Reciprocal match score
Final = harmonic mean 2ab / (a + b) — a lopsided pair is pulled toward its weaker side by design.
Dynamic ring weighting
Where the score comes from
Ring 3 · six match dimensions
All six score at once — the active one is boostedproposed 50 / 10×5
Match card preview
How the Connection Engine works
The Connection Engine is Powered by Women's own matchmaking system — built to connect members for friendship, mentorship, referrals, collaboration, clients, and investment, not just "people who seem similar." Every match is explainable: we can always show a member exactly why she was matched with someone, in plain language.
Three things we look at
Every match blends three layers of a member's profile.
New members start with just a few answers, so we lean more on the business layer at first. As a member fills in more of her profile, the human and life layers carry more weight automatically — matches get better the more she shares, with no extra work on her end.
Six ways to connect
A member picks what she's looking for, and the engine scores everyone against that specific need.
Vibe/Friend is open to every paid member; the other five are part of the Business tier.
Every match comes with its reasons
A match is never just a number. Alongside every score, the engine points to the specific things two members actually have in common — matching lifestyle details, the same communication style, shared hobbies, being in the same industry or business stage — and turns them into something a member can read in plain English. On the match card that's three parts: Why you two (2–3 plain-language reasons), Shared signals (the specific traits in common, at a glance), and a suggested conversation starter to break the ice. Open the Playground tab to see a real example.
Matches work both ways
A good match has to work for both people, not just one. If Member A is a great fit for what Member B needs, but B isn't a fit for what A is looking for, that's not a strong match — so the engine checks both directions and leans toward the weaker side rather than averaging it away. That's what keeps the match list from being full of one-sided suggestions.
Built to be transparent
Every score today comes from clear, explainable rules over a member's real answers — nothing is a black box, and nothing is guessed. That also means it's easy to tune: as PBW learns what makes a great match in practice, the underlying weights can be adjusted without changing how the system works. Longer-term, the roadmap includes learning from real member feedback and, further out, AI enhancement — both are future phases, not part of this build.
The Connection Engine™ is built fully in-house for Powered by Women® — no third-party matching software.
Suggestion 1 — weight the rings differently per dimension
Right now every dimension blends the three rings the same way — the same Human / Life / Business split whether she's browsing for a friend or for an investor. We think that's worth changing. What she needs from an investor and what she needs from a friend aren't the same kind of fit, so the rings probably shouldn't carry the same weight in both cases.
The principle
The more a dimension is about a business outcome — raising money, getting referred, landing a client — the less her personal life and personality should factor into the match. The more a dimension is about a personal relationship, the more they should. Each dimension falls into one of three profiles:
Worked example: Investor
Investor is the sharpest case, and the one that prompted this — an investor doesn't need to be someone she'd be friends with. Stage fit, industry, and funding signal are what matter. One possible split, to make the idea concrete:
Business ~75% · Human ~15% · Life ~10% — versus today's uniform split, which is the same on every dimension.
The other Business-dominant dimensions (Referral, Collaboration, Client) would follow the same logic — Business well above the other two rings — but their exact splits are worth setting during calibration rather than guessing three more numbers today. Investor is the one case worth being this specific about now, since it's the one that came up.
Suggestion 2 — a Questions tab, not just one question a day
The plan today is to surface one question at a time on the home page — a gentle, low-pressure way to fill in a profile without a long form on day one. We'd keep that. On top of it, we'd add a Questions tab in her profile: every question the app asks, her answer next to it (or "not answered yet"), editable any time — and nothing stopping her from answering all of them on day one if she'd rather just get it done.
Right now the only way to answer a question is to wait for the home page to show it to her. That works well for members who like a slow reveal, but it gives everyone else no way to speed up — and no way to go back and fix an answer that's gone stale as her business changes.
Why it's worth doing
It plugs straight into the "matches get better as you answer more" idea already in How It Works — today that's something that just happens to her, one reveal at a time. A Questions tab makes it something she can act on: answer more, see better matches sooner. It also covers a gap the daily prompt can't — letting her correct an answer once her business stage, needs, or circumstances change, instead of that answer sitting stale indefinitely.