MEDIUM - Oct 1 - Adam Cohen-Aslatei is the Founder and CEO of S'More, the new relationships app that's about getting to know a person before seeing a profile picture. He is the former Managing Director of Chappy, Bumble's gay dating app. He spent 5 years at The Meet Group (MeetMe, Skout, Tagged, Hi5, Lovoo, and Growlr), and has consulted for companies including Spark Networks (Zoosk, JDate, Christian Mingle).
Q: What led you to this particular career path?
A: I've always been drawn to the idea of connecting people, and actually created my very first dating program, Harvard Speed Dating, back in grad school. Every big dating app that I know focuses on images first. That's why S'More was born. S'More focuses on the whole person and elevates the standard of online dating. The app is designed to prioritize getting to know a person before deciding if you like them and before you even see them. The more you engage and chat with a person, the more their profile photos unblur and the more their private content unlocks.
Q: We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors?
A: People like Dimitri Volkov from dating.com who is S'More's early investor, Geoff Cook from The Meet Group and Whitney Wolfe from Bumbleā¦disruptors who had vision and built companies from the ground up. My greatest mentors are also my industry peers, such as Daniel Gendelman founder of Raya, Dan Kurani founder of Friended, and Amanda Bradford founder of The League.
Q: Can you share the best advice you've gotten along your journey?
A: Whatever happens, "never, never stop", surround yourself with the brightest people and celebrate the small wins.
Q: Being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good?
A: I would say that good or bad, disruption is rarely easy. Our industry has not seen a major disruptive force for over 8 years.
Q: How are you going to shake things up next?
A: Our hope is that some of the largest players adopt some of our industry-first features and approaches to make dating just a little less superficial and more effective. These include removing race filtering, 100% of profiles verified on dating apps to prevent catfishing. S'More is not just for dates. We are a relationship app. We are continually adding more community features into the app so there are more indirect ways to meet someone special whether via a newsfeed, chatroom, or mini trivia game.
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