine does the ninety percent that is logistics. It must never touch the ten percent that is chemistry, generosity, courage and love. That ten percent is your job, and we cannot automate you.

02 Part two

The theories.

The network science that underpins the formula.

Theory 01 · Dunbar, 1995

Ideal table size: 4.

(We currently aim for 6).

Robin Dunbar and two colleagues stood around in bars and receptions and counted how many people were in each conversation. The answer came back at about four. Add a fifth and the group does not get bigger, it splits. It is plumbing, not manners: how far a speaking voice carries, and how many other people's minds you can hold in your head while also thinking of something to say. So why do we aim for six? Because a four-person table dies if one person cancels, and a good host can hold six in one conversation. Six is the compromise between the research and the no-show rate. Eight is the absolute ceiling and it is already hard. What it changes for you: your table is ONE conversation, and keeping it that way is most of the job. Second finding worth mentioning: Cheek and Buss, 1981. Shyness and sociability are separate traits. Someone can badly want the company and still dread the door. That is the most common person at our tables.

Theory 02 · Granovetter 1973, Rajkumar 2022

Weak ties carry the opportunities.

Though not the very weakest.

Be precise about who said what, because the two findings are fifty years apart. Granovetter, 1973: your close friends know what you know. They read what you read and have already told you about every opening they heard of. Acquaintances live somewhere else socially, and that is where the new information is. His claim was essentially "weaker is better". Rajkumar and colleagues, Science, 2022: randomised experiments on LinkedIn's People You May Know, 20 million people over five years, 2 billion new ties, 600,000 new jobs. The relationship turned out to be an inverted U. Moderately weak ties do the most work, the strongest ties help LEAST, and the very weakest are less useful than moderately weak ones. Hence the shape: low at your best friend, peaking at somebody you met twice, settling above where it started. One honest wrinkle: measured by messages exchanged rather than mutual connections, the weakest ties looked best. The shape depends on how you measure strength. What it changes for you: the value is not in tonight. It is in the third and fourth meeting. Getting people to say who they want to see again, before they leave your table, is worth more than any single conversation you facilitate.

Theory 03 · Burt, 1992

The value sits in the gap between groups.

Between two crowds that never speak to each other there is a gap. Burt called it a structural hole, and the person standing in it gets paid more, promoted earlier, and rated as having better ideas. Not because they are cleverer. Because an idea that is old news in one world is a revelation in the next one over. Now use the two clay nodes, because this is the point most people miss. Those are the local hubs: the person everybody in their crowd knows, the most connected in the room. They have MORE relationships than the bridge does, and almost no new information, because everything they hear has already been round their own crowd. So popularity and usefulness are not the same thing. You do not need to be an extrovert to be valuable here. You need to be in an unusual position. The companion finding is the annoying one. Casciaro, Gino and Kouchaki: networking deliberately for gain makes people feel physically dirty, and the more power you already have, the less dirty it feels. The people who need the bridge most are the ones most repelled by building it. What it changes for you: resist the urge to curate a sensible table.

Theory 03, continued

It's easier (and more profitable) to be a bridge than an influencer.

1,200 crowds in Singapore

720,000 bridges needed

The arithmetic that makes a mixed table worth the awkwardness. Two crowds have one gap between them. Four crowds have six. Ten crowds have forty-five. Bridges grow far faster than groups, which is why a table of six unlikeminded people is worth so much more than a table of six colleagues, where there is one crowd and no gap at all. Then the numbers. Our rough estimate is around 1,200 reasonably distinct crowds in Singapore. Every pair of them is a bridge nobody has built: about 720,000 positions, and almost all of them are empty. If anybody asks for the maths: 1,200 times 1,199, halved, is 719,400. Call it 720,000. And be honest that 1,200 is our estimate, not a census. It is also the honest answer to "why is this table so random?". It is not random. Random is the mechanism; structural holes are the reason. And it is why we ask you not to fill your table with your own friends, however much easier that is. Your friends are one crowd.

Theory 04 · Grant, 2013

Givers finish first. They also finish last.

The difference is whether they're encouraged to ask.

Sort people by how much they help others, then sort each group by performance. Givers are at the bottom. Givers are also at the top. Takers and matchers pile up in the middle. What separates the two ends is not how generous they are, it is whether anybody ever encouraged them to ask for something back. That is the word that matters: encouraged. It is not a character flaw and it is not their job to fix. It is a thing a room either does for them or does not, and tonight you are the room. The ones at the bottom are not naive. They said yes to everything and asked for nothing, for years, until they ran out. Wayne Baker built a format to fix exactly that, the Reciprocity Ring, where every single person has to make a request. Roughly 150,000 people across 20 countries. The compulsory part is the whole design: when everybody has to ask, nobody is the one imposing.

Theory 05 · Donderi 2007, Hall 1976

Some cultures find it harder to ask for help.

Guess culture · high context "Hotels near the conference are so expensive."

Ask culture · low context "Can I stay on your sofa on the 14th?"

In an ask culture you ask for what you want and a no costs nothing. In a guess culture you do not ask until you are fairly sure the answer is yes, because making someone refuse you is the rude part. Neither is wrong. Almost nobody knows which one they are running. The same axis has been drawn twice more, which tells you this is a real pattern and not an internet theory. Edward Hall's high-context and low-context communication: in a high-context culture the meaning sits in the situation and the relationship, so the request is implied. And Brown and Levinson on face: every request threatens somebody's freedom to say no, and cultures build different machinery to protect it. Deliberately no map of countries on this slide. The axis is real, the country-level version is a stereotype waiting to insult somebody at your table, and you will do better watching the individual in front of you. Singapore does sit firmly on the guess side. So a room here can be full of people who all want to help each other and are all waiting for someone else to go first. What it changes for you: you say the rule out loud, and you push twice.

Theory 06 · Bohns, 2016

Help is abundant. Asking is hard.

48%

People underestimate how likely others are to say yes to a direct request, by about half. Across 14,000 strangers asked.

Bohns (2016); Flynn and Lake (2008)

The external evidence for the thing you will watch happen all evening. Vanessa Bohns reviewed a run of studies in which participants asked more than fourteen thousand strangers for things. The finding is robust and large: requesters underestimate compliance by around 48%. People get about twice as many yeses as they expect. And the reason is precise: askers fail to appreciate how awkward it is to say no. The asker is worrying about the imposition. The helper is worrying about the refusal. Only one of them is right about what happens next, and it is not the asker. So the bottleneck at your table is never generosity. It is courage. Which is why we make the ask compulsory, and why when you push somebody for a second ask and it feels uncomfortable, that discomfort IS the job.

03 Part three

Before the gathering.

In the app

Set it up.

Create a venue

Create a gathering

A gathering's guest list, with a WhatsApp button beside each name

Send reminders optional

On the day

Get there first.

Ten minutes early
Pick the quietest table
Sit where you can see the door
Order drinks before people arrive (optional)

Hosting in pairs?

One runs the conversation and stays seated. One runs the room: drinks, late arrivals, the bill, the noisy table next door.

Hosting alone?

Hand the room job to a guest by name before you start. People love being given a job.

Once the session starts, the primary host does not fetch anything. The line if you are on your own: "Sarah, would you be my co-host for ten minutes and make sure everyone's got a drink?" It makes her the second most comfortable person at the table, which is a gift. A café that was calm at 3pm can be unusable at 7. If the room is loud, move to the quietest corner before anybody arrives, and tell us afterwards. We can change the venue or the time. We cannot hear the room from here. And do not be late. Five strangers at a table with nobody who knows what happens next is the worst version of this evening. If it does happen: message the group, not one person, give a real number of minutes, and name someone to start the names and the drinks.

If things go wrong

If only one person shows up.

15-20%

cancel at the last minute. Worse at 4 to 7pm.

of gatherings end up with one guest. It's maths, not you.

We keep a standby list to bring that down.

Mark cancellations in the app as soon as you know
Message us in advance if you can see it coming
Buy them a drink, and send us the bill

Do the maths out loud, because it takes the sting out. Last-minute cancellation runs 15 to 20%, and it is worse for the 4 to 7pm slots when people are still at work. At those rates, roughly one gathering in twenty ends up with a single guest. That is arithmetic, not a judgement on you or your table. The standby list exists to reduce it, and it works better the earlier we know. Which is the ask: mark cancellations in the app the moment you hear, and message us if you can see a thin table coming. We can often fill it. On the night: run it anyway. With two hosts, one guest is three people, which is a genuinely lovely evening. Same format, more questions. Do not apologise more than once, or you turn a small table into a failed one and the guest starts wondering whether they should have come. And buy them a drink. Send us the bill, we will sort it. Somebody who turned up when nobody else did deserves that. Do not take it personally. Nobody who cancelled was rejecting you.

04 Part four

Running it.

Your job

Make people feel seen, heard, and loved.

You're the chief encourager, not the guest of honour.

The shape

Ninety minutes.

0-10 Welcome Drinks, names, seated. Explain what happens. Set the tone.

10-60 Life stories Five minutes each, in turn. Everyone gets a turn. Yours last.

60-65 The pivot The importance of asking for help.

65-85 The asks Everyone. You go last.

85-90 Close Photo, app, and Fairy Godmothers.

Sixty percent of the evening on stories, forty on the pivot, the asks and the close. If you are at 70 minutes and have not started the asks, cut a question, not the second half. Six people is the target. Four is the minimum, eight is the ceiling, and hosts count. Ninety minutes, a hundred and twenty at the very most. Starting: begin when everyone has arrived, or 5 to 10 minutes after the scheduled time and no later. Waiting punishes the four people who were on time in order to be polite to the one who was not. The only exception is a real one, like very heavy rain. Line to use at ten past: "Let's make a start and we'll catch the others up when they get here." Latecomers are absorbed easily during stories and almost impossible to absorb during the asks. THE WELCOME, which is the two minutes that set everything else up. Four moves, in your own words: five minutes each in turn; we're more interested in WHO YOU ARE than what you do; my job is to make sure everyone feels seen, heard and included; and I'll go last. The second one is the single most important reframe of the night and it is what prevents six career summaries. Saying you will go last signals the evening is not about you, and buys you permission to interrupt people later. Also ask for phones away. And do not be at the bar for those two minutes. If you must go, hand over a person AND a question: "Ben, you're in charge while I grab these. Ask Priya about the Nepal thing."

Scenario one

Someone won't open up.

Say this "We'd love to hear more, if you'd like to share."
"What's the dream?"
"Does anyone else have a question for Wei Ling?"

Extremely common here, because plenty of people are quite sure their own story is boring. It is not. They have never been asked a good question about it. This is where hosting actually happens. Ask, follow up, ask again. Then hand the question round: half the time somebody else at the table is more curious than you are and just needs permission. Note the "if you'd like to share" ending. It gives them a way out, which is exactly why they take the way in. Two more that work on absolutely everyone: "if you had to give a TED talk, what would it be about?" and "what does a normal Tuesday actually look like, hour by hour?" And remember what you are asking for. Life stories, not CVs. How they got here, what they nearly did instead, the bit that went wrong, the person who changed their mind.

Scenario two

Someone talks too much.

Say this "I've got so many questions, but I want to make sure we give everyone a chance to share their story."

The most common problem and the hardest, especially when they are older or more senior than you. You will get better with practice and you will not get it perfect tonight. Interrupt with warmth rather than with a rule. You are not telling them off, you are so interested that you are worried about running out of time. Alternative line: "I'm going to pause you there so we can make sure everyone gets their turn." Set time out loud at the start and you are keeping a promise rather than silencing a person. Saying in the welcome that you will go last buys you the same permission. And turning to the next person by name while still nodding at the first does most of the work.

Scenario three

Someone gets interrupted.

Say this "Let's let them finish."

Scenario four

Someone becomes emotional.

Say this "Thank you for sharing this with us."

Scenario five

Someone gets pushy.

Say this "That's really interesting. Maybe that's something we can explore after the session."

The pivot

Four sentences, in your own words.

People who know a wide range of people do better. Better jobs, better ideas, more luck. Granovetter 1973 · Burt 1992
Generous people end up at the top of the pile or the bottom of it. What separates them is whether they ever ask for anything back. Grant 2013
Almost everyone here is a giver. We never tell you who is coming, so nobody turned up tonight to work the room.
Therefore, we all flourish more if everyone asks - so we force everyone to.

Then open it "So: one thing this table could help you with. Big or small."

After the stories, before the asks. This is the hinge of the evening and new hosts skip it, then wonder why the asks feel forced. Four sentences, about ninety seconds. Steps one and two are the theory, step three is the bit about us, and step four is the conclusion the room should reach a beat before you say it. Do not recite the studies. The names are there so you can answer "says who?" if somebody asks. Step four used to be "whoever doesn't ask goes home with least", which is a true sentence aimed at the wrong people. It is an argument about losing out, and the givers at your table do not move for that; a taker would. Say it as a rule of the evening instead. "We force everyone to" is doing real work: nobody has to feel brave if everybody is doing it, and an invitation is precisely the thing a giver declines politely. Then go first, and make yours real. A host who asks for something small and specific gives the table permission. A host who says they are fine has just shown everyone that opting out is available. Step three is the one people remember, so land it. Nobody knew who was coming, which is a filter: the person who wants to work a room does not sign up for a room they cannot see. So you are sitting with five people who will all help and none of whom will ask. Then the invitation, and these lines do real work if you can remember any of them. "This can feel a little uncomfortable." Naming it disarms the room and tells the guess-culture people that everyone finds it hard. "Big or small: an introduction, advice, an idea, feedback, an opportunity." "You don't need to know whether anyone here can help. That's the point." This unlocks the most asks, because the commonest reason people withhold one is scanning the table, deciding nobody can help, and saying nothing. "It's okay to ask, and equally okay for someone to say no." Removes the fear of imposing, which is the actual blocker.

The asks

Push for something specific.

Not an ask

"I'm open to opportunities."
"Just here to learn from everyone."
"Nothing really, I'm good."
"Anyone in tech, really."

An ask

"Anyone who has launched a food product in Malaysia."
"Someone to read my deck before Thursday."
"A physio in the east who is good with knees."
"A friend who runs at 6am, because I never go alone."

Ask twice, then let it go "That's kind, but I'm going to push you. What would you actually love to have happen in the next month?"

Your ask

Go last. Unless going first would help.

Vulnerability unlocks vulnerability
Keep it brief, and not pushy

Examples

"I moved here two years ago and I still don't have anyone I'd call on a Sunday."

"I've wanted to write for years and I've never shown anyone a word of it."

"My daughter wants to be a vet and I know nobody who is one."

Default to last, because the evening is not about you and because the table learns what an ask looks like from four other people first. But break the rule when the room is stuck. If nobody will go first, or the first two asks are polite nothings, go next and make yours real. Vulnerability unlocks vulnerability: it is very hard to be the first person to admit something, and very easy to be the second. There is research behind that, and it is the same finding we come back to at the end. Bruk and colleagues, 2018, the beautiful mess effect: we judge our own vulnerability far more harshly than other people judge it. From the inside it feels like weakness. From the outside it looks like courage. Keep it brief and keep it modest. Hosts who never ask look saintly and break the format. Hosts who ask for too much lose the table.

If things go wrong

Somebody doesn't pay.

We remind people in advance at non-home venues
You may still need to gently remind them
Discourage alcohol at external venues

If it gets awkward

De-escalate, cover it, and tell us. We'll PayNow you back if it's reasonable (for now).

Everyone buys their own drink. That is part of the deal and we say so when people register at a non-home venue. It still goes wrong occasionally: somebody forgets, or the bill arrives split oddly, or one person quietly assumes it is hosted. A light touch works: "shall we settle up at the counter on the way out?" Discourage alcohol at external venues. It runs the bill up, it changes the evening, and it makes the settling-up conversation harder than it needs to be. If there is any friction at all, do not win the argument. De-escalate, put it on your card, and tell us. We will PayNow you back if it is reasonable, and that offer is good at least through August. A host should never be out of pocket for hosting, and no gathering should end on a row about eight dollars.

05 Part five

Closing, and following up.

The last five minutes

Tap End session.

Who came

Photos

End session, step three: Finish, which opens the group chat and sends the follow-up

Chat and follow-up

One button, three things, before you stand up.

This used to be four separate jobs in four separate places, and hosts did one or two of them. It is one flow now: End session, on the gathering page or at the bottom of the playbook. Photo first, before you tap anything. Ask permission, take one. It matters more than you think, because it is what makes the evening real to the people who were not there. Step one is who actually came, and it is the one that matters. It is what lets a Fairy Godmother know who met whom, which is what makes reconnect and the introductions work. A gathering nobody marked is a gathering the system cannot learn from. It also decides who gets the follow-up and who is in the chat, so everything else hangs off it. Finish does the last two: it opens the group chat, and it sends everyone marked as present the follow-up on WhatsApp and email. That message carries their own link into the app, so it is also how the app gets installed. It names the guests before it sends, and it asks first. Do it at the table. Nobody installs an app from a message the next morning. Then the last thirty seconds: who do you want to see again, and how often. Get them to set it before they get home.

The last five minutes

Explaining Fairy Godmothers.

Fairy Godmothers make it easier to connect with people across sessions.

Tech gets you 90% of the way - generosity does the rest.

Say roughly this: "Make sure you've shared your ask with your Fairy Godmother too. She keeps looking across the whole network for people, ideas or opportunities that might help. You don't have to know who the right person is. That's partly what she's for." Do not skip this. One table can only hold six people and this is what turns one evening into a standing search. It is also the biggest lever you have on the thing we measure. What people say out loud is a fraction of what they will tell her in private, and she cannot work on what she has not been told. The picture is the one from the start of the session, and it is worth showing again here, because now they have met each other and it means something. We hop you to somebody who already knows the person you need. A human makes the last link. She gets you to the ball; she does not make the prince fall in love. If somebody asks whether she reads their asks: yes, that is the whole point, and nothing is ever public. There is no feed to perform on.

Afterwards

Keep it alive.

The Introduce to… picker, open on a member's page

Make intros

not built yet

Record asks soon

not built yet

Review feedback soon

The group chat is already open. End session made it.

After every gathering

Three questions.

Did everyone speak?
Did everyone feel included?
Did everyone make an ask?

The whole job

Make people feel seen, heard, and loved.

Last thing

Don't worry.

"Even when showing vulnerability might feel more like weakness from the inside, to others these acts might look more like courage from the outside."

Bruk, Scholl and Bless, 2018 · the beautiful mess effect

This is the research, and it is better than reassurance. Bruk and colleagues had people either display vulnerability themselves or watch somebody else do it. Everyone rated other people's vulnerability far more positively than their own. They called it the beautiful mess effect. Which applies directly to you tonight. The fumbled introduction you will still be thinking about on the way home did not register with anybody else, or it registered as warmth. Aronson, 1966, points the same way: a competent person who spills their coffee becomes more likeable, not less. A polished host makes people sit up straighter. A host who fumbles something, laughs at themselves and carries on makes everyone else relax, which is the actual objective. It is also why we say do not use a script. You cannot fake being interested in people, and you do not have to fake anything else. Authentic interest is the one thing we cannot train, and if you volunteered for this you almost certainly have it.

We Like Humans

Go and host a table.

Message us the moment something goes wrong, or right. Both are useful.