100 Coffee Meetings Challenge

A story about a 30-year-old man who took on a challenge to meet 100 strangers for coffee, leading to an important life revelation.

During the pandemic, this French guy named Barbier was posting pictures of his travels on social media - beaches in Australia, scuba diving, exotic solo adventures. He got some pushback from people who were stuck at home feeling miserable. A friend suggested he should do a challenge: have coffee with 100 strangers.

He accepted the challenge, and during these 100 coffee meetings, he had a revelation. The common denominator among all these strangers was that their dreams had been "snuffed out" - they'd forgotten how to dream and were suffocated by everyday life. Most didn't even have a compelling vision for themselves anymore.

This experience inspired him to create his own bucket list, which he published on his homepage - 100 things he wanted to do before he died. Items included things like "swim naked in the ocean," "participate in a protest," "do a live DJ set at a festival," and "reach 12% body fat."

He then tried to turn this insight into a business, creating an app that lets people create and share their bucket lists. Though thousands of people uploaded their dreams to the app, it ultimately "went nowhere" and became his "strike 1."