GIZMODO - Joel Simkhai is back with a new gay dating app, Motto, that aims to tamp down on behavior most associated with Grindr. Simkhai founded Grindr in 2009, two years after the first iPhone was unveiled. By 2018, he had sold it to Beijing Kunlun Tech for $245M. The app was sold again in 2020 for $608.5M. In the same year, Grindr was reported to have 13M users.
Q: Why are you getting back into the business of online dating?
Joel Simkhai: One of my great joys in life is being a matchmaker and seeing people meet and connect.
Q: Why the name Motto?
A: A motto is what users stand for. And their profile is meant to be a statement.
Q: The app says "No more headless torsos." Why is that?
A: We really want to mimic the real-life experience of meeting someone at a bar, on the street, or at a party. What's the first thing you do when you meet them? You look them in the eye.
Q: How many users do you have now? How long is the wait list?
A: We're not we're not sharing specific user numbers right now. We just launched a few days ago. We're seeing some folks chatting already and meeting.
Q: What can you tell me about the matchmaking algorithm that's going into Motto?
A: We're still in the early days. It's not super advanced. It's something that we're going to be leveraging in the future and building up.
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