GDI – Mark Brooks spoke with Christopher Alesich, founder and CEO of Sister Wives and Matchmakers. Sister Wives is a dating site for people looking for polyamorous or polygamous relationships. Christopher Alesich discussed why mainstream dating apps do not work well for this market. He talked about changes to the Sister Wives matching system and Matchmakers’ 200-question matchmaking process. He also plans to launch more dating brands.
Category: All Interviews
Matthew Gain: How ParshipMeet Group Is Evolving in a Rapidly Changing Industry
LTR – In this conversation, Mark Brooks sits down with Matthew Gain, CEO of ParshipMeet Group, to explore how one of Europe’s leading dating companies is evolving in a rapidly changing industry.
Matthew shares his perspective on the unique dynamics of dating businesses, the evolution of brands such as eHarmony, Parship, ElitePartner, and MeetMe, and the growing opportunity in the 40+ dating market.
The conversation also dives into some of the biggest questions shaping dating today: how AI should and shouldn’t be used in the customer experience, the growing importance of trust and safety, the future of compatibility and matchmaking, and why authentic human connection remains at the heart of the industry.
[**See the video here on YouTube**]
The February LTR was kindly sponsored by HubPeople, LeadThink and Courtland Brooks
Fireside Chat With Ethan Martin
LTR – Ethan Martin, founder of Gen Z-focused dating app SLIDE, shares insights from his journey as an entrepreneur. Having learned a thing or two from his previous food delivery app, Round, he stresses the importance of solving one's own problems to devise impactful solutions. SLIDE caters exclusively to 18–28-year-olds, addressing their desire for safety and authenticity with mandatory ID verification. Slide launched in 2023, built off of extensive market research, using humor and relatability across platforms like TikTok to engage users. Ethan's bold vision positions SLIDE as a standout in the dating app market, focusing on a safe and lively community for young people.
[**See the video here on Youtube**]
The October LTR was kindly sponsored by ParshipMeet Group, RealMe, Dating Through Curiosity, along with Courtland Brooks and Matchmaker.com
Interview With CEO of G-commerce Service, RealGifts
OPW INTERVIEW – RealGifts is our newest (Courtland Brooks) client and OPW sponsor. They do G-commerce (at scale) for dating. Here is my interview with dating industry veteran Ruben Buell who is CEO of RealGifts. – Mark Brooks
What is G-commerce?
G-commerce is gifting commerce. We take E-Commerce and tailor it to the act of giving and receiving. In dating, this means we enable one dater to give a gift to another, without disclosure of mailing addresses. Due to the increase in globalization, internet penetration, and the post-corona trend of working from home, this vertical is set to grow at a rapid rate over the next several years.
There is a major increase in demand for instant, last-minute gifts and easy gift exchanges. Personalization is also key – people want an experience that caters to them, and gifts that they have specified, rather than something that they will inevitably return.
Studies reveal that for every $10 the average American spends, $1 is spent on buying someone a gift, and on average this amounts to $1,851 per year spent on gifts. According to stats, the global personalized online gifts market amounts to $31.36 billion and is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 9% per year.
People naturally express their love and emotions through gifts, and as our lives shift online, so do our habits. Gift-giving is a fundamental part of human relationships, and we are reinventing it, and making it even more accessible.
What is RealGifts?
RealGifts is a widget that enables users to send each other personalized, self-chosen gifts without disclosing any personal information, ensuring privacy and security. Through this, RealGifts both boosts UX as well as the level of engagement among users.
The widget itself is an award-winning end-to-end solution that provides a selection of best-selling products from brands that truly embody luxury. Users can create personal wishlists, and from those wishlists, other users can send gifts across mobile applications and traditional websites.
How does it help singles connect?
Gift-giving is a love language in and of itself.
RealGifts is the method through which people can speak that particular love language. They can express their feelings – recent or more long-term – with these self-chosen gifts, deepening connections and making the online dating experience far more real and intimate.
RealGifts creates a memorable experience for users – but more than that, it makes the experience real and tangible. It’s the stepping stone for taking the online dating experience into the real world, and gives couples something that is shared, and that represents the depth of their connection.
How long has it been around, and at what scale is the platform tested to?
RealGifts has been around since 2006, and has been tested for a scale of over 150 million users globally.
What are the most popular gifts?
RealGifts has a vast range of gifts, but the most popular categories that we've seen chosen by our members, and purchased by our members are:
- Fragrances
- Earrings
- Floral Chocolates
- Bags and Wallets
How does it help dating apps monetize?
Dating apps receive a 10%-30% payout on all gift sales.
There is no outside link when using the widget; everything happens on your app or on your site, so the engagement time vastly increases. We've found that each member spends an average of 11 minutes creating their wishlist and browsing the selection available, greatly boosting their ARPU.
Contact: rebeca.valdez@getrealgifts.com
Interview With Jamie Wykes-Hobday, Founder of FITFCK
OPW INTERVIEW – Last week, the fitness dating app FITFCK announced an investment at $3M valuation from OnlyFans founder, Timothy Stokely. We have reached out to Jamie to learn more about his app and the investment.
What made you start FITFCK?
FITFCK was created when my girlfriend broke up with me just weeks before my first bodybuilding show due to my excessive training commitments and lifestyle. So you could say that the motivation comes from the fact that the founder is an actual case study of the problem we are looking to solve!
How is FITFCK better than other dating apps?
FITFCK offers a niche for gym lovers to connect through their common love for fitness, which they would not be able to do on mass market dating apps. We are also focused on building a multi level consumer brand, not just a dating app.
How did you meet the Founder of OnlyFans?
Through an Instagram DM!
What will you do with the money to grow FitFck?
We will be using the money to build our audience and complete our app build which is releasing in November.
How does the OnlyFans founder view the investment, FitFck and the dating space in general?
Here is his quote: !I am delighted to have had the opportunity to invest in FITFCK" says Timothy Stokely. "Having known Jamie for over 3 years now, his vision, drive and determination coupled with the brand concept is something that I fully believe in and I am looking forward to seeing it realise its global potential as a multi level consumer brand."
How are you planning on building your audience? i.e. influencers?
Social media marketing across a number of platforms, including influencers.
Interview With Aurora Townsend, Founder & CMO of Planet Theta
OPW INTERVIEW – Planet Theta is the world's first Virtual Reality dating app. The app's founder and CMO, Aurora Townsend, believes metaverse is the future of dating because it addresses the top concerns that people have with traditional dating apps – privacy and security.
The metaverse is considered the next step in the evolution of the Internet, but how close are we to the real experience?
Real metaverse experiences are already here, and there are many things to do in VR, such as playing poker, going out to comedy clubs, playing tennis, or shopping. As the VR user base continues to double every year, we can expect the variety and quality of metaverse experiences to scale to that need, bringing endless opportunities. This November, Planet Theta will be open to the public.
What is Planet Theta's founding story? How did you come up with the app's name?
Planet Theta's origin was covid. Most of the people I know became lonely and depressed and began looking for ways to connect and date other than meeting in person. Many of us tried group phone and video calls, but they did not fill the void. One day I was playing a VR game with a couple of friends, and it dawned on us that we may have found the answer – using VR, technology's most immersive way to connect. Theta means rebirth, and we created Planet Theta to help foster a rebirth of dating culture. We push personal interaction and chemistry back to the forefront of dating. We call it Microdating. Instead of focusing first on profiles, on Planet Theta matchmaking is about testing chemistry.
How is the app funded?
Our CEO, Chris Crew, contributed ~$1M to start the development of Planet Theta. Since then, we have raised funds from a few seed investors and are currently looking for a larger investor to help us navigate our launch. If you are interested in investing in Planet Theta, please take a look at our investor's website: https://investplanettheta.com.
What are the biggest challenges you are facing right now?
VR is expanding so fast that our target audience is an ever-changing factor of demographics as it grows. This is a unique challenge for our marketing team.
How does Planet Theta stand out from other dating apps, and how does it work? Describe the experience.
Most dating apps are matchmaking apps – there is no dating within the apps, and there is no chemistry testing, which is an essential part of any relationship. On Planet Theta, we have replaced Swiping with Microdating. A user selects Microdating within the app, and the AI sets the user up with three consecutive 75s Microdates with three users the AI thinks they may like. After each microdate, users will be prompted to rate their date with a thumbs up or down. At the end of the three microdates, users will be notified of their new "matches" (where both users gave a thumbs up) and be encouraged to invite them to a Coffee Date. Matches can chat on our associated phone app (mainly to schedule a Coffee Date) but will not be able to share pics or see each other's profiles until after going on a Coffee Date. The Coffee Date is a 3-minute date in our cafe. This is a chance to find out if you can have a good conversation. We encourage couples to go on a few dates, like taking a walk in our Enchanted Forest together or watching a new movie at our allrites© theater.
Who do you consider your biggest competitor in the metaverse space?
To our knowledge, we are building the only VR app dedicated to dating. People have been dating in VR for years on VRChat, Altspace, and other social VR apps. We don't see Social VR apps as competitors. Their environments are almost entirely user-created, allow children, and most importantly, the apps are not focused on dating. Some really cool web 2.0 apps are matchmaking apps in the traditional sense, just focused on helping people make VR connections. We see these apps as partners rather than competitors.
How do you protect your users from abuse?
A lot of our vision is about prioritizing the comfort and safety of women. Planet Theta helps them filter out who they want to meet in the physical world. There is no way to look through a list of profiles or to message random people. Users can only see the profiles of other users after going on a short coffee date in Planet Theta. Some of the more apparent features include an ability to silence, block, or report other users, we'll be using human moderators in public spaces, and of course, a personal bubble that protects your space from being intrusively invaded. The personal bubble will not be an on/off switch but a decreasing setting relative to how much time other users have spent with you in Planet Theta. The longer a couple is dating, the smaller the bubble until it disappears altogether.
Where do you see Planet Theta a year from now?
We expect Planet Theta to be the fastest-growing dating app on the market. Word of mouth will propel Planet Theta into the mainstream as women explain to their friends how much safer and easier it is to date on Planet Theta than on traditional dating apps. By next year if you haven't yet been on a VR date, I expect you'll know someone who has.
OPW Interview With Mark Kapczynski, SVP of OneRep
OPW – Mark Kapczynski is SVP of OneRep.com, which helps consumers and employees protect themselves online. (Full Disclosure: OneRep.com is a client of Courtland Brooks) – Mark Brooks
What does OneRep do?
OneRep scrubs unwanted personal information off the Internet. Google yourself right now: full name + city, state. You're likely to see listings from privacy-breaching websites that reveal your street address, phone number, email, age, and loads of other details, including your work, finances, political affiliations, etc. Such information can be used for staking, harassing, identity theft, and even a physical attack. We remove sensitive personal information from Google and 100+ websites to keep you private and safe.
How does OneRep work?
We SCAN 100+ sites to find where an individual is exposed. We then erase personal information from these sites and continuously monitor all the 100+ sites to ensure people remain private.
How does this help dating/community users?
Helping daters stay private online leads to safety in real life. They choose when to divulge personal contact information; that choice is not made for them by Google. For dating websites, offering members a service like this would help differentiate your brand and foster loyalty by showing you really care about member safety. OneRep complements your existing security programs, giving members more ways to stay protected while dating online.
What is the offering for dating/community apps?
There are two main ways to engage:
A. For dating websites and apps, offering OneRep annual subscriptions via an affiliate model is an easy, no-risk way to test whether your members will value this type of privacy protection service.
B. Directly integrate OneRep via API or SDK for tighter integration with your existing user flow and experience.
How is OneRep distinguished to do this job?
OneRep has been protecting consumers since 2015, being the first and only service to fully automate personal information removal from the web, making the removal easier to scale and more affordable. Our founder, Dimitri Shelest, was named Top 25 Cybersecurity CEO for 2021 by The Software Report. His expertise has been published in CPO Magazine, Safety Detectives, Hackernoon, and others. OneRep has proven consumer demand, with ~400K active users and ~ 6M public records removed from the Internet.
This Is the Story of the Global Christian Network
OPW – Global Christian Network was the world's first and largest Christian Social Media network that dates back to 1995. What started as simple online chat rooms turned into one of the top trafficked sites with 4M subscribers and a $400M valuation. The site was launched by David Fritsche, a former NASA engineer, and his brother Bob. David was also a youth pastor and youth sports coach at the time. The Global Christian Network was launched in 1995 with new services being added over the next couple of years, such as Classifieds, Prayer web, Studio – online chats with celebrities, Newsletters, Instant Homepage, and Singles – The world's first and largest Christian focused dating service. In the late '90s, there was only one online dating service of note, Match.com. ~300 couples were married through the site. In 2000, GCN raised $45M. Then in June 2000, Microsoft lost the antitrust lawsuit and the US Congress voted to break up the software company. That day, the market crashed and so did the value of every internet-based company, including GCN which went from $400M to $40M in just one week. In 2001, GCN was sold to a public company called iExalt. iExalt was later sold to Salem Media Group, a public company that still owns the domain and the rights.
Gitte Bendzulla – Driving Growth and Innovation in the Pandemic Environment
LTR – May 19 – The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on online dating companies. Gitte Bendzulla, COO Spark Networks, discusses the challenges of operating a publicly traded dating company in the current global environment with Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks. Spark Networks SE completed its acquisition of Zoosk in July 2019 to improve its position against Match Group. The combined company experienced impressive growth during 2020 as more people turned to online dating during the pandemic lockdowns. The momentum appears to have faded during Q1 2021. Companies must continue to innovate to drive growth as the world transitions to a post-pandemic environment. According to Bendzulla, Online dating company IPOs have brought positive attention to the market and help to establish better relationships with payment providers and investors. Gitte Bendzulla provides her unique perspective on the online dating and social discovery industry in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
The February LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group, Tawkify, Real Gifts & Courtland Brooks.
Patti Stanger – Dating Apps Should Partner With Matchmakers to Provide a VIP Experience
LTR – May 3 – Patti Stanger, CEO & Owner of Millionaires Club, discusses her invaluable experiences as The Millionaire Matchmaker in this interview with Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks. Finding love for the ultra-wealthy presents unique challenges and requires a comprehensive approach. The personalized matchmaker approach can be scaled to integrate into online dating. Stanger believes that dating apps should form alliances with matchmakers to provide a high-service option for users who desire assistance. There is an excellent opportunity to increase revenues by servicing these VIP customers. Patti Stanger discusses the benefits that matchmakers can bring to dating apps in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
The February LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group, Utopia Analytics, Tawkify, Real Gifts & Courtland Brooks.