Celebrating Fifteen Years: A Letter from Our Founder

In fact, when I first told friends that I intended to leave a stable career in psychology to become a matchmaker, most of them laughed. This was 2006, long before matchmaking had the visibility it enjoys today. There were no podcasts discussing attachment styles, no mainstream conversations about relationship coaching, and certainly no established blueprint for building a premium matchmaking business. To many people, it sounded like an unusual career move at best and a reckless one at worst.

The truth is, I didn’t set out to become a matchmaker.

I was working as a business psychologist and searching for my next professional opportunity when I stumbled across a job advert for an introduction agency looking for someone with a psychology background. I almost skipped past it. In fact, I remember wondering what an introduction agency even was.

Yet something about the role intrigued me. Here was an opportunity to work closely with accomplished individuals from around the world; people who had built successful careers, businesses, and lives, yet still felt that one important piece of the puzzle was missing. The more I learned, the more I realised that this work sat perfectly at the intersection of everything I cared about: human behaviour, relationships, communication, and personal fulfilment.

Looking back, that was my ikigai, although I didn’t have the language for it then.

It would take another five years before I found the confidence to build something of my own. Leaving the security of a salary and launching a business is never a rational decision on paper. There is no perfect moment. There is simply a point where belief outweighs fear.

Even then, there were plenty of mornings in those early years when I questioned myself. I missed the predictability of employment. I worried about whether clients would come. I wondered whether I had what it took to build a company that could survive, let alone thrive. Like many founders, I discovered that entrepreneurship is often a daily exercise in backing yourself before there is any evidence that you should. Thankfully, I did.

Fifteen years later, Maclynn has grown into a team of 24 remarkable people across the UK and the United States. Many of them, fittingly, also have backgrounds in psychology. While the business has evolved enormously, the qualities that attracted me to this profession remain exactly the same.

A fly on the wall in our Mayfair office would hear conversations that have taken place thousands of times over the years. Matchmakers checking in after first dates. Colleagues discussing compatibility. Team members celebrating a client’s breakthrough. The question we continue to ask, day after day, remains beautifully simple:

“How did it go?”

And when a client’s voice lights up with excitement, we still experience the same feeling we did fifteen years ago. We smile, pause for a moment, and quietly wonder whether we have just witnessed the beginning of a life-changing relationship.

One chapter in particular captures the entrepreneurial journey for me.

When the opportunity arose to expand into the United States and establish our New York office, I had a one-year-old child at home and was pregnant with my second. Every practical consideration suggested it was the wrong time to take on such an ambitious project. Yet experience has taught me that growth rarely arrives at convenient moments. Sometimes the opportunities that shape a business demand courage before they offer certainty.

Opening New York was one of those moments, and it became one of the most important decisions we’ve ever made.

Over the years, our clients have come from dozens of countries and cultures. Together, we’ve witnessed countless engagements, weddings, and growing families. We’ve helped create more marriages than I could ever accurately count, and more babies than I would dare attempt to.

Yet the numbers have never been the point; what has mattered most is the impact.

The world has changed dramatically since Maclynn began. Technology has transformed how people meet, dating apps have become part of everyday life, artificial intelligence is now reshaping entire industries. Yet despite all this change, one thing has remained remarkably constant: the human desire for genuine connection.

In many ways, our work feels more relevant today than ever before.

We live in a world of infinite choice, endless scrolling, and constant digital interaction. But still, many successful, intelligent people feel more disconnected than ever. They’re not looking for more options; they’re looking for better ones and what they want most is trust, compatibility, emotional intelligence, and the confidence that comes from being truly understood.

That’s something algorithms can assist with, but they can’t replace.

At its heart, matchmaking remains profoundly human work. It requires intuition, empathy, experience, and an understanding of the complexities that make every individual unique. It is about recognising not only who someone says they want, but who they are most likely to build a meaningful life with.

That belief has guided every decision we have made over the last fifteen years.

To every client who trusted us, every colleague who helped shape our culture, every partner who supported our growth, and every member of the Maclynn community who has been part of this journey, thank you.

I’ve never been the loudest voice in the room. If  I’ve contributed anything meaningful, I hope it’s been an ability to listen carefully, to stay curious about people, and to help turn those insights into a service that genuinely changes lives.

Anniversaries invite reflection, but I have always been more interested in what lies ahead than what sits behind us. So while I’m immensely grateful for the last fifteen years, I’m even more excited about the next fifteen.

To the connections not yet made, the stories not yet written, and the lives still waiting to be changed, here’s to the future.

And to the extraordinary journey still to come.