INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – Feb 20 – A Catholic pressure group has started legal action against Gleeden which promotes extra-marital sex as a cheap “anti-depressant”. Hundreds of posters for the site have been taken down after residents’ protests in the conservative western suburbs of Paris. The controversial poster shows an apple with a chunk bitten out of it and highlights the letters EDEN in Gleeden. A caption reads: “Unlike anti-depressant drugs a lover costs nothing on the state health service.” US-owned Gleeden claims 2.3M members in Europe, a million of them in France.
Month: February 2015
Match Group’s Sam Yagan On Investment
CHICAGO TRIBUNE – Feb 19 – Sam Yagan co-founded OkCupid in 2003 and sold it to IAC in 2011 for $90M. He is now CEO of IAC’s online dating division, Match Group. Yagan also co-founded startup accelerator Excelerate Labs, which became Techstars Chicago. He explains what he looks for as an executive, mentor and investor.
Q: With the influx of dating apps, would you acquire any of them?
A: Until you have a massive amount of usage, it’s just not that interesting to us.
Q: You co-launched a venture fund in 2014 called Corazon Capital. What are your investment criteria?
A: The product, business and market have to make sense. But our No. 1 criteria, by far, is great entrepreneurs.
Q: What have you learned as an investor that you wish you’d known as a founder?
A: I think overestimating the market size is near the top of the list of the things entrepreneurs most get wrong.
Q: What are you doing to help women in tech?
A: A quarter of the founders that have gone through Excelerate and Techstars are women, including Sue Khim at Brilliant, Diane Melville (formerly) at ScholarPro, and Melissa Moline at InRentive. Those are all companies that I’m on the boards of.
Ontario Couple Met On Dating Site In 1966
THE SPEC – Feb 16 – Paul and Bev Mills were introduced by a machine almost 50 years ago. In 1966, when both were University of Western Ontario students, they each paid $3 to answer a questionnaire for a program for "Canada's foremost IBM dating system." Paul got three matches, with Bev listed as number two. After a failed date with his number 1, he called her. "Some computer told me you were my ideal date," he said — a quote that later made its way across the country when their futuristic marriage made headlines.
eHarmony To Accelerate Global Push
BUSINESS WIRE – Feb 19 - eHarmony wants to launch in one new country per quarter. Singapore's site will be the first one in this new initiative. Throughout 2014, eHarmony accomplished significant milestones which included:
- Reaching the highest number of subscribers in company history
- Achieving the highest level of new registrants (Total 61M)
- Raising user engagement with users staying 45% longer
- Launch of eH+
‘The League’ Dating App Is For Successful People
WSJ – Feb 19 – The League, which launched in January and has raised $2.1M is for people who are “too popular as it is,” according to its site. 30% of the app’s users have advanced degrees, and 18% are executives, VPs or founders, according to The League’s founder and CEO Amanda Bradford. The app has a long wait list. 80K people currently are waiting for admission. The League isn’t the only player trying to get a piece of the more than $2B that the online dating industry is worth in the U.S., estimates Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks, a firm that helps dating companies with business development and media relations. Bradford claims The League’s market lies somewhere between those of staid Match or eHarmony, and Tinder. “The goal is to keep The League well-balanced, diverse and classy,” Bradford says.
Coffee Meets Bagel Lands $7.8 Million In Series A
TECH CRUNCH – Feb 18 - Coffee Meets Bagel has closed a $7.8M Series A financing round led by existing investor DCM Ventures. Question Ventures and Azure Capital also participated in the round. Launched in 2012, Coffee Meets Bagel aims to find one quality match for their users every day by using friend-of-a-friend connections on Facebook. IF both parties like their match, Coffee Meets Bagel gives the budding couple a discount on a first date activity, like grabbing a coffee or a drink. Users have 24 hours to respond to a match before it expires.
by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch
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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Valentine’s Day Was Tinder’s Biggest Day Ever
VANITYFAIR – Feb 18 - Tinder usage in the United States set an all-time record on Valentine’s Day, the company said. Overall usage ticked up 7% week-over-week, resulting in a 15% lift over the company’s longterm trends. The jump began on February 6. Message activity was up 5.2% week-over-week, and matches were up by 6%.
eHarmony’s Love For Data Is Good For Marketing Too
ADAGE – Feb 18 – eHarmony said it will embark on an ambitious international expansion, aiming to add one new country to its roster each quarter. The company spends $80M a year on marketing, and that's down from the $100M eHarmony spent before it invested in its own custom attribution measurement system which helped the company spend more efficiently, according to CMO/COO Armen Avedissian. eHarmony built its own attribution system in-house, evaluating the 125 terrabytes of data it has stored in order to optimize media buys, how it communicates with people when the ads convert, and even what types of matches they see. eHarmony uses that system to measure ROI of TV ads, for instance. Matchmaking algorithms themselves change, too, resulting in different pools of potential matches based on whether people arrived on the site via a mobile device, online, or after watching a TV ad.
Snap Interactive Announces $3 Million Senior Secured Convertible Note Financing
PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 17 - Snap Interactive has completed a private placement of a 12% Senior Secured Convertible Note in the amount of $3M to Sigma Opportunity Fund. The note is convertible into shares of common stock at a fixed price of $0.20 per share. The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes.
See full article at Marketwatch
See all posts on Snap Interactive
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.