Yet Another Dating App Idea
I just wanted to put this out in the world before I forget. Would anyone be interested in a dating app focused on activities. For anyone in the dating game, just matching with someone is a small part of the process. After matching, you have to vet the person, then decide when and where to meet.
I'm thinking to turn this entire thing on its head. What if you could browse by activities and availability first, and then be provided with people that match your interests and availability.
Example, I'm free on a Saturday afternoon and want to hit the local outdoor jazz festival. I post it, and anyone in my target demographic can see and match me if interested.
Elevator pitch: Meetup for dating.
Any feedback welcome.
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I’ll give you my informed take on this, borne from experience running a dating app (now defunct).
All variations of dating apps have been tried before, even this. Nearly all of them fail(ed).
The thing you have to figure out with a dating app is how you will solve the chicken-and-egg issue, and secondly organic, viral loops and hooks. Without it, it’s dead from the start. It’s a highly, highly competitive space.
My 2c and genuine advice before you go burn any money or time, re-consider if you can focus your energies and ideas on a different problem. And if you still do it, do it for fun with 0 expectations (unlikely).
If you want to chat more, happy to connect.
What app did you run and what do you consider chicken and egg issue?
I won't name it here (prefer being anon) but at peak, we had close to 10k registered users. In fact, offline meetups (but in a group) was one of the experiments we actively tried. The chicken and egg issue is dating apps are a classic network effects thing. A dating app only has value if there are a lot of people using it in my geography. This is harder than you think.
9 out of 10 people will complain that all dating apps suck, which tells you a lot. The problem isn't about a unique take on app (unless it's targeting a specific demographic that is not served well by other apps). You need bodies. You need people. That's expensive to get.
I don't mean to discourage you, but how you laid it out in your post is how most product-focused founders think about dating apps. That's the wrong approach.
Also, most dating apps are terrible businesses unless you can be one of the top 5 widely used apps.
Okay, thanks for feedback.
Hi @chimaek,
Don't know if you are still working on this, but I released a dating app myself in March. StepUp if you're interested. As many of the other IHers here pointed out, the space is extremely competitive and I don't know if there is a silver bullet to crack the code rather than just throwing in a ton of marketing money. I tried many marketing techniques, ranging from paid to unpaid. I browsed through the most recent threads here on dating app, and it seems like every dating app failed to solve the chicken and egg question.
I am happy to connect. Shoot me an email if you're down though.
Also, there is an app, Eatgether that is quite successful here in Taiwan and I believe they recently tried to expand to Japan before the outbreak of covid-19.
I think the idea has merit, but marketing an app like this requires capital and the space is extremely competitive. I built something similar to what you're thinking and after two user testing sessions we decided to sunset it.
We had 50 people download and use our app and had the sessions lead by a great design thinking consultant. All of the users loved the app and especially enjoyed complaining about their current dating life and how all the apps were bad. We were over the moon and thought we had something, but after the events ended not a single person created an activity on the app.
If you pursue the app my advice is that online dating is a problem but will people change their behavior to solve it? Activities require more effort and time to plan which is good, but your competition has gamified the experience and if your in an Uber they can swipe faster than planning an activity. You also have think about what part of your addressable market is serious daters that want to meet up with people.
Happy to chat more and share any other lessons learned. The app is still out there if you want to download it (put in zip code 20024).
Https://itsadate.app
I appreciate the feedback. I am currently living in Japan, and the market here is primarily focused on marriage arrangement apps -- not so much casual dating. Tinder floundered so hard here that they are now promoting it as a language learning application -- although that could be for plausible deniability amongst its users.
I'd love to chat more about the process you have been through.
Yeah for sure, happy to chat more and show you how we approached problems with scaling, etc.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago.