GLOBAL TIMES – Dec 8 – Blued, a gay hookup smartphone app, recently received $30M funding. Similar gay matchmaking apps have also attracted investment. Zank, an app similar to Blued, attracted a $3.25M investment this July. Zank has drawn ~5M users since its launch in 2013. Blued is the most popular gay app in China. The app has 10M users.
by Liang Chen
See full article at Global Times
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TECH IN ASIA – Nov 18 – Paktor, a Singapore-based dating app with ~1.5M registered users, has raised $5M in the last 12 months. The company has just announced its latest funding from Vertex Venture, a VC subsidiary of Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings. The money will be used to expand into new markets like Malaysia by next quarter. Its key markets have been Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. It will also release a desktop version of its app, and will venture into offline matchmaking.
by Terence Lee
See full article at Tech In Asia
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BOSTON GLOBE – Nov 17 – WiGo, a college-only app based in Boston that helps students coordinate their social plans, has received an investment from Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, the co-founders of Tinder. The size of the investment was not disclosed, but TechCrunch reported that it totaled ~$700K. WiGo (short for “who is going out”) was launched in January 2014.
by Jack Newsham
See full article at Boston Globe
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
RE/CODE – Nov 12 – The app intended to attract “high quality” singles is launching in San Francisco Wednesday in hopes of matching singles who are more “ambitious” and “engaged” than users of other dating apps. The League keeps a “flakiness score” for users to determine whether or not they are engaging with others in the community. The waiting list for The League is more than 10K people across the country. $750K in seed funding was received from IDG Ventures, xSeed Capital, and Cowboy Ventures.
WSJ – Nov 7 – Momo Inc, the maker of Chinese dating and chat app Momo, has confirmed its plan to go public in the U.S. Momo has grown rapidly since its 2011 launch. It began as an online dating app, but it has pushed to become a platform to help people with shared interests connect in locales across China. Monthly active users reached 60.2 M in September, more than doubling from a year earlier. Membership subscription fees accounted for 63% of its revenue in H1 2014. Total H1 2014 revenue was $13.9M, up from $3.1M in the comparable 2013 period. Net loss was $8.3M, compared with a $9.3M loss in the H1 of 2013. Alibaba owns a 21% stake in Momo.
by Josh Beckerman
See full article at WSJ
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VCCIRCLE – Nov 7 – Vee, an Indian mobile dating app, has received $1M in its pre-Series A round of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Launched in April this year, Vee connects people who are single with others having the same tastes. The firm is also looking to monetise the app in the near future by introducing a paid subscription model.
by Sainul K Abudheen
See full article at VCCircle
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
AUSTIN BUSINESS JOURNAL – Nov 5 – Interested Inc, the parent company of ThreadDating.com, a mobile dating app aimed at college students, has raised $585K of a planned $610K financing. Interested was founded by 17-year-old Zachary Dell. It claimed 1K members last month.
by Christopher Calnan
See full article at Austin Business Journal
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GAYSTARNEWS – Nov 3 – The app claims 15M users, 300K of whom are overseas and 20% of whom log on daily. In comparison, Grindr has 5M users. The company would use the investment to improve talent and the product.
by Darren Wee
The full article was originally published at GayStarNews, but is no longer available.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
PEHUB – Oct 31 – Venture capitalists are giving online dating apps their confirmation. More than a dozen mobile apps and social sites have collectively raised $70M. Coffee Meets Bagel, which started in 2012, has raised $3.4M from Lightbank and others. The growth in mobile and the increased attention to dating apps come as Tinder is gaining more attention. Josh Breinlinger, venture partner with Sigma West, has not funded a mobile dating app, but he said there “is a huge market for it." "It’s not a new industry, but with mobile, there’s a whole new opportunity.”
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PEHUB – Oct 28 – San Diego-based SingldOut.com has raised $600K in seed funding from undisclosed investors. The startup, founded by two female execs, uses DNA analysis to determine if a potential date has the “chances for long-term chemistry, greater compatibility and overall relationship success.”
by Alastair Goldfisher
See full article at PEHub
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.