One person makes Thirdlight.

Couples coaching has a distribution problem before it has anything else. Traditional couples work runs $150–$300 a session and asks two people to find a practitioner taking new couples, agree on an hour they can both make, and get there — which is why nearly everyone who arrives at Thirdlight arrives on their own, and why the thing they need help with happens at 9pm on a Tuesday rather than at 2pm on a Thursday.

Leland Char built Thirdlight to be the thing that is there at that hour: a live voice session with Elena, an AI coach, in an ordinary browser, on one subscription of $24.99 a month that covers both partners whether a member starts alone or together — with the first session free, and no card and no account asked for before it.

He spent his career before this at the intersection of product, technology and growth. He has led computer vision and machine learning teams at Coupang, South Korea's largest e-commerce platform; launched Facebook Stories Ads at Meta; and managed ad supply on a multi-billion-dollar platform at Walmart. At McKinsey he advised Fortune 500 companies on go-to-market strategy and digital transformation.

His foundation is engineering: a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from USC, magna cum laude, and an M.S. in Petroleum Engineering. He taught himself computer vision, machine learning and full-stack development afterwards, through MIT courses, papers and building. Outside of work he runs marathons, with a personal record of 3:18 — most people see the race, he tends to see the months of discipline behind it, which is roughly how he builds products too.

Thirdlight is where that lands: the technical half and the product half of one person, pointed at a problem that has been priced out of reach of the people who have it.