Why Marina Pasqual looks beyond the matchmaking database
Marina Pasqual is Co-Founder of Velin Privé, an international private matchmaking agency for founders, executives and investors in tech and business. The agency introduces clients to accomplished women who share traditional family values, and this conversation explains how targeted search, clear briefs and personal vetting shape its work.
A strong database is not enough when the right person may never seek out a matchmaker. Pasqual’s advice is to solve one real client’s problem, then document the work so it can become a method.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
It started with a friend. A close friend of mine wanted to get married, and I had spent my whole career in marketing, so I did for her what I knew how to do: I worked out exactly who she was looking for and went to find him. They got married. Then women began coming to me asking for the same help, and that is how Velin Privé began.
Velin Privé is a private matchmaking agency for founders, executives and investors in tech and business. It introduces them to accomplished women who share traditional family values. Around 70% of the women in our network are from Slavic countries. We are based in Barcelona and work internationally with our own representatives and partners.
What makes us different is the method I developed, Velin Privé Target Search. It is executive search for your personal life, built on marketing expertise. We use the same tools that businesses use to find a specific customer, and apply them to finding one specific person: a precise portrait of who you are looking for, targeted outreach to the people who match it, first in our own database, then far beyond it. Every candidate is personally vetted before an introduction. Many agencies can only show you who is already on their list. We go and look for the person who fits.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
My first clients found me through other people. Women heard what had happened with my friend and wrote to me, and for a long time we worked with a Russian-speaking audience, people who had moved abroad and found it hard to meet someone serious in a new country.
Today most new clients find us online. They read an article on our site about how matchmaking works or what to ask before hiring a matchmaker, and then book a call. People want to understand how it works before they trust anyone with something this personal, so I explain as much as I can in the open.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision that changed the direction of the business was to stop waiting. I moved from waiting for the right person to appear to actively searching for them on behalf of each client. That is where Target Search came from, and it also meant we could work in any city, because the search is not tied to one local list.
My biggest lesson is connected to it. I believed for too long that a good database was enough. A database only holds the people who already raised their hand. The person my client is looking for is usually living their life and not thinking about matchmakers at all.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
People are tired. Dating has turned into a sales funnel: dozens of profiles, then messages, then patience at every stage just to reach one first date. People burn out and stop believing it can work. So they now look for someone who will do the search for them and take responsibility for it.
They also ask harder questions than they used to. Clients want to know exactly how you search, who checks the candidates and what happens to their personal data. We adapted by writing everything down: each client has a questionnaire and in-depth interviews, and we turn that into a written brief, so both of us know who we are looking for. Colleagues in my matchmaking community say the same thing I see: people who have invested in their search open up more and pretend less. And I use AI every day in my work, but people should still be introduced by a human who has actually spoken to both of them.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Do first: find one real person and solve their problem completely, before you build anything. Your first client teaches you what the service actually is. Then write down what you did, because that becomes your method.
Ignore: the idea that you need a huge database, a big office or famous names on your wall before you can start. I would also ignore the temptation to promise results. In this work you promise effort, honesty and a careful search. Nobody can promise love.
Thank you to Marina Pasqual and the team at Velin Privé for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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