Eric McHugh, a digital entrepreneur, President of ShopX, and Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer of Dataing.io AI powered matchmaking, talks about researching dark matter, shaking up Web3, finding romance using AI matchmakers (the first of their kind), and being the #1 Eric in the world.

We are joined today by Eric McHugh, a digital

entrepreneur with time spent at Snapchat cart, rev and others.

Eric is now the president of shop X, a web three powered e

commerce platform, as well as the co founder and chief sales

officer of data in AI powered matchmaking. Eric looking at

your profile, I see roles like chief growth officer, corporate

restructuring consultant, it seems like you excel at shaking

up the status quo and things need to change. That's when you

get to call.

Yeah, pretty much. Um, honestly, I just kind of

fall on my intellectual curiosity. wherever it leads me,

that leads me up to at least disruption. That's disruption

for positive reasons, then so be it.

Before we really dive in. I've got to ask you were a dark

matter researcher at Carnegie Mellon University for a while,

no big deal, right?

That was super cool. And as long as things

were, the universe just presents itself. So I'm very fortunate I

have a very smart family, both my brother and my dad went to

Carnegie Mellon, like after I was in college, my brother was

still there, the senior research team, researching the Dark

Matter thing. So they needed someone on the business side

just to like, write the reports to research. So I gotta go

there, hang out with a team, write the research reports, like

make it presentable. And all that jazz on this thing was we

got it. So they would use a supercomputer called the

lustrous to kind of map out stars, like map out where

everything is to find the dark matter, which is honestly

nothing, no one really knows what it is still. But we got to

like mess around with like, some supercomputer late and I was

like, just mapping out faraway galaxies. Like what do you

think, again, this is all guesswork, because it's all

based on equations. But it was just fun. There's a fun thing,

just playing around with that just like networking and talking

with all these really cool science people who happen to

have a lot of overlap with crypto. So we bought all that.

But it was an amazing experience.

Man, we were really hoping you'd gotten to the bottom of

that dark matter business.

There is no bottom.

So your area of focus is with web three powered

businesses, briefly explained for those of us less

technologically inclined what web three is.

I would say the key differences, ownership. And if

we go back to web one versus web two, web, web three, all those

are just convenient sounding names for the progression

they're not. I mean, it makes logical sense for web one to go

to web two to web three. And so what web one is, is I would

think of read only. So in web one, we could read content. And

that's all we could do web to read and write. So let's frame

it as like social media like Instagram, YouTube, even those

podcasts where we posted, I can post something that's me writing

content, you as a listener can read that content. The only

issue is neither of us on the content. So if I did a post on

Instagram, Instagram owns the content based on my data, they

make money from the parents purposes, or they can

retroactively canceling and take away your content. And web

three, I would say it's a read, write and own some what I can

write content, you can read the content, the only difference and

the key thing is we can own the content. And that's in the form

of an NF t. So let's say hypothetically, I create an NF

T, I now own this NF t, then you purchase enough t right? gifted

to you, however, however we decide to do that deal. Now

there's a connection between me and you, and no one else is

involved. So you're in complete control. And I like to joke

about Web Board web five. So I would say web four is NF T's ai

o and the metaverse all incorporated into one web. And

then as a joke, it's like web five is I think we just kind of

all go back outdoors. There's like enough of this. And web

three, I mean, with ownership comes responsibility. Like for

example, if I own the content, I'm responsible for the content.

And so that's where the biggest gap is. And that's what we're

doing right now. There are two main reasons web three hasn't

fully taken off. The first is incentives, meaning like, why

would anyone interact with web three? Why would anyone interact

with cryptocurrency? There hasn't been too many incentives,

shop X is trying to fix that by adding e commerce incentives for

that new product. But the bigger I guess barrier would be the

user interface meaning like, I personally would never send my

mom or my grandma to do what the product was like, Where's my

money? I don't know. How do I find? Who do I ask? Well,

there's no customer support, because as a budget, okay, it

looks like you have to go on Reddit and find a very specific

solution that some guy came up like five years ago, it'll get

fixed once the larger brands come in. And once they come in,

they have the capital and the resources and now the incentive

to make the system usable for the customers.

So what sets shop X apart in the web three space?

Yeah, so in terms of what sets us apart from other

ecommerce platform for the brand side, we're we're the full

service solutions for like brands, and that T projects. But

the bigger thing is where the simplest and easiest to use for

their customers, customer wanting to purchase an IoT they

can do with credit card. So what Shopify is, is I want you to

think of that Google or Apple, but three long term are going to

be a suite of solutions for Brad to download a simple app, and

then interact within the web three space, getting different

benefits depending on their business need or the product.

Right now we have two products live. The first is reserve x. So

that's an NFT powered loyalty program. If you're a Shopify

store, and you want to enter that web three space, all you

have to do is download the shop X app, get their programmatic

tokenized software licenses, you can launch a NFT collection with

less than five minutes by filling out two simple forms.

And then from there err, you can add ecommerce benefits to this

to that collection for your customers. Our second product

which is squat X, the first ever blockchain based ambassador

program, so just like Twitter pays its creators in revenue

from their from their ad revenue we pay our community from for

helping our ecosystem grow from our reserve X revenue. The logic

behind that is it's a better to give than receive. And so every

time a brand makes a sale, our community makes money. They

obviously they make theory and they're happy about their

posting about their like bombarding brands like Twitter

pages, creating authentic organic content, thus attracting

more and more brands, thus getting them more more money

that's attracting more more brands. I think it's an

important concept because I believe in powerful

relationships, not force relationships. So in a forced

relationship, one party wins, one party loses. And it's

unsustainable, because like, we're in a forced relationship

eventually, like, the person's like, Nah, dude, I'm out. But in

a powerful relationship, which is what this podcast is, like,

relative winning, we're both gonna do we're keeping our list

and the listeners and everyone involved as a winning over

powerful relationship is like a mutual beneficial relationship.

So with our shopping ecosystem, we designed that in mind, so

we're just like, Okay, who's part of this deal? Shop acts as

part of it are we win because we burn money, the brands part of

it, they win because they increase customer lifetime

value. They lower customer acquisition costs, they earn

revenue, okay? Brands customers part of this deal, too. They

have to win too. And they're winning because they're going to

ecommerce benefits. And if they weren't winning, they wouldn't

obviously pay for it. So there's that part. But an important part

of this is the shopping ecosystem ourselves, like our

license holders, how do we get them to win? Okay, every time we

make money, they make money. So it just creates like, there's no

losers here.

Let's talk about your other venture Dataing, an AI

powered matchmaker with the goal of matching 1 billion happy

couples. Ai matchmaking... is romance dead?

Okay, this is kind of funny. So it's the first ever

AI powered matchmaker. So I would say most people will try

to meet online right now. And I think that trend is generally

gonna increase. So it solves a bunch of the problems that's

presented by Tinder hinge and all the dating apps. The first

issue with like dating apps right now is the top 5% of users

get access to like 100% of the users on the app, creating a

skewed marketplace. The second issue is a it's just all based

on physicality, let's be honest, like most dating apps, it's like

Hot or Not hot swipe, not swipe left. And the third issue, which

most people don't know about is the incentive structure behind

each dating app. I like to think of it as a company that we put

our users in the position for them to succeed. I mean, it's

dating, you have to meet the person in person, and you have

to be friendly yet, you can't just completely rely on AI. So

as a dating user, you would sign up link your social media

accounts, and then it would auto generate a profile for you based

on your digital footprint, then it shows you three matches per

day. So you're not going to be bombarded with like messages not

going like 1000s or whatever. So to match with people who have

similar digital footprints. And our goal is for you to learn

more about the person who you want to match with. So let's say

I get Ashley Kimberly Jane as matches like, okay, James,

interesting, please someone world Jane. It's like an AI will

read your social media. It's like, oh, did you know that in

your top three, Spotify listens? You both listened to this one

random artist? Oh, did you know this random artist has a concert

coming up in the month halfway between both of you? Would you

like me suggest this day with Jane. The more you're on our

app, the smarter our AI gets, the better imagining you get so

the line more likely, and you'll take it off. So what we want to

do is be the app where everyone plans the date. So like, let's

say hypothetically and the J an example of the concert, we want,

we're going to do partnerships like taking baths or restaurants

and places where people can just suggest the date plan everything

that looks on both our calendars. And then that point

of time, we would take a commission based on dates.

And virtual dates are also a part of this, right?

So, we want to be one of the first apps in the VR

system just so we're ready to go. And so let's say

hypothetically you match with a user, you have the option to

either have a FaceTime call, or if you want to be more

comfortable, you can meet in virtual reality. But again, the

goal is always to get that in all the data in real life. We

don't want people just kind of wasting people's time just like

chit chatting aimlessly for hours. It's like, no.

So the waitlist is open to sign up for the app, where

should listeners go?

Dataing.io. And then you can just sign up for

the waitlist, we are manually selecting new users first. So if

you listen to this podcast to see Kate for this podcast, shoot

our Instagram DM saying I came from the podcast and then we'll

probably bump you up faster than everyone else.

Awesome. Well, Eric, any parting thoughts?

Just be your authentic self. I'm the number

one Eric in the world. So if you try to be me, you can't you're

the number one you in the world. Yes, try to be you you can't and

I think whatever the Creator God, the universe, whatever you

want to call it. I think he blesses everyone with each

individual with very specific gifts with the goal of being a

service to the community. So the best way to be a service

community is just be yourself and just be positive if you're a

conscious creator. Don't take anything away from anyone and

don't harm anyone and use it gets.

There you have it. You've all been listening to the number

one Eric in the world.

Awesome dude, thank you so much, I had a blast. Your

podcast is extremely well run. Yeah.