Month: February 2024
Christian Cafe’s Journey – Founder Interview
STEP BY STEP BUSINESS – Sam Moorcroft co-founded ChristianCafe.com in 1999.
FOCUS – Our purpose is to connect people who say they're Christians and want to meet other single people of shared faith. We give them options to pick how involved they are in their local church and their denomination. From the beginning, we focused our marketing efforts on America. Now, we've added UK, Australia, NZ, Philippines, Singapore, S.Korea, S.Africa. Today, it's half American, ~15% Canadian.
TEAM & TECH– My average staff tenure is 20+ years. I hired my most recent employee in 2002. The original programmer is still here. I had the advantage of having some very clever and knowledgeable people start with me. As tech. evolved, they learned it. We got a grant from the Canadian government for $100k+ because we built Apple's first dating app. I believe there was no other dating app, and we were the first back in 2010. We had first-mover advantage. We have such a niche foothold that ~75% of our traffic daily comes from people who already know us. I learned that employees want to know that you care about them. If you treat your employees well, they will return the favor ten times. It's very expensive to bring someone new in. It's also upsetting to the whole team because you've got to integrate somebody else in. My wife is our CMO. we've been married for 20 years, and we have five kids.
MARKETING – We've had 25k+ marriages. It works. ~25% of our traffic comes from marketing. We do Google Ads, Bing, and affiliate (CJ, Pepperjam, and direct affiliates). We typically pay 40% of lifetime including renewals. We also do a lot of CPL and CPA deals. Also a ton of SEO work: backlinks and content for specific long-tail search results, like, "Austin, Texas Christian singles." Lately, we've been using AI a lot. Our site is unique amongst all dating sites when people come in because we don't give people a permanent free trial. We treat you like you paid for the first 10 days but cut you off afterward.
SAFETY – We built an anti-scammer tool that is behavioral-based. We kill them, but we don't tell them they're dead. We also give a network of volunteers free access in exchange for finding abuse.
Dating App Blush Launches With $7M in Funding
TECH CRUNCH – Invite-only dating app Blush has raised $7M in seed funding to scale and expand its platform. Founded in Oct 2023 by Matthew Alfin, Blush is currently operational in LA and plans to extend to cities like Miami, New York, Chicago, and Austin. It matches users based on shared favorite local venues, aiming to make online dating more personal and connected to real-life experiences. Blush also hosts private community events for members and offers zodiac compatibility charts. Future plans include broadening its reach and introducing an AI dating coach to provide personalized dating advice.
by Aisha Malik
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
Match Group Tells Users to Verify Their Profiles in Order to Go on More Dates
PR NEWSWIRE – Match Group's platforms will send users coordinated reminders to Photo Verify their profiles utilizing Photo Verification with a selfie video or the platform's verification tools. Verified profiles often receive better engagement, according to Match Group. At Hinge, users with profiles that are Selfie Verified go on ~200% more dates globally than those with unverified profiles. On Tinder – in the 18-25 age group – being Photo Verified bumps up their chance to match by 10% as users feel more confident that their potential match is genuine and looks like their photos.
See full article at PR Newswire
See the top news on Match Group
See the top news on Tinder
See the top news on Hinge
Hinge’s First Gen Z Report Reveals Top Dating Trends in 2024
Top Five Product Lessons With Will Wu, CTO at Match Group
20VC – Prior to Match, Will was VP of Product at Snap. As the 35th employee, Will spearheaded the creation of Snapchat's "Discover" content platform. He also led the creation and growth of the "Chat" messaging feature, which today is a primary Snapchat engagement driver that connects hundreds of millions of people each day. In this episode with Will Wu We Discuss:
- The Journey to Snap Vp of Product
- How to Hire Product Teams
- How to Do Product Reviews Effectively
- Product: Art or Science?
Dating App Meet Cute Won Pittsburgh’s First Techstars Startup Weekend
TECHNICAL.LY – Pittsburgh's first Techstars Startup Weekend, hosted by InnovatePGH and Techstars, brought together people with new business ideas. Participants pitched new ventures, with Meet Cute, a place-centric dating app, winning top honors. Meet Cute team received two dedicated desks for one year at InnovatePGH's Avenu Workspaces ($7,200 in value) and up to $5,000 of incorporation fees from Dentons.
Mixing Dating Apps and Travel Can Be Dangerous
The Growing Acceptance of Polyamory
What’s the Best Age Gap in a Relationship?
