our thesis

For a long time, the dating market has been overdue for a complete rethink. Everyone has a need for romantic relationships. Yet, all the technology we have studied has primarily helped people only where they faced the most barriers and obstacles for various reasons. That pain point has always been the initial contact, and every player in this market has tried to ease and simplify it by bringing it online. While thinking in this direction is correct, the form in which this first contact is usually packaged seems almost cursed, and today it is found nearly everywhere.

Different apps differentiated themselves mostly by target audience: apps for serious relationships, for casual flings, for plus-size people, for thin people, for the LGBTQ+ community, local apps for specific countries, and so on. But the principle always remained the same: you sit in front of a screen and sift through profiles, hundreds of profiles. For an average person to go on just one date using modern dating apps, it takes an average of 9,500 swipes—equivalent to 9,500 profiles. This is unforgivably high and consumes a monstrous amount of time. And let's not forget: filtering through ten thousand profiles is still not the end of the journey.

We all understand that during an in-person meeting, you see a person's emotions, their reactions, behavior, and body language—that vast array of signals that enable you to make a decision. None of this exists in a chat.

Furthermore, the presence of a chat provides more opportunities for scammers. Today, this is a whole industry, and dating apps serve as a major traffic channel for it.

So the big question is: is chat really a necessity in such apps? After all, people used to meet in public, their initial contact happened much faster, and they received feedback instantly. Today, this feedback is dragged out for weeks, if not months.

Perhaps one of the main flaws of the dating industry today and for many years is the unequal distribution of users by gender within these services. This demographic imbalance between women and men has remained the most pressing issue in recent years, one that former Tinder executives, among others, have tried to solve.

The most prominent case is the founder of Bumble, the second-largest dating conglomerate by market cap, which today owns several major dating apps in its portfolio, including Bumble, Badoo, and others. This problem is driven mostly, first and foremost, by human nature, and secondly, by the mechanics built into existing apps. Men tend to adopt a more active and assertive strategy: they swipe right about 6 times more often than women, message more frequently, and spend more time on the platform.

As a result of this behavior, women act more cautiously and become highly selective. This forces men to be even more persistent to maximize their chances, and this loop only reinforces itself, highlighting once again the flaws of current mechanics in dating apps. By simply eliminating the chat and the ability to sift through thousands of profiles a day, and constraining this via the app's core mechanics, we already rid ourselves of most major problems.

Today, people find solutions in personal matchmakers, or professional matchmakers. But not everyone can afford them, and they have their own downsides.

Indeed, the lifestyle and general pace of life for many people has changed. Moving to big cities and megacities leaves people with less time for a personal life: we work more and have less time to occupy ourselves with this endless search.

That is why we clearly see all these issues: a large number of fakes, fraud, burnout and fatigue from endless swiping and scrolling of profiles, as well as low efficiency and conversion into actual dates.

With today’s technology, people’s habit of sharing personal data to improve their digital experience, and the well-established expectation of personalized service, it is truly surprising that the dating market has gone ignored for so long.