TECH CRUNCH – Dec 22 – Coffee Meets Bagel launched "Send A Woo", a feature similar to Tinder's Super Like. With "Send A Woo", Coffee Meets Bagel's users can express higher-than-usual interest in a potential match. CMB launched in 2013. The app delivers one match per day. Users then have 24 hours to respond. If both users liked each other, the app would then connect them in a text conversation.
by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 26 – Bullish is a new TechCrunch talk show. Their first guest was Arum Kang, the founder of Coffee Meets Bagel. She talked about how online dating has lost its stigma. "Online dating will be mobile only; that's where the trend is going", she also said." Watch the full interview.
by Alex Wilhelm
See full article at Tech Crunch
NYMAG – Oct 6 – Users choose dating apps the same way they choose bars – based on the people. The make-or-break factor in whether users stick around, is the crowd. With new apps getting launched every few months, the dating app people will like best is the one that happens to have a user base that fits the demographic of people they want.
Here's a breakdown of some of the dating apps Maureen O'Connor, a sex columnist, have experimented with:
Dating apps, like all social situations, are malleable. They're whatever people want them to be.
FINANCIAL POST – Sep 20 – Three sisters Arum, Dawoon and Soo Kang – graduates of Harvard, Stanford and Parsons School of Design respectively – launched Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating app that has made ~25M connections that have led to ~20K relationships and 200 plus engagements/marriages in the three years since its launch in USA. The app launched in Canada this summer. The app impressed billionaire investor Mark Cuban; he offered them $30M for the business, which has yet to make a profit, when the sisters appeared on Shark Tank this past January. They turned him down. After that, they raised $7.8M in a series A round led by DCM Capital. With no profits to point to, Kang said investors liked the team, the vision and the engagement metrics. The company targets young, busy working professionals between the ages of 21 and 35, which is exactly why the Kangs decided to expand into Canada. The business is based on a freemium model. Users can pay for getting more than one match (bagel) a day or unlocking the identity of a mutual friend.
by Mary Teresa Bitti
See full article at Financial Post
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR – Aug 14 – When Match bought POF for $575M in July, smaller dating sites felt encouraged. Mark Brooks, an Internet dating business consultant who has worked with POF, says the news prompted one start-up to approach him with a business plan. "They told me they'd like to get purchased by Match in six to nine months," Brooks says of the would-be clients. He had to set them straight, explaining that the POF acquisition was many years in the making. POF had impressive back-end features and 100M users. Bill Pescatello, a partner at Lightbank, a VC firm in Chicago, feels very optimistic about online romance. "It's crazy looking back to see how Tinder and other mobile apps have changed the game," he says. Tinderites may be anywhere from age 18 to 35, the younger set being those not yet interested in marriage prospects and likely to stay with the service for a longer time, notes Brooks. Another popular apps are Coffee Meets Bagel and Hinge. Dawoon Kang, CMB co-founder, says she believes her site will grow to rival Match. That kind of confidence made it easy for her to turn down Mark Cuban’s offer to buy the company for $30M.
by Lila MacLellan
See full article at Institutional Investor
See all posts on Match See all posts on Hinge
See all posts on POF See all posts on Coffee Meets Bage
ABC NEWS – July 27 – The Kang sisters from Coffee Meets Bagel stunned everyone when they said no to $30M from Mark Cuban. They believe their dating app is worth a whole lot more. Coffee Meets Bagel raised $7.8M in external funding and has more than doubled its user base since January. The app is free and delivers one match (bagel) by noon each day. Users have 24 hours to “Like” or “Pass” on their Bagel, and if two people “Like” each other, then the app will open a private chat to set up a date. A majority of the app's users are females.
by Juju Chang, Hana Karar & Lauren Effron
See full article at ABC News
STANDARD.CO.UK – July 9 – Coffee Meets Bagel, a dating site founded by three US-based, South Korean-born sisters, uses Facebook profile to recommend matches based on users’ friends of friends. Every day at noon, users receive their top match and have 24 hours to "like" or "pass". The app is already available in the US, Hong Kong, Sydney and Toronto.
by Jamie Nimmo
See full article at Standard.co.uk
EJINSIGHT – June 22 – Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) launched in Hong Kong, the app's first stop in overseas expansion, three months ago. Since then, CMB attracted 100K users, and is in the top 10 in Apple's App Store. Co-founder Dawoon Kang said the app has huge potential given ~2M Hong Kong FB users age 21-35 are single and they have 768 friends on average. To become a CMB member, a user has to register through Facebook. The app will then analyze the user’s friend group. Every day around noon, CMB randomly picks one of the matches and sends it to members who can then access the personal info of the recommended person for 24 hours. In that time, they can decide to proceed or pass. After Hong Kong, Toronto will be its next stop.
NEWS.COM.AU – May 25 – Coffee Meets Bagel, the dating app that turned down a $30M offer from Mark Cuban on the US TV series Shark Tank, is launching in Australia. Coffee Meets Bagel introduces users to one match every day and they have 24 hours to pass or like their counterpart.
by Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson
See full article at News.com.au
FORBES – Apr 3 - Coffee Meets Bagel is a dating app that has been making waves in the US ever since the founders went on the popular TV show SharkTank and rejected investor Mark Cuban’s offer of $30M. The company went on to close a $7.8M series A financing round earlier this year. Coffee Meets Bagel arrived in Hong Kong on March 4th. Founder Dawoon Kang wouldn’t reveal membership numbers but did say that the service has achieved “consistent 20% week on week growth” since launch. Facebook is proving a key platform for spreading interest in the app.
by Joshua Steimle
See full article at Forbes