All Interviews – Page 9 – Online Personals Watch

Interview With Sanjeev Kumar, CEO Of Simply Marry

Posted on January 6, 2015

OPW INTERVIEW – Jan 6 – Simplymarry.com is the POF.com of Indian Matrimonials. Sanjeev Kumar is the Head Of Business for SimplyMarry, which sits under the wing of The Times of India Group. Here's my interview with him. – Mark Brooks

Tell us about the Indian matrimonials market?
The online matrimonial industry in India came into existence in early 2000's and has now become a de facto option for people to find their perfect match.

In the initial years the growth was led due to cultural, social and economic factors such as the emergence of more and more nuclear families instead of joint families, people migrating to metros for work etc. This was followed by a phase where the growth was fueled by factors such as increased internet penetration, convenience and reach the internet gave. Currently it’s the third phase of growth for the online matrimonial industry which is fueled by the internet enabled smartphones, and a huge young population which choose for themselves rather than their parent finding a match for them.

What's your thoughts on Shaadi and Bharat Matrimony?
Bharat Matrimony is the leader in the online matrimonial industry followed by Shaadi and both have done very well and have contributed to the overall industry growth as well. In the last 15+ year’s most online matrimonial players have focused on web and continue to run similar product and business models. But now the companies need to think mobile first and both the product and business models need to change as what works on web might not work on mobile. The company which is able to do that and lead on the mobile front will become the overall leader in the next couple of years.

How are you disrupting the matrimonials business with Simply Marry?
We started with a belief that the online matrimonial industry is bound for disruption – reason being – the mobile and fast changing needs of young marriageable population. The current business models are subscription based where even if two users are mutually interested in each other they cannot take the conversation ahead unless one of them is a paid member – which is a mere 3-5% of the total active base.

We started with the hypothesis that:

The existing business model (paid subscription to contact) is fundamentally broken as it acts as a blocker for potential matches to reach out and start a conversation which might lead into a successful marriage. This leads to bad consumer experience.
Users today, and increasingly so, will not want to pay for – contact details or initiating a conversation. Connections on leading platforms such as FB, LinkedIn etc are free; it’s supposed to be free.

Thus we changed or business model and made our platform completely free from subscription. With Simplymarry.com – mutually interested users can start an instant conversation absolutely free without the need to buy a subscription. This has had a huge impact on user satisfaction and our metrics. We will continue to build on this value proposition and will leverage mobile capabilities to create successful connections & conversations between potential matches. They can then eventually decide to get married.

How do you drive new membership?
Marriage, unlike dating, is mostly a one time affair with lower life cycles – 6 months or so. Thus the business needs to continuously acquire users and with more active user base network effect kicks in. Also in India arranged marriages still mostly happen within the community – religion, caste being important criteria. Thus concurrent matching profiles is very important. For example, if we have 5000 profiles with certain demographics (religion, age, caste, income, education, location etc.) we need to acquire profiles matching their requirements for the network effect to kick in. This also will drive per user activity – contact or connections being initiated.

Thus our acquisition strategy is aligned to optimize on this. A huge amount of data analysis and automation is done so that the spends are optimized to achieve and build strength in the targeted segments or communities. So instead of spreading thin across communities we target segments where we have inherent strength and lead on those segments.

For paid matrimonial sites – this strategy helps better paid conversions (subscriptions) as well – as users will find more relevant and mutually interested profiles and would hence pay up to contact. The paid model creates misaligned incentives for paid matrimony sites as they make money when 2 free users become mutually interested in each other and are keen to talk. But Simplymarry being a free portal, wherein we allow users to contact and communicate with mutually interested matches for free, we are currently more focused on user activity and creating a seamless platform for 2 potential matches to connect and communicate.

And monetization?
We have a monetization strategy in place which I cannot talk about at this point in time – but it will be built around giving users more value and not around subscription as we fundamentally believe that the existing business model of paid matrimonial sites is broken.

See all posts on SimplyMarry

Post by Mark Brooks @

Geoff Cook, Co-founder And CEO Of MeetMe

Posted on November 7, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – Nov 7 – Geoff and his team have morphed MeetMe. I interviewed him to find out how things have changed. – Mark Brooks

How has MeetMe changed since we last caught up in 2013?
In 2013 we were focused on building out the mobile monetization engine, which we did quite successfully. When we last spoke, mobile was 25% of our revenue, now it’s 58%, thanks to the success of our mobile banner and native advertising products. MeetMe continues to focus on meeting new people; we still see ourselves as the mobile equivalent of the bar or coffeehouse. What’s different, is our focus on driving new chat partners as a way to connect people to each other. MeetMe today is a mobile chat app for connecting with new people.

I understand you reported your Q3 earnings today. How did it go?
Q3 was a strong quarter all around. We saw 128% growth in mobile revenue YOY to $6.7M in the quarter. Our adjusted Q3 EBITDA grew 213% YOY to $2.18M, and we were net income positive in the quarter too. Our average mobile daily active users were at 888K in Q3, up 15% versus the start of the year. We rank in the Top 15 social Android apps in the US – ahead of Skout, Badoo, Zoosk, OkCupid, and Match.com.

What has spurred the growth?
Chat is the main action in our app. Before we started, we never crossed 10M chats a day. Now we routinely break 15M chats a day, and we had our first 20-million-chat day recently. Within the last few weeks we released a major redesign of our MeetMe apps on both iPhone and Android to make it easier to find new chat partners.

How are you helping users discover compatible people to talk to? How are you defining compatibility?
We want to drive good conversations. A good conversation is a lengthy conversation. Users presently discover people in different ways on MeetMe – in the Meet tab and in Feed. The Meet tab shows the people near you who are available to chat. The Feed displays new photos and status updates of the people near you. We’ve found people prefer to chat with people local to them of a given age range and gender. Now that our app is optimized visually around the Meet tab since the redesign, we are working on further optimizing that tab by showing only the users most likely to result in lengthy conversation. To do that we leverage our data beyond age, gender, location. Our product pipeline is oriented around interests and leveraging data that affects likely conversation length, which we determine through a series of data experiments, which influence our algorithms. We slice and dice data in many different ways to predict conversation length.

What’s the demographics of MeetMe now, and how have they changed?
Our users are young, mobile, and engaged. Our core demo is 18-30 years old. They login 122 times per month on mobile. The US is our biggest market (80% of our traffic) followed by UK, Canada, Turkey, and Brazil. Android is our biggest platform by far, followed by iPhone, and then the web. In terms of how they’ve changed, we’ve become a bit more international and our average users have skewed a year or two older over the last few years.

Why should users use MeetMe instead of Facebook or dating apps like OkCupid, Tinder and Zoosk?
People join MeetMe to make new friends and to find new people to chat with. Facebook is a network for communicating with existing friends. Dating apps like OkCupid, Tinder and Zoosk are for dating and romance. We believe a focus on chatting and friendship reduces churn once connections are made. Also most people prefer to start off as friends before dating. In addition, our business model differs markedly from dating apps. In Q3 we drove 84% of our mobile revenue from ads. Many dating apps tend to become increasingly paid services. We like to build our business and design our products with every user in mind, and not for the one or two percent who might buy a premium service someday.

Are you seeing chat volume helping to drive revenues?
We believe our mobile ARPU is higher than Facebook’s mobile ARPU. We earned $2.29 per mobile user in Q3, which has grown 100% in the last year. We have advertising in Chat so we monetize every user in that way. We’ve recently announced the launch of a new virtual currency product in Chat called Boost, and we are likely to experiment with others in the future as well.

What can we expect to see from MeetMe in the Future?
We expect to continue to innovate our technology to improve the relevance of chat partners and the quantity of chats. We’ll likely continue to experiment with standalone apps, which we view as inexpensive product research and a quick way to gather user feedback. We’ve recently launched a new standalone app called Advice Chat for iPhone.

See all posts on MeetMe

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Interview With The CEO Of Leading Chinese Dating Site: Zhenai, Dr Song Li

Posted on October 28, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – Oct 28 – I first met Dr Song Li at iDate Beijing in 2007. He was one of the most active and participatory speakers and delegates of any iDate I've ever been to. He asked lots of questions, and shared lots of insights and opinions. Since then Match bought a 20% stake in Zhenai in 2011 (see news). I last interviewed Dr Song Li in 2008 (see interview), so its time for an update. (iDate Mobile will be in Beijing China in May, 2015). Here's my interview with luminary CEO Dr Li. – Mark Brooks

How does Zhenai work now? I understand you provide matchmaking over the phone?
Zhenai has been doing well. We expanded our service model based on online-to-call center matchmaking service into an online dating service (with the help of our strategic partner Match.com) and online-to-offline matchmaking service.

What service levels does Zhenai offer?
We now offer three types of dating/matchmaking services to a broad range of singles in China:
(1) Zhenai Online Dating through the website Zhenai.com and the mobile app Zhenai: This is similar to the service provided by Match.com in the U.S.: RMB 398 (US$64) for 12 months;
(2) Zhenai Online-to-Call Center Matchmaking: RMB 5,000 (US$800) for 6 months; with call-center-based matchmakers providing matchmaking services over the phone;
(3) Zhenai Online-to-Offline Matchmaking: For a wide range of subscription prices depending on the level of customization, but generally more expensive than Zhenai Online-to-Offline Matchmaking. With matchmakers providing face-to-face matchmaking services, This service is only available in the largest and most affluent cities in China.

Have you thought about expanding to the Chinese diaspora?
No plan at this point because we think that there is a big room for growth in China and we do not want to be distracted right now.

China has just surpassed the U.S. to become the world's largest ecommerce market in terms of total transaction value, and I think that the Chinese iDating market will catch up with the American one in revenue size before the end of this decade, so I want to focus on our domestic market.

Over the past decade, China has taken over the U.S. to become the No. 1 market for a wide range of consumer markets including TV sets, personal computers, smartphones, cars, now ecommerce, I don't see why the iDating market would be any different.

How has your partnership with IAC/Match gone so far?
We are truly quite happy about our partnership with IAC/Match, Match has been generous in providing its technology and operational experience to us. We have learned a lot about how to improve ROI and other critical operational metrics. What they have provided us is not just new capital but their almost two decades of experience in the Internet personals industry.

How would you say iDating in China is most different from iDating in the USA?
It was quite different as recent as three years ago because the payment infrastructure in this country was way behind that in the U.S. then, so doing pure online dating services was more challenging. But now our online payment infrastructure has significantly improved.

We can now adopt Match-like service models based on multi-month subscription offerings, and we have. Compared to Match.com, we are still disadvantaged in that we have to rely on online debit payment systems (which have become much better in China) but not on credit cards-based systems, so we can't have an auto-renewable subscription model yet, which means that it would not be economically viable to offer single monthly subscription packages at this point. You will certainly lose a significant amount of income from those who would have paid if single month subscription had been made available to them.

On the other hand, China has become the world's largest smartphone market, with some 800 million users, so mobile apps-based services including dating/matchmaking services have grown leaps and bounds in the past 3 years. Now a significant portion of Zhenai's revenues come from its mobile app.

What have you learned from iDating sites in USA recently?
I met the Tinder co-founder CEO Sean Rad 3 years ago and visited him recently in his Los Angeles office, I am very impressed with what he and his team have accomplished with their cool product of Tinder app. Unfortunately, it is very hard to create a Tinder-like product in China because, for Tinder to grow, you need to leverage Facebook to import the user's profile. I think that it is critical that Tinder-like dating apps are able to leverage real world friends-based sites like Facebook. China does not have a Facebook to leverage. We have a lot of social platforms for strangers with screen names and cats' pictures, which would be useless for Tinder types of products.

How many of your users login on mobile now, vs desktop?
I can't disclose the actual figure but some 40% of our new users now come from Zhenai's mobile app. The challenge we face now is that mobile users are growing faster than desktop users but the average age of our mobile users is younger — generally speaking, paying customers tend to be more mature. Hopefully, with the passage of time, the situation will change because at some point every device, mobile or not, will be apps-based.

See all posts on Zhenai

Post by Mark Brooks @

Interview With Joshua Bocanegra, Founder & CEO Of LoveRoom

Posted on August 21, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 21 – We first heard about LoveRoom in November last year. The concept of allowing users to share their room for free with attractive strangers has sparked some controversy. Bocanegra listed his place on Airbnb, and to make it more appealing, he used the photo of his girlfriend for the profile. Soon he started getting reservations at $80 a night. This is where the idea for LoverRoom kicked in. We've interviewed Joshua about how LoveRoom went from just an idea to a website that has attracted ~10K people in 6 months without any PR efforts.

See all posts on LoveRoom

POF Interview With CEO Markus Frind

Posted on June 25, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – June 24 – We spoke to Markus Frind, founder and CEO of POF, about mobile, Tinder, and POF plans for Google Glass…

How are the events working out for you?
They’ve been working out great for the past 10 years now. We host 400-500 events a month with 28-30k showing up.

How is your offering different from Match?
All of our events are user driven. Users create the events, they promote them on the site and then people show up. Match.com plans the events and charges people to attend.

Isn’t that a little more risky though?
I would say theirs is more risky. It’s much easier to hold free events. From a business point of view, our users are advertising the site for free for us.

You had a $10M fund for acquisitions. What’s the ideal profile of a company that you’re looking for?
It was more like $30M that we wanted to invest. We’re looking for a company that has ~1M in revenues, and can massively grow if we send them our traffic.

Online dating is skewing more towards mobile, do you think?
The web is going the way of the dinosaur.

Looking at what Match/IAC has done with Tinder, do you think that this was done with POF in mind? POF is a direct threat for Match.com. So their ultimate response would be to back a free app that focuses on mobile. How much of a threat is Tinder?
I don’t think they have that much foresight. Although Tinder is growing in leaps and bounds, it’s not like it’s affecting traffic of existing dating sites. It is just bringing more people to the category.

Do you think they will launch a site? It seems like a fishing mechanism, but where’s the website? They aren’t sending traffic to Match yet.
95% of our users under the age of 35 are using a mobile phone. So who cares about a website?

How about the high end matchmaking? Aren’t you leaving money on the table?
We will see what happens with eHarmony. Everything is just moving mobile and getting more casual, not serious.

Last year, 70% of your traffic was on mobile, what’s it stand at at this stage?
85%. It still grows a percent a week.

I hear Zoosk is making close to half their revenues on mobile now. How’s that compare with POF in terms of revenues.
We haven’t done a lot of revenue driven features on the apps yet, so we are nowhere near where they are. I think they are at 41% from their filings. We focus mostly on getting users and retaining them.

Was developing an app for iOS less challenging than for Android?
iOS is far more challenging for us. There’s just more things that can go wrong.

If you were going to give some advice to a startup. Which would you advise them to start with?
We make equivalent amounts of money from users. It doesn’t matter if they are Android or iPhone. As far as I know, that applies to all of the major players.

Doesn’t iOS make more money though? Are behaviors a little different?
Android makes a little more money because you don’t have to pay Google 30% that you have to pay to Apple.

Do you have plans for a Google Glass app?
We have no plans for an app yet. Facial recognition is banned. So until there’s a wide install base, we’re not going to play with it.

What’s your thoughts on wearable computing in general? Do you think wearables improve the idating experience in the next 5-10 years?
The technology is still 3-4 years from being the next big thing.

See all posts on POF.com

HowAboutWe Interview With CEO Aaron Schildkrout

Posted on June 16, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – June 16 – There's a couple of companies in the online dating industry that have done a good job with innovation, and HowAboutWe is a standout in thinking different. Here is our interview with Aaron Schildkrout, Founder and CEO of HowAboutWe.

HowAboutWe is all about getting offline. Tell us more about that.
We wanted to make online dating all about meeting up in the real world. Even with HowAboutWe for Couples we want to make date night happen. Studies show that if you repeatedly surprise each other, then you're 300% more likely to be happy in your relationship.

Delightful closed down after three months. What's your thoughts on what happened?
This is a huge space. There are a lot of companies that got it right in terms of direction, but not necessarily in terms of execution. The big winners are yet to be determined.

You're maintaining the relationship with the people that you've been successful with, rather than losing them to the wind.
The couples space is going to be 20x bigger than the dating space ever will be.

How is the acquisition of Nerve working out?
It's going really well. We have a significantly sized and very skilled editorial team that is now building content for Nerve.com, Swimmingly.com, which is focused on relationships; Famously.com, which is focused on celebrity relationships; and The Date Report, which was our original blog.

I hear that Zoosk revenues are approaching 50/50 for mobile. How's that compare with HowAboutWe?
Views are higher, but revenue is trailing only slightly. We're seeing those two lines converge. Mobile is our most important channel by far. We're seeing the most engagement there. I think that this trend will only continue.

How do you deal with location in your apps?
We want to provide extremely relevant information based on where you are. We connect singles with people who want to date in the same places. Our next "You&Me" release will include a major location feature that lets couples track their adventures together.

It seems like you're bringing together some pieces of the pie which would serve a higher service level – less time invested but more help getting to the date quicker – a' la matchmaker. Is this an area that you believe in?
Very much. There is a large market opportunity around a matchmaking service that is facilitated by the Internet. People who buy luxury goods want a carefully crafted, curated, personalized concierge service-level experience for finding love.

Do you have a wearable game plan?
Finding the user experience in the wearable space that will work in the dating space is tricky. It's much easier in the couples space. We already have a prototype for You&Me on Google Glass.

See all posts on HowAboutWe

Aclipsa Interview With VP Of Business Strategy Tom Oh

Posted on June 6, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – June 6 – With the increasing popularity of video messaging through mobile apps like Snapchat, Vine, etc., there is now the potential for dating sites to pay attention to mobile video messaging, specifically secure video messaging, as a new way for generating revenue. Aclipsa is currently the only secure mobile video messaging provider with a B2B offering. We've interviewed Tom Oh, VP of Business Strategy at Aclipsa. Email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com if you'd like a copy of the Secure Mobile Video Messaging white paper.

(Full Disclosure: Aclipsa is a client of Courtland Brooks) – Mark Brooks

What does Aclipsa do?
Aclipsa delivers streaming video to mobile apps. We offer two different ways – through a one-way video delivery called content distribution, and a two-way conversation called video messaging.

Which other industries are you involved with?
The entertainment and sports industry. Our entertainment clients use our app that allows them to deliver entertainment content. Our sports clients uses Aclipsa to deliver team information on various sports for all of their customers.

How does it work? What, exactly, are the users getting with the integration of your product?
The user gets a very simple way to create and send private video messages.

You're also addressing the Internet dating industry. People are not using video that much because it is very personal and they are concerned about their privacy. If that video gets spread around, they could get very embarrassed. How do you help with that?
Our secure video messaging is not going to be shared or posted to any type of social site. It creates a more personal conversation knowing that it can't be shared or copied. This gives users a little more comfort to open up more.

How is Aclipsa funded?
Aclipsa is funded by the founder. He has been very dedicated and committed over the last four years.

What does it cost?
It is based on a monthly usage. It depends on your user base – how often they're using it. You pay for processing, storage, and total number of minutes. We charge clients based on what's been used, not on a flat-rate fee.

How, would you say, Aclipsa compares with the competitors?
There are companies offering social video messaging and some companies that are offering businesses video messaging, but they are not secure. We've found this niche of secure video messaging which protects the privacy of all users. From a B2B standpoint, Aclipsa makes it easy to integrate our technology into somebody's existing iOS or Android app, which makes us unique.

What does the future hold? What's your goal, by the end of the year, with this industry?
I see a strong, long-term relationship potential with the online dating industry. We want to help them increase conversions, improve the user experience and create a path or an in-app way to authenticate users.

Match Group Interview With CEO Sam Yagan

Posted on May 21, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – May 21 –

In the latest CEO Interview, Mark Brooks and Match Group CEO, Sam Yagan, discuss:

Acquisitions
Opportunities in Matchmaking
The Couples Market
Mobile Trends
Android vs. iOS
Wearable Computing

Please click here for a complete transcript of the interview.

See all posts on Match.com See all posts on OkCupid
See all posts on Tinder See all posts on People Media

BeehiveID Interview With co-Founder Mary Haskett

Posted on February 25, 2014

OPW INTERVIEW – Feb 25 – BeehiveID is a new ID verification technology that is being used in online dating. It analyzes an individual's social media history, their friends and posts to determine whether a genuine person or a spambot is posting. TangoWire, a network of niche dating sites, has recently implemented BeehiveID technology. Here is our interview with Mary Haskett, who is the co-founder.

What is BeehiveID's founding story?
I met my co-founder, Dr. Alex Kilpatrick, when we worked together on a large national biometric identification project in the Middle East. We both felt that the way identity is managed online is fundamentally broken. On the Internet, your identity is tied to an email address. Individuals can have as many as they want at no cost. We wanted to see if the identity technologies could be used to verify that an online account was backed by a real person. We were accepted into the three month TechStars startup accelerator in Seattle and developed BeehiveID.

What's your industry specific solution for Internet daters?
We prevent online fraud. BeehiveID combs through the data on social sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. All of the posts, messages, uploaded photographs, likes, etc. create an interconnected graph of data, which we sort through to find the patterns real people display that fraudulent accounts do not. We use those patterns to generate the BeehiveID score, a measure of your proof of personhood. The score is modeled after a credit score, so a low score indicates a fake profile and a high score indicates the account is backed by a real person.

How much does it cost?
The cost is based on the number of identities validated per month. There is a free tier for very low volume users. The highest price (for low volumes) is $1 per verification but the price goes down rapidly as the number of transactions per month increases.

How is it better than the likes of a Rapsheets.com felony and sex offender check?
Those services are great if you are only looking for felony and sex offenders in the US. Facebook alone has more than one billion users worldwide and so we are able to provide identity verification for a much larger number of people. Integrating BeehiveID into a dating site is as easy as adding a button to the site, and having your identity verified requires only a single click.

How can the idating industry work with you?
We would love to talk to anyone who wants to take BeehiveID out for spin. We are happy to discuss options for trial periods.

Category: All Interviews

Recommended Reads From The CEO Of Zhenai

Interview With Sanjeev Kumar, CEO Of Simply Marry

Interview With The CEO Of Leading Chinese Dating Site: Zhenai, Dr Song Li

Interview With Joshua Bocanegra, Founder & CEO Of LoveRoom

POF Interview With CEO Markus Frind

HowAboutWe Interview With CEO Aaron Schildkrout

Aclipsa Interview With VP Of Business Strategy Tom Oh

Match Group Interview With CEO Sam Yagan

BeehiveID Interview With co-Founder Mary Haskett

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