On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2015. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Matt ↗
In their words
We were sitting around one day and we wondered what would happen if we created the opposite of Facebook — something private, something messy and something honest.
We put it out there, we seeded with some Facebook ads, we got about four thousand users in the first month and sent just over half a million text messages.
We actually found that we didn't have to keep it positive. We've only had to ban about two people of those 4,000 — and when we ban them they talk to a chatbot forever, so they don't even realize they're banned.
Around the web ×2
Quick answers
Did Matt McCausland co-found Sam?
Yes. BetaKit's acquisition story of September 13, 2017 refers to "Sam:)'s co-founders, Jonathan Keebler and Matt McCausland", and Jonathan Keebler's own site records that Hugging Face "acquired Sam:), founded by Toronto-based Jonathan Keebler & Matt McCausland".
What happened to Sam?
New York-based Hugging Face acquired it. BetaKit reported on September 13, 2017 that the platform had by then carried 20 million messages through 1.2 million conversations, and that McCausland and Keebler would not be joining the Hugging Face team.
What did Matt McCausland do before Sam?
BetaKit described him and Keebler on September 22, 2015 as "known best as the forces behind ScribbleLive", the Toronto live-publishing company Keebler founded. Nothing we could source names him as a founder of ScribbleLive itself.
What does Matt McCausland do now?
We could not source a current role. Checked 2026-09-22: sam.best no longer serves the product, and the only present-day claims about him sit on directory and profile-aggregator sites, which this directory does not treat as sources. His last sourced activity is the 2017 sale of Sam.