Category: Thursday
Q&A With George Rawlings and Matt McNeill Love: Founders of Thursday
BUSINESS LEADER – Dating app Thursday only works one day a week.
Q: Can you tell us how it works?
A: If you sign-in on a Wednesday, it will tell you to go away. Once Thursday comes around, the app will come to life and show you people that want to go on a date.
Q: Do you have any concerns about the longevity of the idea?
A: Since we launched in Oct 2021, we've hosted 322 events and every week, without fail, they sell out. The number of users increases month-on-month and we're looking at new territories, both in the UK and abroad.
Q: How have you funded the business so far?
A: Our first round was on Crowdcube in 2018. We also raised a round of £100K from friends and family. Then in lockdown, we raised an additional £350K through angel investors and following this, we had our official seed round for £2.5M last summer.
Q: What have you learned through your fundraising?
A: Raise what you need, rather than what you can.
Q: When you're raising, what are the expectations from those funding you?
A: We were told to hire lots of senior people, as fast as we could. But it would have been expensive, and we would have run out of money. We've been very careful about hiring and taken the process very slowly.
Q: What is the most outlandish thing you have done to raise money?
A: We held up a sign outside of a Lamborghini garage asking if anybody rich wanted to give us some money. We raised ~ £20K that day.
Q: How do you organise your marketing?
A: We have a team of eleven in total, but we don't have a marketing department. It is a case of us all getting together and discussing ideas, and no idea is stupid.
Why Some People Are Turning to Face-to-Face Apps First
by Martin Graff
See full article at The Conversation
See the top news on Thursday
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The Thursday Dating App That Only Works One Day a Week
BBC – George Rawlings, 29, wanted to make dating less complicated and launched Thursday from his bedroom last year. He hoped by narrowing the app to one day it would give users a sense of urgency to organise a date straight away and cut down on small talk. It has been downloaded 750K times in the last nine months. Mr Rawlings says he chose Thursdays because his previous dating app – Honeypot – peaked on a Thursday, with about double the number of people logging on compared to other days.
Top 8 Relationship Apps
STARTUPS MAGAZINE –
- Thursday – This dating app only opens its doors for matchmaking on Thursdays, aiming to eliminate dating app fatigue and stop endless scrolling and make dating exciting.
- Cobble – A virtual planner for all friendship groups.
- Paired – An app for couples to improve their relationships.
- Grazer – A matchmaking app for people who want their friends and romantic partner to be plant-lovers too.
- Hang5 – An astrology-based matchmaking app.
- Blink – A voice-first speed dating app. Blink's two-part matching process relies on chemistry through conversation, and physical attraction.
- Lex – A text-centred social app connecting queer, transgender and non-binary lovers and friends.
- FITFCK – A fitness dating app, designed to connect like-minded gym lovers.
The Hot New Thing in Dating? Actually Going on Dates
NEW YORK TIMES – Last Thursday night, dating app Thursday was hosting a singles' mixer. The app is accessible only one day a week. When the clock strikes midnight, users toggle an icon to indicate that they're ready to date that day. Then, for 24 hours, they can swipe and chat as on other dating sites. When Thursday becomes Friday, however, their matches are wiped and the app locks. The implication is that there’s no time to waste with chitchat; making a date is now or never. To encourage those IRL meetings, Thursday hosts events in London and New York, the two cities where it is up and running.
Dating App Thursday Handcuffs Woman as Part of ‘World’s Most Embarrassing Internship’
FIRST POST – Anya Jackson went for a paid internship in the dating app 'Thursday'. She was handcuffed to a pole in central London. Jackson said that the stunt was intended to get people to sign up for the app. The handcuffs became a part of the stunt to tie it in with "cuffing season". She was given a target of £25 and asked to get a thousand people to sign up for the app. Jackson added that her manager uncuffed her after she met her target. The post divided social media, with many stating that the stunt was "disturbing".
Founder Interview: Dating App Thursday Lands £2.5M
VERDICT.CO.UK – June 30 – Thursday, the dating app backed by Monzo founder Tom Blomfield, has just topped up its coffers with a £2.5M round. "He is going to be a fairly key stakeholder with us," says Matt McNeill Love, co-founder and COO at Thursday, tells Verdict. McNeill Love is unwilling to reveal what Thursday's valuation is following the dating app's latest cash injection. "I'm afraid our chairman's advisors wouldn't be too happy with us saying," McNeill Love protests. "But I can give you a steer: it's over £10M by quite a bit." Thursday's latest funding was backed by Ascension Ventures, Jägermeister's venture arm Best Nights VC, Connect Ventures, TypeForm and FIIT. The Thursday dating app is only available on Thursdays. Users can only search for, match and chat with would-be paramours for 24 hours on the fourth day of the week. Then the magic disappears at the stroke of midnight, with no chats or matches to be saved. The founders believe this encourages serious singles to set up dates directly and cut through plenty of time-wasting waffle.
Dating App Thursday Raises $3.5M
TECH CRUNCH – June 28 – Thursday, a dating app that only works on Thursdays, has raised a £2.5M (~$3.5M) seed investment, a few months after launching in May in London and New York. Last Thursday (June 17) it says that 110K likes were sent, resulting in 7,500 matches in a single day. The app opens for usage at 00.01 each Thursday morning so swiping is compressed into a few hours. All matches and conversations vanish at midnight. Hence users are pushed to act quickly. Matches are also limited to x10 people a day. The plan for the seed funding includes hiring a head of growth and a head of marketing, in addition to other senior roles and a number of tech hires – and coming up with what they dub as a "six figure marketing strategy".
by Natasha Lomas
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
New Dating App Thursday Launches Today
MIRROR.CO.UK – May 26 – Friends George Rawlings and Matt McNeill Love have set up a brand new dating app – Thursday – which launches today. Instead of spending evening after evening scrolling through potential matches, Thursday will only let users log on once a week. Thursday also offers a 'stories' which allow users to share short video clips with potential matches that are automatically deleted after 24 hours. All matches and conversation disappear at midnight on Thursday.