Please vet my startup idea -- pay to go on dates
As a single guy, the dating app scene is horrible. I'm swiping on Tinder hundreds of times for barely any matches, and terrible ones at that. This coming as a relatively attractive 30-something guy with a well-paying software engineering career. I considered getting a matchmaking service, yet these all seem along the lines of 'Pay $XXXX and we'll send you on a few dates with a match'. Why not cut to the chase and let desirable partners set a price for a date, preferred locations, and a calendly-like schedule to book the date. Once both parties meet at the specified time, they hit a button saying they arrived and met. The money is transferred and the date goes however it goes.
Let me state, this is solely a matchmaking dating service. There is no implication of anything other than your partner meeting for a date. It's a chance to cut through the BS of swiping endlessly and quickly meet with a desirable partner with a chance to impress.
Example case:
An attractive woman sets a price of $100 to meet at Otis in Brooklyn for a dinner date, available between 6 - 8 Tuesday-Thursday. A guy can book a date with her and she can approve or deny the request. If they both meet the $100 is exchanged to the woman and the guy has a chance to impress her.
Have I lost my mind or is there any chance this could work?
Paying someone to go on Date, people will just start going on dates for only money without any meaningful connection
What has the world come to haha
I’ve had a similar idea. I live in Miami which is a good place to test, I think there’s an opportunity for this as long as it’s worded and branded correctly and authentication/safety measures are in place. If you’re interested let’s discuss further about the value I can add.
I think the money would be better invested into an app that will educate and bring together people who want to practice picking up a girl on the street, at a shopping mall, in a cafe, bar or discotheque.
Features:
All single guys deserve some pickup skills (me included), because that inevitably helps you to get into a relationship, if you want one.
I like the idea but you're attracting the wrong crowd in my opinion.
Problem with dating apps are the guys.. Not the women. Women are constantly bombarded with rotten males.. Having males pay 100 bucks for a date, won't solve that problem, only amplify it.
I think we can all agree the dating app experience is far from ideal, all parties involved. The idea behind this is essentially taking the matchmaker experience where a guy pays to be set up on dates and avoid the time wasted swiping experience and eliminating the matchmaker so the guy can connect to interests directly, as well as give women an added incentive to leave the house.
Idea could use some fine tuning for sure. Probably naive to think women would start booking these as added income and quit once they happen to fall in love.
I have had that idea myself. Was going to put an ad on tinder saying I'll pay for dinner, I'll pay for dinner. haha. try it out. i think the name will be important.
How would you filter out women using this as a job?
Also would you honestly use this? Personally I would never pay a girl money to go out with me - both out of principle and because I'm not interested in the type of girl who'd do such a thing. (Of course that's just me, I have friends who probably would)
Honestly as a man dating apps are terrible, and I don't think the experience will ever significantly improve because the barrier to entry for men is too low, and attractive women already get more attention than they have time for and don't need to sign up for dating apps. A man's best bet is to learn how to meet women offline.
After being single for several months, honestly I would drop $100-200 to meet up for an activity or dinner with an attractive, interesting partner. I like the intimacy of one-on-one date atmospheres and miss them. Though not sure I would use it again if I never got a second date without shelling out a fee.
I have not heard of any dating service like this, so I think this is definitely a unique idea. And I think you definitely already have market research cut out for you: sugar daddies exist. This would just be a smaller scale for that (though it'd also serve bigger scales too).
But there should be some things you'd have to be aware of:
Prostitution laws in your country. I'm not a lawyer, but you should probably be aware of this. If someone posts "$100 for a date, sex guaranteed", it seems to me that they'd be solely held responsible by the, but I would not be surprised if some jurisdictions will go after the platform as well.
Market it less than a "pay to go on a date and impress someone" type deal and more of a "pay to go on a date". I have a feeling most people getting paid to go on dates probably treat it like a business rather than an interaction to find a genuine relationship. I would not treat it like a dating app in general like you would for Tinder or Bumble
Possible scaling: allow for other services like paying to hang out with someone as a friend, or paying to play video games together online with someone, or just playing xyz games in general with someone to get better at them.
Possible integration with AI? I have not seen many dating apps, let alone dating services offer the ability to filter people. So I'm wondering if in the future, you could get some facial recognition with AI going on, and users would be able to type something like "blue eyes black hair" and it'll return a result.
Btw, I'm building an AI as a service platform (Evoke) that allows access to AIs on the cloud through APIs, so I'm just throwing this out there if you ever decide to use AI integration. I think some image detection models like Yolov5 would be great for facial recognition, and we def plan to have that on the cloud in the future.
Good luck!
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
Good points! I feel like you could market it more as a "pay to hang out" type service that includes dates to start with a broader market.
Or you can start out with dates first, since it'll be easier to niche down.
Either way, it'll be great to expand in the future and have it be possible to book "hang out" time.
And yep, the filter stuff is quite surprising. I just feel there would be a lot of backlash if they did implement a filter, which might result in less people using them.
However, there is nothing saying you can't have a filter in the background. I would not be surprised if Tinder collects data from its users (guaranteed they already do this lol) and then compare it to other users to determine a statistical model of which users are the most likely to both swipe or at least meet up.
However, they might do the opposite as well to get more people to stay on the app.
It's food for thought, but implementing complex algorithms is probably somethin you'd think about later.
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Thanks for your sobering and valid perspective. I have likewise come around to this same conclusion.
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