our team
Grace Lee
Dror Goldberg
GENERAL MANAGER
FORETELL REALITY
Howard Olah-Reiken
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
FORETELL REALITY
Liesel Sharabi, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
HUGH DOWNS SCHOOL OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
Ben Sontheimer
CO-FOUNDER & GENERAL PARTNER
ELIZABETH STREET VENTURES
Grace Lee, Founder
My Mission
My mission is to help you date better. What does that mean? Well, for one, it doesn’t mean always getting the next date or getting your date to totally fall for you. To be good at dating means being able to be yourself, to feel confident and relaxed so that you can really get to know the person in front of you. It seems simple enough, but after years of social distancing and an over-reliance on phones and social media, being IRL can feel uncomfortable. You may be out of practice and or feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. So, back to my mission: I’m going to help you get better at dating by leveraging the game changing capabilities that VR has to offer.
The datingverse will help you get out of your head and onto a good first date.
More About Me
I was born and raised in East Lansing, Michigan, making me a friendly Midwesterner and a stalwart MSU fan. I earned my B.A. in History from Emory University and my M.A. from Cambridge University in Economics.
After deciding against a career in academia, I joined HSBC as an International Manager in their corporate banking program. This role brought me to the Channel Islands, Hong Kong, and Shanghai where I lived for nine years. During my time in China, I worked as a banker, had my two kids (now 16 and 18) and started a company specializing in children's retail.
Life changes brought me to NYC in 2009. I arrived as a single parent with two little kids and threw myself into online dating. They say you should do what you love, and that’s what I did. I transitioned to matchmaking and then into date coaching. Now, after over ten years of dating and experience as a professional matchmaker, I’m sharing the fruits of my experience.
Dror Goldberg,
General Manager
At first glance, you could mistake Dror for just another tech guy. After all, with his professional experience at Samsung, Amazon, and Nokia, not to mention his MBA from Yale, he has the pedigree to fit the description. However, his interest in Virtual Reality technology runs much deeper than its typical gaming/metaverse applications. As General Manager of Foretell Reality, his vision is to leverage VR technology for people to acquire real life skills.
The company is involved in many projects. For one corporate, Foretell created VR spaces for people to practice negotiation, pitching, and executive leadership. For a regional hospital, they created a shared virtual safe space platform for group and individual therapy to make participants feel comfortable relating their experiences to one another. And for dating, Foretell helped me create The DatingVerse.
Dror and I share the same vision for how this technology can effect change in real life. VR is not a replacement for real life, but instead an important training ground for practicing social skills to apply in real life.
Howard Olah-Reiken
,
Chief Technology Officer
Notice the charming roof deck, realistic evening sky, and shimmering moonlight you see in The DatingVerse? Those are just a few examples of the expertise Howard brings to the table. Howard and his team of expert developers represent the leading edge of VR development, making The DatingVerse a state-of-the-art platform in the world of VR. The avatars, environments, virtual interactions, and special features like the whisper, beach ball, and recording are all the result of countless hours of programming and direction.
With over 25 years of experience in software engineering etc, Howard is an established figure in the world of VR/AR. He is a highly regarded advisor and mentor to companies looking to incorporate Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, XR hardware, and other emerging technologies, and has been a long-standing contributor of the VR/AR Association, AR New York, and New York VR. Howard holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science.
Liesel Sharabi, Ph.D.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
THE HUGH DOWNS SCHOOL OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
While Foretell Reality and I share the same vision for technology’s role in dating, there’s a bigger question at hand. How is that technology affecting dating, relationships, and how we communicate with each other today? That’s where Dr. Sharabi comes in.
Dr. Sharabi is an assistant professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication and the Director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at Arizona State University. She has dedicated her career to understanding how technology affects romantic relationships. As an expert in online dating, she is an oft-quoted expert appearing in a variety of edited volumes and journals as well as New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Time magazine, NPR, the BBC, The Huffington Post, and her blog for Psychology Today called Dating in the Digital Age.
By partnering with Dr. Sharabi and her Relationships and Technology lab at ASU, we are contributing to a larger study on VR coaching’s ability to transform dating and relationships in real life. Dr. Sharabi will help us fine-tune our process with quantifiable data, giving our clients the best date coaching experience possible. With Dr. Sharabi’s help, we’re proving that VR isn’t just fun, but seriously helpful.
Ben Sontheimer,
Cofounder & General Partner
Ben is the Co-founder and General Partner of Elizabeth Street Ventures. An art collector and global consumer investor, he brings 20+ years of experience evaluating consumer-focused businesses across public and private markets, launching and growing investment funds and investing in brands globally. Elizabeth Street is Ben’s third consumer investment firm as a founder and his first early stage venture capital fund.
Prior to Elizabeth Street, he launched and was Managing Partner at Vault Partners, an equity long/short fund with a global consumer mandate, which he grew to $250M in assets. Previously, Ben was the co-founder at Javelin Partners, a U.S.-focused consumer long/short equity fund that grew from an initial investment of $800K to over $300M. As a public markets investor, Ben took a thematic long-term approach, targeting businesses and brands experiencing exceptional changes in growth and aimed to hold investments through the full trajectory of their success.
Ben’s successful private market investments include: Capital IQ (acquired by McGraw-Hill in 2004), New Oriental Education (IPO in 2005), TrueCar (IPO in 2014), LendingClub (IPO in 2014). His notable early investments in the public markets include: Odwalla, Audible, Expedia, Mobile Mini, Tractor Supply, Coach, Peet’s Coffee, New Oriental Education, Align Technology, WisdomTree, Moncler.
Ben began his career as a short seller at Rice Voelker, covering retail and consumer stocks. He then worked as a consumer analyst at Gilder Gagnon Howe, a $10B equities manager. Ben graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature. He had a Grant in Creative Writing at Skidmore College. Ben is a founding board member of The Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought.