IDATE – Sep 23 – The UK Channel 4 will be filming at iDate London October 14-16. They will be doing a documentary on the dating industry and new technology. If you want to be interviewed, please reach out to me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com.
Post by Mark Brooks @
IDATE – Sep 23 – Genevieve Zawada will host the "Matchmakers & Dating Coach Track" at the next iDate Internet dating conference, taking place in London, on October 14-16, 2015 at the Strand Palace Hotel in London.
LONDONLOVESBUSINESS – Sep 23 – Ross Williams is the CEO of Venntro Media Group, a parent company of WhiteLabelDating.com. The company claims 1700 partners, 25K sites and 45M members worldwide.
Q: How big is the market?
A: The UK online dating market is valued at £165M and is expected to grow to £225M by 2019. A third of adults in the UK use a site powered by us.
Q: How do you make money?
A: Our largest revenue-generating product is White Label Dating. We operate on a revenue sharing model so we only make money if our partners do.
Q: Who’s bankrolling you?
A: Venntro is completely privately owned. Steve Pammenter and I founded the business in 2003, juggling a dozen credit cards and paying them off each month.
Q: What advice would you give other entrepreneurs trying to secure that kind of finance?
A: Juggling credit cards is a gamble. You need to be confident that the business model is going to work. It’s very hard to monetise a product if you haven’t thought about revenue generation from the off.
Q: What do you believe the key to growing this business is?
A: Move with the market. It is a constantly developing market – if you stop innovating you could end up with getting left behind.
Q: What metrics do you look at every day?
A: Revenue per customer and customer engagement.
Q: What’s been the most unexpectedly valuable lesson you’ve learnt so far?
A: Ensure that you have multiple levels of redundancy in all areas of the business.
Q: What’s been your biggest mistake so far?
A: In 2014, our payment processing provider made the decision to exit the dating market, giving us 60 days notice to find a new solution. We didn’t have any redundancy. We worked around the clock to resolve the issue but it was touch and go. We now have four payment providers in place.
Q: Which London startup/s are you watching?
A: I love what HER are doing at the moment. Clocked.co have also a unique product and have built a great team. The Inner Circle have a great marketing strategy, with a lot of headline grabbing campaigns.
See full article at LondonLovesBusiness
SABEMOSDIGITAL – Sep 22 – IAC has decided that they can manage the Spanish business from France, and laid off most of Meetic's staff in Spain. This will also affect Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands, which will also be controlled from Paris, and the Nordic countries, which will be led from UK. Meetic laid off more than 10 people including the country manager Jose Ruano, and marketing director, Miguel Javier Mangas. The remaining staff (rumored to be just 3 people) moved into a smaller office.
by Miguel Ángel Uriondo
The full article was originally published at Sabemos Digital, but is no longer available.
NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL – Sep 21 – So far, 11 lawsuits have been filed against Avid Life Media, which operates AshleyMadison.com, most of them class actions accusing the company of negligence in allowing its customers’ personal info, like credit card numbers, to be hacked. Avid filed a motion to combine all the lawsuits in the Eastern District of Missouri. Their planned defense includes challenging the anonymity of the cases as procedurally improper under federal rules. Plaintiffs in some of the cases said they filed anonymously to protect their privacy. But anonymity could be an issue, said Gary Mason, a lawyer who filed one case against Ashley Madison. "It's going to be hard to prosecute a case on behalf of the class, a representative lawsuit, with someone who's not willing to step forward and publicly disclose who they are," he said.
by Amanda Bronstad
See full article at The National Law Journal
FINANCIAL POST – Sep 20 – Three sisters Arum, Dawoon and Soo Kang – graduates of Harvard, Stanford and Parsons School of Design respectively – launched Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating app that has made ~25M connections that have led to ~20K relationships and 200 plus engagements/marriages in the three years since its launch in USA. The app launched in Canada this summer. The app impressed billionaire investor Mark Cuban; he offered them $30M for the business, which has yet to make a profit, when the sisters appeared on Shark Tank this past January. They turned him down. After that, they raised $7.8M in a series A round led by DCM Capital. With no profits to point to, Kang said investors liked the team, the vision and the engagement metrics. The company targets young, busy working professionals between the ages of 21 and 35, which is exactly why the Kangs decided to expand into Canada. The business is based on a freemium model. Users can pay for getting more than one match (bagel) a day or unlocking the identity of a mutual friend.
by Mary Teresa Bitti
See full article at Financial Post
THELOCAL.DE – Sep 18 – The Dresden-based dating app Lovoo tricks users by creating fake female profiles to tempt men into paying, a technology magazine C'T has claimed. Lovoo is free but users can pay for premium services. Lovoo, which has 36M users in 17 countries has rejected the accusation.
QZ.COM – Sep 18 – In general, more men than women use online dating (13% men vs 9% women) in USA, according to 2013 Pew Research Centre study. Ashley Madison is an extreme example of this male-heavy ratio. Prior to the July hack, the site claimed that 30% of its clients were female. But only 15% of the 35M hacked records belonged to women, and it was found AM had created 70K female bots. Sites that promote casual hook-ups and extra-marital affairs are dominated by men but, when it comes to more serious, women are just as interested in online dating.
by Olivia Goldhill
See full article at QZ.com
BUSINESSWIRE – Sep 16 – MeetMe, the public social discovery company, has launched native chat ads in its iPhone app and video interstitials in its Android app. "We expect it to contribute ~$1M to Q4 revenue," said Geoff Cook, CEO of MeetMe.
USA TODAY – Sep 19 – Meat processing giant Oscar Mayer has launched Sizzl, a dating app functionally similar to Tinder that matches users based on compatible tastes in bacon. Users rank which cut of meat they prefer, and how they prefer their bacon cooked.
