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He was a science student; she, political science.

Kismet led to their meeting. They lived near each other on the Simon Fraser University campus and found themselves often running into each other at the bus stop. Between him — Justin Long — and her — Elyssa Macfarlane — there was a mutual attraction. They flirted. They found they could talk easily to each other.

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“The bus ride,” Elyssa said, “was always too short.”

They became friends. They hung out. Then life intruded. In 2009, Justin graduated and Elyssa spent the next couple of years finishing up at SFU.

“We just went separate directions,” Justin said. “And I was too young. I think I was 19 or 20 at the time and focused on getting my life started up.”

He went to work for a tech company. Not surprisingly, given his tech background and status as a young single male, in 2014 he signed on to dating sites Tinder and Happn.

He found them distracting and time-consuming. It was frustrating having to swipe through page after page of profiles of women, most of which didn’t interest him. He decided he could do better. In 2015, he created Tinderbox, a computerized robot app of Tinder that could learn which attributes the user found attractive — in effect, editing Tinder for his best selections.