SOCALTECH - Nov 28 - Andrew Connell is the CEO of DinnerDate.com, a startup which is using the Internet to arrange group dates at local restaurants, to connect people in person and offline.
Q: What's DinnerDate.com?
A: A small group dating. Typically, we put together a table of 10 single people. When people register on DinnerDate.com, they create a short profile and choose to go to a dinner that is advertised.
A: We've been around for over a year now. The idea really came from looking at the dating industry online. It was taking people an incredible amount of time to get offline.
Q: What's your background?
A: I was previously at Nokia, and ran Nokia's e-commerce business globally in fourteen markets.
Q: You've been in beta in San Diego, how you're planning on scaling that out to other markets?
A: We've identified ten cities in the U.S. where we'd like to roll out to in 2013. Also we've been approached by companies who would like to white label what DinnerDate.com provides.
Q: What have been the biggest challenges you've found so far in launching?
A: Getting the right type of restaurants, menu, and event structure and secondly figuring out how people are flowing through the site, optimizing conversions in the right places, and really engaging them on that journey.
by Benjamin F. Kuo
The full article was originally published at SocalTech, but is no longer available.
