Scott Valdez
Founder of VIDA Select
VIDA Select is a modern matchmaking service for accomplished professionals who value their time. Scott Valdez built it on a simple conviction: finding the right person is a skill, and the people who need it most are usually the ones with the least time to practice it.
From a side project to a service
In 2009, Scott was a marketing consultant who had gotten good at dating through trial, error, and paying close attention to what actually worked. Friends started asking for his help. His approach worked often enough that he realized he could turn his side project into a business.
When TechCrunch covered the launch that June, they framed it as online dating help. That framing stuck for years, even as the service grew into something bigger.
What Scott was really building was a matchmaking operation. Someone doing the sourcing and screening so the client only had to show up.
— Scott Valdez“Dating is a skill.
Most people treat it like a lottery.”
Scott didn't build VIDA for everyone.
The service is for one kind of person: accomplished professionals who are serious about finding a relationship and want an expert running the search. They already work this way everywhere else. They find the person who's excellent at the thing, and they get out of the way.
His clients are typically 40 to 65. Executives, physicians, attorneys, founders. People who realized the part of life they'd deprioritized was the one thing that mattered most: finding someone to share it all with.
VIDA’s standard hasn't changed since the early days: real dates, with people you want to see again. It's still how Scott judges whether the service is working.
— Scott Valdez“Nobody hires us to go on dates.
They hire us to stop having to.”
The story that became the standard
One of the first ten clients Scott ever took had already counted himself out. A good man, by every measure that should matter, who had somewhere along the way decided he wasn't the kind of guy women got excited about.
Scott disagreed.
By the second weekend, the client had three dates lined up. Every one a woman he had personally approved. Every one a woman genuinely looking forward to meeting him. A few months later he was in a relationship with one of them. Today they're raising a family together.
That's the whole company in a single story. The client was never a hard case. He was a great match. He’d just been searching alone. So Scott went and found her.
See how VIDA became a modern matchmaking service.
Before VIDA
Scott studied business at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business before moving into marketing. He founded VIDA Select in 2009 and has led it since, meeting his current partner through the service. Scott is a member of the Matchmakers Alliance, the invitation-only network of leading matchmakers.
Scott Valdez, Founder of VIDA Select — featured on Vice
The company, now
Today VIDA Select is one of the largest matchmaking services in the United States. Scott leads a full team of matchmakers, scouts, and client success staff working across 30+ US metros, with clients on four continents.
The service has created more than 11,000 relationships since 2009. But Scott will tell you the number he cares most about is smaller and simpler: finding your person.
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