WASHINGTONPOST – Jacqueline and Alexa Child are launching Dateability, a dating app designed for disabled and chronically ill people. It carries the slogan "Making love accessible." "People with disabilities (PWD) are often discriminated against by other users on dating platforms, and not seen as potential partners." Jacqueline, who suffers from a connective-tissue disorder, had one bad encounter after another with potential dates. Then late last year, she decided to get surgery that would leave her with a feeding tube, making it so that she could no longer eat dinner out. She worried about what that might do to her dating life. That's when they came up with the idea for the app. Alexa described it as a way for them to "take the power and control back."
Month: October 2022
Two Former Match Group CEOs Join Global Private Equity Firm
Date ‘Til You Drop: Couple.com Chases Speed-Dating Records
GLOBE NEWSWIRE – Couple.com, the Video-date platform, will attempt to claim several speed-dating records by hosting a free Date 'Til You Drop online event on Nov. 3 at 7pm ET in honor of National Sandwich Day. The event, which is "located" virtually and open to people across the globe, aims to connect and couple-up a record number of singles.
Plenty of Fish Introduces Dating Card Game “Cue’d up”
PR NEWSWIRE – With two-thirds (63%) of singles saying that breaking the ice is the hardest part about meeting someone new, Cue'd Up helps singles make better first impressions with conversation starters. Each Cue'd Up game consists of a small group of singles (six players max), and four rounds of gameplay. During each round, the players are presented with a humorous "cue" and are given 40 seconds to respond. From there, the responses are anonymously shared with the group and each player votes for their favorite answer.
The most popular questions in Cue'd Up initially include:
"I can't watch a movie without _____"
"My camera roll is full of _____"
"I could never date someone who hates _____"
"I never get tired of _____"
IDEA SUMMIT Paris Is Full
OPW – The IDEA SUMMIT in Paris, a by-invite-only gathering of CEOs and leaders of dating companies, is now full. Invitees can still join a waitlist, in case anyone bows out in the next month. The gathering is on Mon 28th Nov, in 39 days. This gathering is unusual because there are no attendees, just speakers. Everyone brings an idea worth sharing, and the suggested topics for this gathering is Innovation and M&A Strategy. The gathering is hosted by the CEO of happn, Karima ben Abdelmalek, and Mark Brooks. If you work in the dating industry, you're welcome to join the Internet Dating Excellence Association (IDEA.gp) by emailing mark@courtlandbrooks.com.
Dating App FROME Is Launching in New York
PR NEWSWIRE – After a launch in LA, the new dating and social networking app First Round's On Me (FROME) returns to New York City, where the idea originated. The app, designed to ensure users meet in person, is hosting hosting pop-up events with partners throughout Manhattan in Oct. These events will build up to the official NYC launch party on Nov 4 at 214 Lafayette. After creating their profile, users select "Available Today" or "Available This Week". Once users see someone they're interested in, they send a date request with a specific date, time, and location. If the recipient accepts, it's a date. Six hours before the date, a chat is available, giving users time to break the ice before meeting in person but not too much time where they turn into pen pals. The app raised $1M seed round.
Breeze – a Dutch Chat-free Dating App
EMERCE.NL – Breeze is an Amsterdam-based dating app where users can't chat after a match but go on a date immediately. "On average it takes 38 hours to start dating on Tinder in the real world. With us it's only 2 hours", claims the app's founder Marsha Goei. Every month, ~35K singles in the Netherlands are active on Breeze. Users pay €7.50 per date, which includes one free drink at Breeze's partner locations.
Plenty of Fish Is Showing Singles the Best Dicks
Gen Z Dating App “Snack” Keeps out Users 35+, Age Bias Suit Says
LAW360 – A Southern California man filed a proposed class action against Snack, which touts itself as "not your parent's dating app," saying he was blocked from joining because he is over 35. Snack is a video dating app specially made for Gen Z. Instead of swiping profile photos, the app shows a user's real personality through videos.
How Innovation Really Works Based on Lessons From Nature
OPW – Goal-seeking is the surest way to create nothing interesting. By executing a 5-year plan to pursue a fixed, innovative goal, the chance of success becomes near zero. 600m years ago, humans shared an ancestor with an octopus. Evolution got from a worm to a human and from the same worm to an octopus. If evolution had a "goal," the diversity of such forms could never have emerged. Evolution optimizes to escape competition through novelty. Successful species avoid reproductive competition and fill a niche. That's what life does and what businesses try to do. Facebook didn't try to outcompete Myspace. It established itself as a closed network for college students. The smart entrepreneur does not run toward an established player, she runs away from it. A novelty search can take years, where one interesting idea is a stepping stone to another, none of which is commercially viable, until, voila, it is. Innovation is a combination of features at the right time, connections made across disciplines and arranged in some novel way, which creates something different AND that could only have been arrived at by the failure of all previous incarnations.
My siblings and I started myYearbook, then a live video gaming platform which failed, and mobile apps, all of which failed. Critically, our team earned the right to keep building the next thing, because we had built myYearbook / MeetMe. I saw livestreaming video on YY and MOMO in 2016, and we built it for a Western audience, and bet the company on it, an all-in bet. We acquired Tagged, Skout, & Growlr, adding our video solution, it grew there too. We built livestreaming for the video & creator economy in a box, vPaaS, on rev share, and signed up 6 of the top 50 social apps in the world and a dozen others. Follow the novelty and keep following it, and eventually, you'll arrive in a unique place. You'll know it by the large moat surrounding it, because all those stepping stones you crossed, they're now covered by the tide. And to all of you goal seekers: the future does not turn out as you plan. – Geoff Cook