Meet In The Wild exists for men and women who are done with situationships, endless swiping, and low-effort dating. We create curated, in-person experiences and high-touch matchmaking for relationship-minded singles who take their lives — and their love lives — seriously.
Across Tampa, St. Petersburg, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, and Fort Worth.
From chaos to commitment
I'm Kiley, the founder of Meet In The Wild.
I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu who's built two successful businesses before this one. I've never been someone who does anything halfway, including this. I don't play games with people's time or emotions, and that instinct didn't come from a business book.
I spent my childhood in a home broken by infidelity and neglect. There was violence that a kid should never see, much less experience. My adolescent years were spent bouncing between group homes and foster care, changing schools so often it took me six years and six high schools to graduate.
What changed everything was that other families stepped in. They pulled me out of that environment and into their homes. They showed me what a structured, committed, nuclear family actually looked like. That contrast was far too wide to ignore and has burned in my brain ever since. I saw exactly what gets destroyed when the family breaks, and what becomes possible when it is strong.
Seeing these qualities in the men who took me out of that abusive home gave me an obsession with masculine excellence. Not the version the internet argues about — the real version. Discipline, consistency, accountability, and doing the hard work that relationships require.
I fought my way to a degree from Bryant University. I earned that black belt. I built those businesses. And then I built this.
Meet In The Wild is where all of that converges. The obsession with masculine excellence. The belief that how a man shows up in his career, his health, and his relationships changes everything for the people around him. It is my life's work. A room where good men and women who actually want to build something real can meet in person, be seen, and start the kind of story I never had as a kid.
When you come to an event, you are not just buying a ticket. You are walking into a room built by someone who has seen what happens when relationships fail, and is obsessed with helping you build one that lasts.
I knew a lot of men who were dating with the right intentions — built careers, worked on themselves, did the hard things. The kind of men who would've had women lining up in any prior generation. They couldn't find quality women.
I could see the problem from their side. What I didn't have yet was the women's perspective. So I launched a relationships podcast to hear directly from them.
Episode after episode, the women were describing the exact same frustrations in reverse. Good women, serious about commitment, burned out on apps and low-effort dating. Both sides were exhausted and asking the same question: "Where else can you even meet people in person anymore?"
Before I built anything, I wanted to know if the room I had in my head was something women would actually show up for. So I started asking a simple question on the podcast and off-air:
"If there was a curated, in-person event where you could meet 20–25 vetted, intentional men in one night… would you go?"
Thirty-nine out of forty women said yes.
That was enough for me. If the room didn't exist, I was going to build it.
We launched our first official Meet In The Wild event on April 27, 2024, with 100+ people in the same venue we used for the podcast.
That same podcast didn't just validate the idea. It introduced me to Gloria, who was on our very first episode.
At one point we asked the women if they'd ever been "flown out" before. Gloria just laughed and said:
That line stuck. It was exactly how I felt too.
We invited Gloria back for the second episode of the podcast. After we wrapped, we ended up on the 20th-floor rooftop at Camden Pier, looking out over downtown St. Pete. She looked at me and said, "You're going to take over this city."
That rooftop is now where we host our events.
That rooftop is the building we call home.
That rooftop is also where I proposed at our Christmas party on December 19, 2025.
She said yes.
Somewhere between that first episode and that proposal, Meet In The Wild was born.
Will and I go back to early 2022, when he was my trainer and I was helping him with Facebook ads for his fitness business. We were both fed up with where we were and kept talking about finding something we could build together.
When I finally started Meet In The Wild, Will was the first person to bet his livelihood on it. He walked away from a successful high-ticket training career to help me build this from scratch.
Five months in, two back to back Category 4 hurricanes hit our only market. Internet was down, events were canceled, and we were inches from shutting everything down. Revenue dried up overnight, but the work didn't.
The first year was brutal for us, but especially for Will. He got evicted multiple times and was taking calls from a different Airbnb each week. He had every reason to blame the business, blame me, and walk away. He never did. He showed up to every call, every event, and every backend fire drill like this was the only way forward.
In the process of building this, I brought a lot of friends into Meet In The Wild. Almost every single one of them bailed. They weren't ready for what it actually costs to build something from nothing, and unfortunately I lost a lot of those friendships. Will is the one who stayed.
Going into business with a best friend is one of the fastest ways to destroy the relationship. We knew that. We risked it anyway because we believed in what we were building more than we feared losing each other. We rebuilt it on shared sacrifice, accountability, and trust.
Today, Will is our Director of Operations and runs the entire backend and matchmaking engine. When you walk into one of our events or work with our matchmaking team, you're stepping into something one of my best friends and I were willing to suffer for, not a cute social experiment we threw together on weekends.
"Still standing from day one. We took the hit from back-to-back hurricanes in our only market, and rebuilt the backend and matchmaking engine that's now behind 100+ relationships."
Meet In The Wild is a family business in every sense.
My brother Cameron moved his entire life to St. Pete to help build this from the ground up. Today, he leads many of the first conversations people have with us and is largely responsible for the quality of men in each room. Everywhere else I'm considered "Cam's brother", so Meet In The Wild is the one place he lets me be the older brother again.
Cam is the living embodiment of what we teach the men who come through our doors. He built a real career at Oracle and Sisense. He stays in serious shape year round. He took the risk and moved his whole life to St. Pete build this with me. He did the work most guys skip. Money, health, mindset, all dialed before he ever expected the right woman to show up. And from that place, he attracted the kind of woman most guys are still swiping for. We came from the same broken home and he's proof that where you start doesn't have to determine where you end up.
Ten days after I proposed, Cameron proposed to his fiancée, Maria.
Maria is an integral part of the creative side with Gloria. She shoots our events, and she's the one who takes the photos for our men's bios in matchmaking. Those images have been a catalyst when we reach out to women and schedule dates — she makes our guys look like a million bucks.
My fiancée Gloria, my brother Cameron, and Maria are in this with me. Will left a successful career as a high-ticket trainer to build this with me and pulled his younger brother into the company too. Multiple brothers, one mission. We are building the kind of rooms we wish existed when we were single.
Two brothers from a broken home, building a company around masculine excellence and healthy relationships. Both living proof that you can become what you didn't grow up with.
When you come to a Meet In The Wild event, you're not just buying a ticket. You're walking into something our family is living, not just talking about.
"Two brothers. Two proposals. One mission: bring back intentional, in-person love stories and masculine excellence."
Roy and his wife Larra round out that circle. Roy serves as our strategic advisor and silent equity partner. Larra helps host events and has supported our matchmaking.
Roy was already the youngest credentialed actuary in the world and a Fortune 500 executive when he saw our ads. He had advised other dating and matchmaking companies, was engaged at the time, and came to an event undercover just to see if it actually worked.
After participating in all the dating rounds, he walked up to me and said, "I've been pitched by a couple hundred companies. This is the first time I'm the one doing the pitching."
Roy has invested the last two years into Meet In The Wild as a silent equity partner and strategic advisor, and we wouldn't be where we are today without him.
Roy typically charges four figures per hour to advise founders, yet has never sent Meet In The Wild an invoice.
Multiple families have real skin in this mission, which is why we treat every event like we're introducing people we care about.
We don't just talk about commitment. This is our real inner circle — the same people building and hosting Meet In The Wild. Multiple couples, one mission: help you find someone real.
We believe you cannot automate a human connection, no matter how hard you try.
Real attraction lives in the intangibles you can't capture on a screen.
Investment — time, money, effort — is a filter. It's how we separate tourists from people who are truly ready.
Our vetting exists to protect your time, energy, and safety.
Live your life. Stop managing a pipeline.
We care about relationships that last, not vanity metrics.
Founder & CEO
I'm Kiley, the founder of Meet In The Wild. I've never been someone who does anything halfway, including this. I'm a Brazilian Jiu‑Jitsu black belt and have built two businesses before this one. I grew up in a home where the family broke, so I know firsthand what that costs. This company exists because I became obsessed with building what I never had and making sure the right men and women have a real shot at it. Every person who walks into one of our rooms gets the same thing I put into everything else: complete commitment.
Will left a successful high‑ticket training career to join Meet In The Wild when it was just an idea and a podcast room. When two Category 4 hurricanes shut down our only market five months in, he doubled down and helped rebuild every system from scratch. Today, Will is our Director Of Operations and runs the matchmaking engine behind hundreds of curated introductions and leads the team that protects the room. His rule is simple: the room has to be worth showing up to, every single time.
Cameron is often the first real conversation someone has with Meet In The Wild — and he takes that seriously. Kiley's youngest brother, with B2B experience at Oracle and Sisense, he brings the same rigor to client selection that we bring to the room itself. His job isn't to close everyone. It's to make sure the right people say yes and the quality of the room stays protected. He also lives what we teach our men: strong career, strong body, strong relationship — all built coming from the same broken home I did.
Gloria is the creative force behind everything you see at Meet In The Wild — the brand, the event aesthetic, the logos and decor, and the social presence that's brought over 40,000 people into our world. She's also was the one who said the line that started it all on episode one of the podcast: "I prefer to meet people in the wild." Gloria doesn't just design how things look; she protects how every room feels so that men and women know, without a doubt, they're walking into the most premium, exclusive dating experiences out there.
Sam started as a Meet In The Wild customer and stood out so quickly that she became the first person outside the leadership team to bet on us and make the jump to full time. She's a natural matchmaker — intuitive, direct, and relentlessly focused on long-term outcomes, not just whether the first date went well. As Lead Matchmaker, she's blown both our team and her clients away. She's sweet and genuinely cares, but is also incredibly sharp on process. There's a reason why she runs nearly all of our testimonial interviews at events. Clients open up to her, trust her, and it shows in the quality of the matches she creates.
Abby first came to Meet In The Wild as a guest, seated next to Sam Thiel at the same event long before either of them joined the team. She started with us in sales, but moving her into matchmaking turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made as a company. She's a natural: deeply invested in her clients, sharp on the details, and often seeing what someone needs before they can put it into words. Abby's easy to spot at events because she never stops moving. She's always working the room, making introductions, and quietly raising the bar for everyone around her.
Tiffany joined Meet In The Wild and immediately started overdelivering for matchmaking clients. She's incredibly kind, grounded, and the type of person who takes a new framework and applies it in real life right away. With a background in psychology and mental health, she brings a rare level of emotional intelligence to every match she works on. At events, she's constantly moving through the room, checking in on women, and looking for ways to add value in the moment. Behind the scenes, she's been instrumental in filling the room with high‑quality women. She doesn't sell everyone and protects the standard by only inviting those who are actually a fit.
Cierra is our Dallas Matchmaker and has been exceeding expectations since day one. She's incredibly kind and genuinely invested in her clients, but also very coachable. When we refine the process, she's the one who has it implemented by the next event, not six months later. With a strong background in events, she's been instrumental in securing and managing our Dallas venues, making sure the rooms look and feel the way they need to for real connection to happen. When we launched our first Miami events, it was a no‑brainer to have her fly out and help host. She brings the same calm, capable presence to every city she touches.
Sean is Will's younger brother and the person we call "The Fixer." We literally fly him down from Baltimore for every single event because anything that could embarrass the brand, whether it's a cable, banner, bad angle or audio glitch, he gets to it before it happens. Sean owns the setup and breakdown, dials in sound and lighting, and keeps the room running so the rest of the team can focus on guests. Sean also brings a deep film background to Meet In The Wild. He's spent years acting, directing, and shooting projects that have landed on major platforms, and he's the one behind many of the 100+ client testimonials you see on our Proof Wall.
Larra helps host Meet In The Wild events and has personally supported our matchmaking for past clients. She's Roy's wife and a walking example of the values we want women to experience in our rooms: kind, genuine, honest, and dialed into the details that make people feel safe and seen. From the moment women walk through the door, she's watching for who looks nervous, who hasn't been welcomed yet, and who needs a gentle intro. Because if the women don't feel safe and cared for, nothing else in the room works. Like Roy, Larra has never taken a dime for the work she's done at events, including flying out to help us host in Dallas.
Roy Ju has served as an executive at multiple Fortune 500 and publicly-traded financial services companies, primarily within insurance. He's been a senior advisor and consultant in a variety of domains, including dating and matchmaking services. He advises on finance, risk, and strategy so the company you're trusting with your love life is built to last — after first coming undercover to an event to make sure it actually worked.
At Meet In The Wild, we're not trying to fix dating on the internet.
If you're serious about finding someone real in the next 12 months, this is your next step.
