Bettina Bennett launches Kaffeklatsch, a friendship app for women over 50, following a career spent in the media and publishing world

Bettina Bennett, 69, has been an Oak Cliff resident since 1994. Prior to that, she and her husband had a short six-month stint in Los Angeles following her move to the United States from her home country of Germany.

Born and raised in Kassel, she grew up with an affinity for literature and the arts. As she got older, she developed an interest in technology, which has led to creating Kaffeeklatsch, a friendship app for women over 50.

She started her career by earning a publishing degree in Goettingen through a traditional apprenticeship. For three years, she went through the different departments in a publishing company, like learning how to print books and run bookstores.

“I did that for a number of years and worked in that industry, and then I realized that technology was going to have a major impact on that entire environment. It was going to change it, and I wanted to be prepared for that because I also saw opportunity.”

She went on to earn a double master’s in literature and law with a specialization in entertainment and copyright law from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. While her peers wanted to go on to practice law, Bennett sought to use her degree as a tool in the publishing world.

One of her professors was an editor at one of the largest publishing companies in Germany, so he introduced her to the CEO who said they wanted her to work in their rights department.

“I said that was too boring. I didn’t want to sit and just look at paperwork all day long. I wanted to do something more exciting,” she says.

Instead, Bennett suggested that the company create the first ever media department in a European publishing company to look into selling the rights of their books to movie and television production companies. They were skeptical.

“They kind of laughed at me and said, ‘Oh, we haven’t made much money that way in the past, but if that’s what it takes, and if you can help our rights department in the process, you can have those two rooms in the basement, and your two computers that you want, and an assistant.’ And it turned into a seven-figure profit center within a very short period of time.”

Her role was to know what producers and actors wanted when it came to books, what production companies may be interested in and how she could get them to co-produce.

She was the connector.

“At some point, the publishing company decided that this now needed a vice president, and of course, I raised my hand, and like many other women before me and after me, I got patted on the head, and doctor whatever was hired to take up that role, and he explained to me that, of course, I could continue to do all the work,” she says. “I could sit in my basement and do all those things, but that he now would be the one to do the interviews, he would be the one to sign the important contracts, he would be the one to be the public face, and now that I’ve lived in Texas long enough, I said the equivalent of, ‘Bless your heart.’”

So she started her first company, Media Rights Management, in February 1988.

With Media Rights Management, she was now on the other side. She worked with production companies, television stations, producers and creatives to negotiate. Then, she received a call from ICM, a talent agency in Hollywood, to become their European partner. After an introduction at the Cannes Film Festival, she had an office in Los Angeles by June.

This new opportunity led to Bennett doing many more firsts, including the first ever co-production deal between an American and a European production company, the first co-production for the children’s program, and introducing film finances to create a bond or an insurance policy for film projects into the European film industry.

“I enjoyed that a great deal, but it was also very exhausting work,” she says. “I was usually the only woman in the room, so I kind of find myself in that place over and over again, and that can be wearing because you have to find ways to stay true to yourself and, at the same time, participate in an environment that isn’t really built for you or for your participation.”

She and her husband decided to move to Dallas, and with that, Bennett also realized she needed to do something different.

She continued to work in consulting in the industry, including working with her husband on some of his projects. In 2005, she started working on a new venture that would be at the cross-section of technology and publishing again.

By 2008, she launched WhichBox Media. Bennett says she and her co-founder joke that they created user-generated content, and it found its way into the universe.

“At the end of 2007, there was no iPad. Facebook was still only for college students. YouTube was still small and just YouTube, not Google owned. There was no Instagram, no Pinterest, none of that existed, and I believed that what ultimately is the most important component in the relationship between brands or organizations or communities, and the people that participate, is that it is a two-way street,” she says.

WhichBox allowed a brand or a publication to invite their users to share their own stories in an environment that was specific to that community, she says. Her innovations in the industry led her to hold two tech patents because of the new ways she created software around that type of content.

But, Bennett says the pandemic was not kind to them.

“We believed that we were even more important than ever before, but the way structures changed in companies made us a nice to have and not a must have … so we decided that it was time to say goodbye after 15 years, which is not always easy when you’ve invested a lot of yourself into an environment like that, but you know you can’t force it either.”

At this point, Bennett decided to take a break.

“It’s something I had invested 15 years of my life into, and there is a period of mourning when you realize that something that you’ve given so much to is no longer,” she says.

Around that same time, Bennett received a text message from a much younger friend sharing that she was no longer getting much out of their “get-togethers” due to being in a different season of life. This moment led Bennett to realize she didn’t have friends her own age anymore and inspired her next endeavor: the Kaffeeklatsch app, which is named after the German phrase for coffee and conversation (and maybe sometimes a little gossip, she adds).

“I want to find women in my own neighborhood where I don’t have to plan a month in advance, where I can just pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, you feel like doing whatever?’ and to give that a chance to, over time, develop into a friendship because nobody starts out with that, you start out with people that you may like,” she says.

So, she started asking the women in her community if they felt this way. She would talk to women her age at the coffee shop or during her morning walk, and after some initial laughter, they would answer similarly. They struggled to make friendships due to other life obligations like moving to be near grandchildren or retiring and losing those work friendships.

Bennett dug deeper. She researched the loneliness epidemic and found that loneliness led to higher chances for heart disease, anxiety and depression.

Kaffeeklatsch is currently in the beta launch phase, starting with four local ZIP codes. Participants answer questions up front up to help find compatibility between users, with the goal to build a human connection that can lead to face to face interactions, for at least a cup of coffee.

“That’s what we really need, even if we have to do it on a walker. It doesn’t matter, but we need that,” she says.

As she began developing the app, her mother was ill. While her sister and brother were at the hospital with her one day, she told the physicians and the nurses that she had a really good life and that there was nothing left that she would want for. Specifically, she mentioned to them that she had great kids, a great marriage, great travels and that she had great friends.

“Those four things were the pillars of her life,” Bennett says.

Because of her condition, Bennett never told her mother about Kaffeeklatsch, yet it felt impactful to her that she would mention the importance of friendship.

“And here it is, one of the cornerstones of her life that was so important to her that she mentioned as she was dying, and I think that’s what it has to be for all of us,” she says, tearing up. “I think the reason I’m building this is because I want all women to have that. I want them to say that the friendships that they had and the people that they had around them was one of those most important things in their lives.”