Ava And Building A Better World (With Tinder For Escorts)

The tech space has no shortage of bright minds hoping to use their talents to build a better world. Using networks to connect the financially underserved, using data to build better services, innovating the way to cleaner energy production — social entrepreneurship has a strong pull, and the world is full of needs that require better service.

But while some problems draw lots of interest, other holes in the market draw a bit less, because, frankly, they make people a little uncomfortable.

Which leads to Ava — one of the more out-of-the-box shots at social entrepreneurship out there. Said simply, Ava is a platform that connects escorts (either individually or escort services) and gentlemen interested in female companionship for an evening.

“This landscape for these kinds of services is evolving. The legal aspects are very scary, and it is not a very clear-cut arena,” noted Ava’s founder and CEO, who requested that PYMNTS omit his name since he has a mother, a day job as a software engineer and no strong desire to be known as the creative force behind Uber for escorts.

“A lot of what I’ve encountered since founding this has been a little shocking since my background is engineering, and adult services is an entire subculture,” he said. “What I am trying to do is offer a service that is very transparent and create an easy-to-use platform where legitimate services can be offered. This may be a very lofty goal, but I really think that, if there is a lot of legitimate supply in one place, then illegitimate stuff will struggle to find what it needs in terms of audience.”

So, how to build a site for legitimate adult services? According to Ava’s founder — carefully.

The Underreported Clean Side Of Adult Services

Let’s first review the recent struggles of Backpage and Redbook, which have drawn intense criticism for allowing (and perhaps passively encouraging) human traffickers and those dealing with the severely underage to use their classified services.

Apart from being illegal and immoral, the problem with allowing breaches of common decency is that it drives away users whose enthusiasm for hired escorts doesn’t mean they are enthused to actively support slavery or child sexual abuse.

“Technology is here right now and can ease up the stress on a lot of industries and make them run better — and adult services aren’t different,” said Ava’s CEO. “If you want an escort to take out for an evening, as a guy who might need something like that, you can struggle to find a legitimate way to do it. If our platform can do a good job of providing a service to the bulk of people who are operating legally and who want to make use of legal services, I think you can drive the really ugly business out. That demand is always going to be there, no matter how much legal process or difficulty society injects into it. No one is going to change the very real human condition of wanting companionship.”

So, how does Ava keep it on the up and up?

Well, in a word, screening — and lots of it. Both service providers and service buyers are encouraged to submit photo ID verification (this is not required, however, though the site gives preferences to those who submit their photo and phone ID). Additionally, Ava has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to questionable cases. When a profile is reported in doubt, the post comes down within 24 hours.

The founder also noted that, unlike Backpage, Ava doesn’t let questionable postings go through that use coded terms to allude to potentially illegal services on offer. Ads that refer to “young-looking” escorts, for example, are pulled.

And the voice of the user community is important. Reviews are posted and open, and clients or service providers who are poorly reviewed are removed from the platform.

What Ava Doesn’t Do

While the Ava platform allows escorts and those looking for company to meet, the site does not allow for transacting directly. That is handled offline between parties.

“When we were first building the platform, like a total engineer, I was like, ‘Oh, great — we can build that; it’s easy. We’ll just add a button,’” said the CEO. “Then, I talked with a couple of processors about what we do, and it became clear that we don’t want to handle the payments because that [involves] a whole host of other issues.”

And not hooking into that part of the business is tough since it means that, as of now, Ava is a labor of love, as neither side of the platform is charged because the site doesn’t have an embedded way to do that yet.

That could change going forward — an ideal future iteration might involve subscription services for the various user groups, though that is still somewhat down the line.

The goal now, according to its founder, is to keep signing up legitimate service providers and helping them connect to safe legitimate users.

It might not be most people’s first choice to make the world a better place, but for the team at Ava, sometimes, the most important problems to solve are the ones that no one is very comfortable solving.