Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Schmooze, an India-based AI-powered Dating App, Raises $4M

INC42 - Schmooze, a meme-based dating app from India, has raised $4M in a Series A funding round led by Elevation Capital. Founded in 2021, Schmooze matches users based on their meme preferences and sense of humor. The platform, which originally launched in the US before focusing on India, has attracted ~1M users in 10 months. The fresh capital will be used to enhance AI capabilities, scale user acquisition, expand content offerings, and target Tier II and III cities.

by Krithika K L
See full article at INC42

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com

In Online Dating, Being an Entrepreneur Is an Advantage

INC - Aug 24 - According to data from OkCupid, more people have been proudly owning the title "entrepreneur" while looking for love online this past year, says Melissa Hobley, the company's global CMO. And for some, it's a clear advantage. From July 2020 to July 2021, use of the terms "entrepreneur" and "self-employed" in the US OkCupid profiles increased by 10%. And users who identify themselves as entrepreneurs in their profiles have a better chance of getting a match's phone number, according to the company.

by Sophie Downes
See full article at INC

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Selective Search - Executive Matchmaking Business

INC - Feb 14 - Executives and entrepreneurs pay upward of $250,000 for Barbie Adler's exhaustively curated matchmaking service. Adler, a former executive recruiter, founded Chicago-based Selective Search in 2000. The company, which employs 40 people, has annual revenues north of $10M. It claims an 87% success rate, which works out to ~4K happy couples--1,800 of them married--to date. Roughly a third met "the one" on their first introduction. The process begins with a tell-us-everything intake interview: 15 pages of questions. Potential matches undergo the same in-depth personal interviews as clients. ~30% of Selective Search's clients are women, who also make up the company's fastest-growing category.

by Leigh Buchanan
See full article at INC

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Bumble's Founder Is on a Mission to Clean Up the Internet

INC - Mar 2 - A bill was introduced Thursday in the Texas House of Representatives that would make sending an unsolicited nude or sexual photograph a misdemeanor punishable with a fine up to $500. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble, put the spotlight on so-called cyberflashing. "Right now the Internet is the Wild Wild West. It's ridiculous that there is no accountability online for things you are not allowed to do in the real world," said Wolfe Herd. "We are trying to make a law for indecent exposure, but for the digital realm." A few months ago Wolfe Herd hired a lobbyist to help seed the idea. On Thursday Texas Rep. Morgan Meyer, a Republican from Dallas, took up the issue and introduced a bill that would add to the state penal code an offense "of unlawful electronic transmission of sexually explicit visual material." As written and if passed, the bill would take effect September 1, 2019.

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
See full article at INC

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Study: 10% Of Americans Are Paying For Dating Apps

INC.COM - Feb 13 - Americans are expected to spend ~$20B on Valentine's Day this year, including on virtual dating services. According to a new research from Earnest, those living on the West Coast are 55% more likely to pay for a dating service. Overall, ~10% of those surveyed said they paid for a dating app. Men are 16% more likely to pay for a dating app than women.

by Zoe Henry
See full article at INC

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Dating App Paktor Is Taking On Tinder In Southeast Asia

INC - Feb 12 - With 6M users across Asian markets, Paktor is the biggest dating app in the region. It raised $7.1M in its Series B funding round this year. Paktor works like Tinder but the premium features allow users to also filter by occupation and education. Paktor says their research shows this is what matters to their users. Users are spending ~13 hours a month on the app, returning six times daily on average.

by Kirsten Han
The full article was originally published at INC, but is no longer available.

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Grindr Is 5 Years Old, Q&A With Joel Simkhai

INC - Apr 7 - Joel Simkhai founded Grindr, the location-aware hookup app, five years ago. The app has now 5M active monthly users. 75% of revenue comes from subscriptions to Gridr Xtra, which allows users to see more other nearby users.

Q: What motivated you to start Grindr?
A: In my 20s I tried some more traditional dating sites but location was not part of it.

Q: Did you know how to write software?
A: No, I went into this frantic race to find a developer.

Q: Did you take venture capital?
A: We are all self-funded.

Q: Was not taking investment a strategy from the beginning?
A: I like challenges, and I like the idea that if I'm going to risk something, I'm going to get the reward.

Q: How do you find new users?
A: We've done a little Facebook advertising. It's all really word of mouth and press.

Q: What is Tinder doing differently than Blendr did?
A: I think they figured out some things that I didn't figure out. Girls don't want to be harassed by guys. It's a more controlled harass.

Q: Are you worried about Tinder as competition?
A: It's not an app for gay guys.

Q: Are you still growing?
A: Yes, as people get more iPhones globally. Markets like Brazil are growing well for us now.

Q: Would you consider an exit strategy?
A: I'd take $19 billion. But no, I don't think I'd go public.

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
The full article was originally published at Palm Beach Post, but is no longer available.

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How Tinder Is Winning The Mobile Dating Wars

INC MAGAZINE - May 25 - Tinder is one of the year's fastest growing apps. CEO Sean Rad has already been a successful entrepreneur once. In 2009, he founded ad.ly, which helps brands land celebrity endorsements on social media. Rad claims that the app has led to 50M matches and 10 marriages since it launched this fall.

Q: What inspired you to start Tinder in the first place?
A: In the real world, you're either a hunter or you're being hunted. If you're a hunter, there's constant rejection. And if you're hunted, you're constantly being bombarded. On Tinder, you anonymously say if you're interested in somebody, and if that person happens to be interested in you, you can have a conversation. If they're not interested, they never know you liked them anyway, so you don't feel embarrassed.

Q: When did things really take off?
A: Around January. We had been picking up on college campuses.

Q: What was the biggest issue?
A: We never anticipated it was going to take off this fast. Our challenge was not only maintaining the current system, but building the new one at the same time.

Q: Where'd the idea for Matchmaker, the new feature, come from?
A: Our vision is to be the platform that you think about when it comes to meeting somebody new under any context, not just dating. With Matchmaker, you can create a match between any two of your Facebook friends.

Q: How are you going to make money?
A: Right now, we're prioritizing our product ambitions first. We want to charge for giving you more value, not for interacting with us in a basic way.

Q: You've had a lot of success at a young age. Any advice to other founders who are just starting out?
A: You should only start a company because you can't sleep at night until you solve a certain problem, and I think those problems need to find you. If you're starting a company for the sake of starting a company, you're going to fail.

by Issie Lapowsky
See full article at INC Magazine

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How Grindr Went Mainstream

INC - Mar 29 - Joel Simkhai founded the company behind an incredibly popular app called Grindr. Blendr began as an idea as early as 2010, just right around when Grindr really started to gain popularity. Blendr officially launched in September 2011, about two years after Grindr went live. Both companies are self-financed and through premium services and advertising revenue, though Simkhai is reluctant to offer revenue numbers. He says the company has spent no money on marketing, and downloads are completely driven by word of mouth. He does not plan on taking outside funding.

by Eric Markowitz
See full article at Inc

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Best Industries 2011: Online Dating And Matchmaking

INC - Apr 11 - As the social stigma about online dating vanishes, industry-wide profits are soaring. The online dating and matchmaking industry grew 2.3% between 2008 and 2011, with 2.8% more growth expected annually through 2016, according to IBISWorld. The number of people employed in the field is expected to increase from 15,606 in 2011 to~17,000 by 2016.

By the Numbers:
19.5 - Annual profit percentage for an online dating company, according to IBISWorld
14,427 - Number of online dating and matchmaking enterprises in the United States in 2011
15,621 - Number of enterprises expected to exist in 2016
18,285 - Number of people expected to be employed in the field in 2016
2.8% - Projected annual revenue increase for the online dating and matchmaking industry from 2011 through 1016

by Tim Donnelly
See full article at Inc

A Dating Site Thrives In Delhi

INC - Feb 14 - Along with partners Dan Osit and Kevin Owocki, Adam Sachs started a dating website called Ignighter.com in 2008. The premise was simple: Online dating was weird, but less weird if you did it as a group. The company was becoming incredibly popular in India. About 90% of our their users are overseas, and of that the majority are in India. The market there is huge: ~65% of India's 1.1 billion people are under the age of 35. In March, Sachs will be setting up Ignighter’s official Indian outpost. FULL ARTICLE @ INC

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Finding Love For Millionaires

INC - June 1 - Ten years ago, Patti Stanger started Millionaire's Club, a matchmaking service for millionaires. Today her business idea is a reality television hit series called Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo. Here is an interview with Patti. 

Q: How did you decide to focus your personal matchmaking service exclusively to millionaires?
A: There are 110M single people in the United States. Then you've got the top 1-2% who are really single -- these high-wealth individuals who are always exchanging wives -- and they really need some help. 

Q: How did you appeal to that niche market?
A: You have to find things that nobody has and that they need. 

Q: What has been your biggest challenge?
A: My first year in business, I made a million dollars out of my house. The more success you have, the more business gets thrown at you. You really have to learn how to say no. 

Q: Did you ever want to quit?
A: It is hard work, and it'll suck the life out of you, because you're dealing with people's feelings and problems. Sometimes, you cry yourself to sleep, asking, "Do I really want to do this tomorrow?" Other days, you get a call saying, "You're invited to my wedding".  I don't think there can be any greater joy or any greater high.

Q: How'd you get your own TV show?
A: Once I started the Millionaire's Club and Marie Claire magazine did a feature on me, then everybody came to me. But at the same time, I did my homework. I got involved with a lot of producers. I pitched my story.

Q: Who are your worst clients?

A: I get millionaires who call me and want me to work for them for free. There's nothing worse than a cheap millionaire.
FULL ARTICLE @ INC

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Oh, Shoot: Markus Frind

INC -- Jan 9 -- January's Inc cover features Markus Frind (Plentyoffish.com, age 30) who, with a mix of ingenuity and practiced simplicity has managed to build a $10 million business entirely on his own. Check out this little funny video from INC.

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Plentyoffish Money Comes Rolling In

INC MAGAZINE -- Jan 8 -- Plentyoffish is on track to book revenue of $10M for 2008, with 50%+ profit. Frind can be disarmingly frank. Yahoo, he says, is "a complete joke," Google is "a cult," and Match is "dying." Mark Brooks, a marketing consultant who has advised Frind since 2006 said "I've never known anybody so competitive. He always says exactly what he thinks." Frind made just $5 in his 1st month but by the end of the year he was making $3,300 a month, largely by selling ads to paid dating sites. From March to Nov' '03 he expanded from 40 members to 10,000. By 2006, Plentyoffish was serving 200m pages/mo. In 2008 he rented an office and hired 3 people. Frind estimates, based on exit surveys, that the site creates 800k successful relationships a year. FULL ARTICLE @ INC MAGAZINE   

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