Category: TheLeague
Swiping Meant Dating This Decade, and It’s Time for a Change
THE VERGE – Dec 11 – As we close out the decade, it might be time to retire the swipe we once knew. The swipe was born only seven years ago, and in that time, it's conquered online dating and made it mainstream. Dating apps are expected to top 25M users in the US this year, and as of 2017, 39% of heterosexual couples in the US said they met online, up from 22% in 2009, according to a recent study. Tinder lowered the barriers to online dating and gamified it. As we enter 2020, the apps seem to be finding out that the swipe alone is no longer cutting it. They're differentiating themselves by creating slower experiences that result in real dates with real people, presumably picking up on daters' wants. Even Tinder is experimenting with ways to augment the swipe and give people more context than just a yes or no. It launched Swipe Night, an interactive video feature, this year that gives daters the option to swipe on people who made similar decisions to them during the experience. The League is using automated, two-minute video calls to help daters filter through matches. New dating app Bounce concentrate on the real-life part of dating by giving people no room to talk and instead focus on the meetup. The app is only live at specific times.
by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge
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Dating Apps Are Turning to Message-free Meetups
Dating App The League Will Pair up Users for Two-minute Live Video Dates
THE VERGE – Nov 19 – The League, a dating app that requires LinkedIn verification to join, is launching its version of speed dating next month: two-minute video dates that take place within the app. It's called League Live, and the company will allow people to opt in to the video dates, which take place at 9PM local time on Sundays starting on December 1st. CEO Amanda Bradford says that, in initial beta testing, users between the ages of 35 and 40 liked the feature most, likely because their time is at more of a premium. Although the feature is available to both paying and free users, Bradford says only users who have a high "League Score" will have access. The League Score is measured by factors like how often they log on, whether they’ve been reported by other users, and how complete their profile is.
San Francisco Event: Modern Love
OPW – Oct 2 – HBS Alumni of Northern California are hosting an interesting evening event which includes Amanda Bradford, CEO of The League on October 16th. Amanda is an interesting speaker, and this looks like a good panel. See link.
This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley Podcast: The League Founder & CEO Amanda Bradford
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 20 – In this week’s edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley features Amanda Bradford, founder/CEO of The League. Amanda talks about modern dating, its limitations, its flaws, why ‘The League’ will win. She talks about her days at Salesforce and how it influenced her decision to build a dating tech product that focused on data, and funnels. She goes in on all of the popular dating sites, including Bumble and others, providing her take on what’s wrong with them.
Amanda Bradford: Advice She Wished She’d Taken in Her 20s
FAST COMPANY – Feb 19 – We spoke to successful women about their own regrets in their 20s. Here's advice from Amanda Bradford, CEO of The League. "GO TRAVEL AND EXPERIENCE THE WORLD." In her 20s Amanda was busy. By the time she reached 29 in 2014, she was building her now uber-successful dating app to a 1.5M person waitlist across 60 cities. Now 34, Bradford is happy with her success but she wishes she would have taken the advice of her former boss at Google who urged her to go see the world. "For me, global work experience and travel are key contributors to business and personal fulfillment. I wish I had invested more in global exposure during my 20s," she says. Now it's just too hard. I'm devoted to The League as the app expands into international cities. It would be helpful to have firsthand knowledge of each market and a network of people on the ground.
Q&A With League’s Founder Amanda Bradford
THE VERGE – Jan 10 –
Q: What is The League?
A: The whole mission of The League was to create power couples. Sometimes I joke and say it's an app for workaholics, but at the end of the day, it’s people that are really serious about their career and really want to make some kind of impact on the world.
Q: So for you, is the career the most important characteristic when looking for a potential partner?
A: I don't want to say it's most important, but I wanted to play more than just hot or not. You can see a little more about the person and what career that they decided to dedicate their livelihood, too.
Q: How are you determining who gets to be let into the app?
A: We use both Facebook and LinkedIn. Then we put everyone into a waiting list. It's similar to a college admissions pool. Job and education is a very big factor in the application. We can see who's checking back in, who's referring friends, and figuring out how it all works, and we use all of that information to predict who's going to be a good user in the system. We don't reject anyone. We just keep them on the waiting list. We try to encourage them to make some changes. There's also sort of like a demand score for everybody, and if you're in high demand, you might get in faster than if you're in lower demand.
Q: Do you have an estimate of what percentage of people get waitlisted, and then make changes, and then later get in?
A: Our acceptance rate in general hovers around 20 to 30%. And then a lot of people don't come back and make changes. A lot of the people that we don’t accept were probably not the right fit anyway.
The New Breed of Elite Dating Apps Designed for Wealthy Singletons
FINANCIAL TIMES – Nov 26 – Elite platforms are unashamedly catering to professionals, the wealthy, the highly educated and celebrities. The most controversial is Luxy, which described itself when it launched in 2014 as "Tinder, minus the poor people". Luxy declined to provide figures on its profits or revenues, but says it has been profitable since its first year of operation and now has ~2M users. New members must first pass a 24-hour approval process. Only 10-15% are accepted and the company claims that half of its active members earn ~$500K. The Inner Circle, which describes itself as an "exclusive community" was launched in 2012 in the Netherlands. It organises social gatherings for its members, such as polo tournaments, gallery openings or cabaret nights. Members are vetted according to profession, age and the quality of the pictures they submit. The company also declines to share the revenue figures, but says it is profitable, employs ~20 staff and has 1.3M approved members globally. The League, launched in the US in 2015, caters to professionals who are screened based on what industry they work in, their university education and how many LinkedIn connections they have. Toffee, a dating app exclusively aimed at the privately educated, launched in the UK this year. Lydia Davis, co-founder of the app, estimates Toffee will make $10M in revenues in 2019 if the app is as successful overseas as it has been initially in the UK.
by Madison Marriage
See full article at Financial Times
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Slow Dating Is The French-Invented Hack
COSMOPOLITAN – Nov 5 – Dating app Once launched in France and recently made its way stateside. Instead of passively swiping through profiles, Once introduce each user to only one person, per day. If the users both like each other, they start a conversation and see where it leads. If not, they have to wait until the next day to meet someone new. But what if all potential matches are bad? Jean Meyer, CEO of Once, says making good matches is a concern, obviously, but he's more focused on cutting down absentminded app time. "Even if your match of the day is crap, it's okay," Meyer says. "Maybe you're not going to talk to that person, but at least you're going to put the app away, and you may even put your phone away and do something else with your day. You can put 100% into another task that's not swiping on ten-thousand profiles." The League, which only serves users a few matches per day, operates on a similar premise as Once. And when Hinge redesigned to eliminate swiping and force people to slow down a bit, users grew by more than 400%.
by Hannah Smothers
See full article at Cosmopolitan
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