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Today, we brought in a group of conservative young women and wanted to get their honest opinions about what they're looking for in the guys they date. I like an independent man. Personally, I like the alpha male vibe. This is an ad for a dating app for conservatives called The Right Stuff. I just prefer my men to be masculine. No Democrats. Can't be a Democrat. No Democrats. It's a no.
The app targets like-minded daters by pairing them based on their shared values and distaste for things like Democrats and gender pronouns. And you can be accused of misgendering while trying to flirt. Or you have to sort through 33 gender options. 33 gender options.
So maybe this app isn't your vibe, but that's the point. The Right Stuff is a part of a universe of dating apps that cater to specific groups of people. They're not trying to be for everyone the way Bumble, Tinder, and Hinge are. The sell is that they are not for everyone. Now, maybe this works for some of you, and that's fine. But if you're looking for something different, we created an alternative. And there are so many alternatives. City folks just don't get it.
Right now, there are dating apps for vegans, for rock climbers, for Muslims, for Jews, for Christians, for the queer community, for hookups, for exploring kink. There's even been an app for people who hate the same things as you do. Bad Wi-Fi is up there. Man buns is pretty unpopular. As it should be. There are exclusive apps for influencer types.
There's been dating apps for dog people, for cat people, sugar daddies, and sugar babies. Seriously, I can keep going for a while. The point is that people and businesses are looking outside the mainstream apps for opportunities. For people, it's about looking for better connections. For businesses, it's about seeing that demand and trying to fill it. But do these apps work?
I'm Lakshmi Rangarajan, and it's pretty clear that a lot of people are fed up with dating apps, especially the mainstream ones. Despite this, most niche apps still end up failing. However, some do work, and the ones that do tend to follow a similar recipe for success. So today we're going to look at some of these niche apps, some that failed, a few with a real chance to make it big, and one that's already a huge success. ♪
The book is frozen. GRMD opens at $17. Come on. Where are we, girl? We at the New York Stock Exchange. Okay. Ooh, and what are we doing? We going public. Last November, the LGBTQ chat and hookup app Grindr IPO'd. Another day, another dating app goes public. Grindr is merging with Tiger Acquisition Corp in a deal valued at $2.1 billion. Ring the bell. There it is.
They say another day another dating app goes public like it happens all the time. It doesn't. As far as American dating apps go, Grindr is only the third to accomplish this next to Bumble and Match Group, two dating behemoths. And as far as niche dating apps go, Grindr is the gold standard. It's got millions of active monthly users. It's growing. It's profitable. It's well-designed and celebrated by the community it serves.
By the way, when I say niche, I simply mean that Grindr is not for everyone. It's aimed at a specific population, the LGBTQ community at large, but primarily gay men. We're really the app that serves this community specifically. AJ Balance, Grindr's chief product officer, told us that the key to success was having a nuanced understanding of how users behaved IRL. Grindr was originally developed as a
because it was focused on a user segment of gay men for a real-time location-based use case, casual dating, hookups. So when you open up Grindr, the thing that's most unique about it is you send 10 messages to people and you might get six responses back in a minute. And it's super engaging. So in 2009, people started using it. It became a global phenomenon really quickly. And that what we call on the product side, an engagement engine.
So Grindr is already a success. It's made it. It's at the very top of a huge heap of niche dating apps all trying to do the same thing. Serve a specific community and make money in the process. So how do they do it? While looking at Grindr and a ton of other apps for this episode, we noticed a few things. A few must-have ingredients for any of these apps to be a success. We're calling them key indicators.
And we found an app that has the potential to be the next Grindr, one that appears to have all those key indicators.
I'm Katrina. I'm from Brooklyn. And I'm here with actually a group of friends who I met on field. This is our third party. And it's like our little social thing. And we meet new people. And so I've actually brought with me an ex-boyfriend, an ex-lover, and his new girlfriend. So it's very modern. The other night, I went out to an event in Manhattan hosted by the dating app Field. I kind of like to call it like a sexy romantic networking event.
Field is an app for non-traditional dating. People use it for threesomes, casual sex, exploring kink, polyamory, you name it. We play with other singles. We're a couple ourselves. We're engaged. And we just find a lot of enjoyment in connecting with other people, both romantically and emotionally and sexually. I'm bisexual, so it's great. So I get to meet all different genders and people of different backgrounds.
and everyone I've met has been really cool. It's amazing to see how big the community has grown. We like it just because we're into play and we're voyeurs, we're exhibitionists.
I actually used to run singles events for years, and I would grade this event very highly. For starters, there was a great turnout. A couple hundred people showed up and packed out a hotel bar with what felt like every type of person. Lots of straight guys who are typically hard to get out to dating events. Lots of couples looking for unicorns, which
Which, by the way, is the mythical third person needed for a threesome. Everybody here is open to talking to everybody because we all realize that we are kind of like unplugged from the matrix of dating. What's happening here at the bar is happening every single day on the app. As an actual app, Field works much like your standard dating app. Users are swiping through profiles, matching and messaging. It's free to use, but just like other apps, there are premium features and memberships that cost money.
What's different from most apps is the veil of anonymity.
People typically use pseudonyms and sometimes hide their faces in photos, which makes sense because not everyone wants to broadcast their lifestyle or what they do in the bedroom. You can also link your profile to your partner. The app is very kink and queer friendly, but it's open to everyone. On the app, it's common practice for users to be really transparent about what they're looking for. And that transparency and the allure of a new experience is especially refreshing to people who are frustrated with Bumble or Hinge.
And I tell all of my friends who don't have success on traditional apps, get your ass on field. Other apps were kind of busted. It's the same people over and over doing the same kind of dates. And I just wanted to try something different. It's funny, talking to people about field can sometimes feel a lot like talking to crypto bros back when Bitcoin was just taking off. It's almost evangelical. A sense that this is the future.
Now, this is great for Field because like any dating app, it needs a lot of new users. The best way to do that is through marketing, which is expensive, or through word of mouth, which is free. And this brings us to our first key indicator of success, volume and density.
Meaning, to survive as a business and create a decent user experience, dating apps — and that's all dating apps — have to have enough people on them. And those people have to be concentrated close enough to each other for it to work. Because typically, you want to date people who live near you, right? For Field, reps say the number of users is in the millions, but they wouldn't share details. They said the app has, quote, "...seen over 100% user growth in users and revenue over the past three years."
And Field is betting that there is a lot more growth to come because it sees a real opportunity to be the app for people who feel disenfranchised by the standard one-size-fits-all approach to dating.
There are strict prescriptions of what a relationship should do for you. There are really limiting boundaries around how relationships should work. And they don't work for everyone. Monogamy is an amazing system, I guess. And it works for many people, but it doesn't work for a lot of people too. And always defaulting to that because that's the only option we know about is a mistake.
This is Anna Korova, and years ago she was in a heterosexual, monogamous relationship with her partner, Dmitry Trivanov. After dating a while, Anna found herself in a tough spot. For the first time, she started to develop feelings for another woman. She wasn't sure what to make of it and felt really guilty about it. It put to question my entire identity. It wasn't just about sexuality, it was everything.
Worried that something would happen, she decided to tell Dimo about what was going on, thinking it would lead to a breakup. But instead of calling it off, Dimo suggested they continue dating and also begin seeing other people.
So we decided we'll try to date together as a couple. So even though we're together, we'll continue dating. Also, it wasn't driven by pure sexual desire. It was a sincere interest to continue exploring other people. And we tried dating on a lot of other platforms, but we always felt out of place. People would either tell us to go to swinger websites, which wasn't what we were looking for, or they'd say, "Why are you here if you already found the one? Why are you so greedy?"
Anna and Dimo eventually started using Field because mainstream apps are, by and large, primarily designed for traditional monogamous relationships. They're selling the idea of finding the one, not the second or the third. Anna and Dimo are still together and still seeing other people. And this is the part where I tell you that Anna is not only an active Field user to this day, but she's also the CEO of Field.
Her partner, Dimo Trifonov, originally created the app while trying to solve the problems they were having on mainstream apps. Anna later joined him in running the company. This is all to say that the app is being guided by people who genuinely understand and are a part of the community they're serving. Which brings us to our next key indicator for success, understanding user and intent. ♪
For apps, it's really important to understand who the app is for. A clear user. If mainstream apps are for everyone, the niche apps can only survive in their specificity. In Feel's case, it's pretty clear that the app is for people who identify outside of mainstream dating. Maybe that's someone exploring kink or dating more than one person at a time, aka non-monogamy. That's the user.
I went on a couple dates with a couple that I met on Hinge, and then they were talking about how they usually have more success finding people on field. And then I was like, oh, maybe I should be on that app because that's kind of what I'm looking for right now. While it is possible to date couples, solicit a threesome, or be polyamorous on Hinge and Bumble, it's a little more difficult. You're basically swimming upstream against the monogamous culture of those apps. So that's the user. Now let's talk about the intent part of this key indicator.
It's important for apps to know what users intend to do on the app and how to facilitate that. For Tinder and Bumble users, it's often difficult to decipher what people's true intentions really are. Field users come to it with a wide variety of wants, but they're often pretty clear about what those intentions are. Threesomes, shibari rope tying, maybe a little sub-dom action, or maybe just plain old dating.
Yeah, I think Field really allows you to put everything on a table in the most non-judgmental way that I've seen. Field's ability to cultivate a culture around users being very upfront about what they are looking for goes a long way as far as intent is concerned. Eventually, this all gets boiled down to dollars and cents. Because in order for an app to continue working for users, it also has to work as a business.
Which brings us to our third and final key indicator for success, profitability and the potential for continued growth. Field as a business says it's been profitable for five years, which is huge. It's something most independent dating apps never achieve.
Field has also taken very little investment. So far, just half a million dollars. CEO Anna Korova hinted the company might take more soon as it continues to see growth and attracts more investor interest. So as far as profitability and future potential, Field appears to be in a good spot. But can it be the next Grindr, an app so successful that it's talked about in the same conversation as Hinge or Bumble? Grindr nailed all those same key indicators to get where it is today.
Volume and density. Grindr has millions of active users. It's global and it's growing, so check. Next indicator, user and intent. Grindr is so crystal clear on who its user is. LGBTQ and primarily gay men and its intent to chat and hook up. So understanding user and intent, big check.
And lastly, profitability and the potential for continued growth. Grindr is profitable. It's now publicly traded and more people are identifying as LGBTQ than ever before, which means more potential Grindr users. So once again, check. That growth, though, also benefits field, which caters to queer communities. Another demographic that's on the rise is ethical non-monogamy.
Field CEO Anna Korova sees these changes as part of a larger shift. I think the future of dating will start looking less and less like an endgame. When you say dating, it feels like something that should stop at some point. She says that more people are looking for a kind of dating that doesn't have to end in a monogamous partnership. And that's where Field can help. Is that enough to make it the next grinder? Maybe. Maybe.
But the mainstream apps are trying to catch up. Hinge, for example, recently added a feature that allows users to list themselves as ethically non-monogamous. That move acknowledges this cultural shift and may even say something about field success. Oftentimes, these shifts that begin within queer culture will eventually make their way to the mainstream. Remember, Grindr predates Tinder.
At some point, the mainstream does tend to catch on. And helping make alternative ways of dating go mainstream likely means more business for Field in the future. When we return, we're going to talk to other founders about other niche dating apps. And we'll examine which apps are bound for success and which are destined to fail.
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Okay, we're back and we're trying to figure out which niche dating apps are good for users and make sense as businesses. I brought in my co-host on the series, Sangeeta Sinkerts. Hello. Because in a minute, we're going to play a little game where we look at some dating apps. Sangeeta, you're going to tell me whether you think each of these apps is a success or a failure based on a rubric, the one we talked about before the break. Got it. That sounds good. Okay.
Okay, Sangeeta, this is a game we're calling Swipe Right, Swipe Left. Here's how it works. I'm going to present you with a pitch for a real-life niche dating app.
then you have to decide whether or not to swipe left or right on each one. Basically, you're telling us if you think this idea is working or not. Okay, so I'm like a Shark Tank judge. Yes, with no money, but yes. With no money. Yes. All of these apps are real. I want to be clear about that. They currently exist or existed at some point.
Some are having success and others are no longer in the app store. But we've talked to all of the founders of these apps and each one provided us with information about their companies. So swipe left if you're not confident that this app will work and you're going to swipe right on the app if you think it's destined for success. Let's do it. Let's play. Let's play.
My name's Brendan Alper, and I'm from Brooklyn, New York. I'm seeking $200,000 for a 5% stake in my company, Hater. The only company in the world that can make love using the power of hate.
So Hater is an app, and it pairs people together based on the things they hate instead of the things they love. So think Harry Potter, guacamole, politicians, you name it. When it comes to dating, hating always gets overlooked. But there are studies that show that people who hate the same things actually form closer bonds than people who love the same things. Very interesting point, yeah.
Brendan Alper, the founder, actually made it all the way to the TV show Shark Tank to seek out more investment money. According to Alper, overall, his app has had around 2 million total users and has received nearly a million dollars in funding. Okay. I mean, I hate the idea of hater. Really? Why? Because I just feel like I know a couple couples that, like, bond over things that they hate. Yeah. And, like, that's their whole thing. Yeah.
And it's like substanceless. Like, where do you go after you talk about how much you hate Disney or guacamole? Like, where do you go from there? Yeah, I agree. That makes total sense to me. I just feel like anyone can come up with like a dumb business idea and like get a seed funding round and go on Shark Tank. But I just I don't think it's a good idea.
Having things in common that you hate is not enough of a sort of like social tie. Okay, so Sangeeta, are you swiping left or right on hater? I'm swiping left on hater, which I hate. Ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. Of course. Of course. Did it, what happened to it? Unfortunately, hater no longer exists. Oh.
Brendan had to shut it down less than two years after launching. You know, there's things that are really good ideas and then there are things that are really good business ideas. And I think it was a really good idea in the sense that it resonated with a lot of people emotionally. And it certainly worked for a lot of people. Like I still get people reaching out saying they got married on Hater, which is pretty cool. But in terms of it being a good business idea, I think dating in particular is just a very hard thing
market to break into because you need that super saturated kind of like local takeover. That's exactly what I thought he was going to say. Oh, really? I don't know what you envisioned, but he was like such a delightful dude. I was like actually really rooting for him. I liked that he had this idea of like wanting to, you know, turn hate into love. But, you know, for Alper, Hater faced a lot of problems. And as you outlined, the main one being that
classic volume and density issue that is just, you know, such a hurdle for anyone trying to break into the market. Yeah. And he really emphasized just how much money it takes to get enough users and how, you know, challenging and expensive marketing is. I'm talking like tens of millions of dollars. Like, I think you need like serious kind of like A, B round venture capital. And you need like a really good team and you got to be like cutthroat. After looking at a lot of the data,
And also just seeing a million other dating apps come and go. I think that everyone has their own idea for a dating app. But ultimately, what happens is people tend to be physical appearance first. And then it's like, if I think you're attractive enough, then I will look into your personality and I'll talk to you and we'll figure it out. And in order for that to work, you just need a huge pool of people. That trumps any sort of mechanism or gimmick.
It's interesting though, right? It's not a mainstream app, but it was trying to appeal to everyone because everyone, you know, has something that they hate. Yeah. And it's not targeting a specific demographic.
So in a weird way, it's trying to do the same thing as Bumble and Hinge, which is to throw everybody into a pool and see who matches. But it doesn't have the clear intention or the clear user. So some people might want to get married and other people might just be there to be like, I want to hook up with someone who also hates fennel or something. So it's not really solving the big problems that mainstream apps have. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
So it's also worth noting that Hader got a ton of media attention, but that didn't seem to really matter. Hader was a fun idea, but it wasn't clear who it was for. That's strike one.
It didn't nail user or intent. And also there weren't enough people on it to make it feel appealing to users. Strike two, volume and density. And there wasn't enough money to fuel growth. That's strike three. Yeah, rest in peace, hater. Sorry, you were a bad idea. I know, but I just love that they tried. Yeah, I don't, but... Okay, are you ready for the next app? I'm ready, I'm ready. Okay, here we go.
If you're a cat-loving single on the prowl for the perfect date, aha, there's an app for that. This is Tabby, a dating app for cat lovers. Cat people can have a hard time finding that special someone who understands the feline fancy. Men in particular find that they get fewer matches when they have a cat in their photo. That can't be real.
My hater profile would say I hate cats. You know what I mean? Along with its sister app, Dig, which is for dog lovers, the apps combined have a couple hundred thousands of users. They also have something that almost no other dating apps have and what so many dating apps want. A majority of their users are women. This is a huge selling point because for dating apps, there's this kind of nightclub mentality.
Let the women in for free and the men will follow. Also, about half of the country owns a cat or a dog. So you're looking at a huge potential user base. And Tabby's gotten some of the best press I've ever seen for a dating app. It's also been featured on Shark Tank, Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Drew Barrymore Show, and many others.
All right. So what do you think, Sangeetha? Are you swiping left or right on Taddy? Okay, this is tricky. I want to swipe left because I don't like cats, but I feel like it's checking some of the boxes. The user intent, especially, like I feel like if you are a pet owner, you have a certain sort of like lifestyle that comes with that and you would want someone to
sort of accept that and be compatible with it. I don't want to, like, compare it to religion, but, like, it means that you live a certain type of way, you know what I mean? And also, we do know that, like, men follow women to these apps. But I don't know whether or not, like, it's profitable. I'm going to reluctantly swipe right because I think they might be onto something. When it comes to the app for cat and dog lovers...
Tabby and Dig did not make it. They were never able to grow their user base big enough or reach profitability or secure the funding they needed to continue on. They seemed to really struggle with the old volume and density problem. There's not a lot of people on Tabby. So we actually talked to a guy in New York City who used Tabby a few times, and we'll just say his experience was uneventful.
I'm a cat lover. I own two cats myself. I'm drawn to people with cats. Apparently, the cat community is not as large as I thought it would be. There are very few people who are actually in New York City. I very quickly started to see people from Hartford, Connecticut or New Jersey. The people who did show up, they were not normally people I'd swipe right for.
A lot of them just fit your perception of what a crazy cat person. And so I found that like, I love cats and I love dating, but I didn't need to mix the two. Iconic quote. Like, I totally get it. Like people really, really love their pets and they think that somehow that's going to be a conduit to other people. But like, if you have a pet, I feel like it's more of a deal breaker situation.
Issue than it is like a bonding issue, if that makes sense. Totally, totally. Then a point of appeal, right? Yes. Yeah.
I think there are a few clear takeaways here. While Tabby had that clear target user, being a cat person is not really an identity that most people think of as key for seeking a partner, even though it sounds like they might. I think that's the thing. It sounds like they might. And founder Lee D'Angelo was hoping that it was. The way that passionate pet people talk about their animals is
has a lot of similarities with the way people talk about their religion and their lives. And so that's why we thought this would work.
That's why I thought it would work. I know. I know, right? Like, seems like this would be a really good idea. And as we've already seen with Field and Grindr, sexual identity and preference is something people hold strongly. And they're willing to orient their dating life around that. Unfortunately for Tabby, they don't do that with pet ownership. It's more of a preference rather than a lifestyle.
And just like Hater, all that media attention and the Shark Tank appearance didn't end up being the boost they had hoped for. Yeah, it's like that guy said, like, people don't mix their pet lives and their dating lives. In fact, it sounds like they're reluctant to do that. I know, but it's kind of funny, like, what sounds good on Shark Tank, like, doesn't work. Doesn't work. Except for that sponge. All right. All right.
Next up, we have Muzz, which is a dating app specifically for Muslims looking to get married. The goal is finding a life partner as opposed to casual dating. That's Muzz's founder, Shahzad Yunus. Millions of members on the platform. That's going to blow your mind. Over 350,000 people around the world have met their partner on Muzz.
Marriages, not just matches, right? Yeah. So a couple things about Muzz. It's a global app. It launched in 2015, and it has around 7 million users overall. It raised around $9 million and helped a lot of Muslims get married. They're so clear about their user base and their intent, right?
Hundreds of thousands of marriages. That's like we don't even have the statistics for like Tinder and Hinge. They'll be like blah, blah, blah. Like this.
This number of couples have matched or gone on dates or had two-hour conversations on our apps, but we actually don't know whether they're like in actual marriages. So yeah, I don't know. I think this is a really good idea. One thing about this app, though, is that there's this kind of built-in kill switch. A person who uses Muzz to get married is no longer a long-term user.
That's tricky because that's good for the reputation, right? Like if you think the turnover rate would be good, we're losing someone to marriage, but we're gaining someone who heard about their marriage. You know what I mean? So I still think if they have enough volume, which it sounds like they do, that they could survive like pretty neatly. So Sangeeta, are you going to swipe right or left on Muzz?
I'm going to swipe right and I'm going to invest in Muzz. I'm going to put money into this company. Ding, ding, ding. Muzz is working.
It's alive and growing. It's nearly profitable and getting tens of thousands of new signups each month. I think to understand part of its success, you have to go back to user and intent. It's very clear who the product is for, Muslims, and what it's intended to do, help them get married. And its users can't quite get the same experience on the mainstream dating apps.
Muzz appears to really understand their user base. Religion, like sexual identity, is something people deeply identify with. And Muzz says marriage is still pretty important among Muslims. And there are nearly 2 billion Muslims in the world, roughly 300 to 400 million of which are potential users. So even though Muzz is niche, it has a pretty huge potential user base to work with. Your inclination to invest was spot on.
All right, Slengitha, are you ready for our final app? Yes, let's do it. So in my own experience of specifically wanting to date Black men, the problem for me was just the limited numbers. So, you know, if I was on any of the conventional apps and I was specifically looking for Black men, there was just very few that were on the apps.
Okay, so this next app wants to solve this issue. It's called BAE, which stands for Before Anyone Else. It's a dating app for Black singles. Right now, there are around 50 million Black people just in the United States alone. BAE has somewhere between half a million and a million users so far. We spoke to its co-founder, Brian Gerard, who had the idea for BAE when he came across a study that showed how different the experience was for Black people on mainstream dating apps.
If you were Black on a mainstream dating app, you were 10 times less likely to get a match, 10 times less likely to get a message. And I believe the number was 82% of Black women were experiencing some type of racial bias while on those dating apps. So Gerard saw this and started his own dating app for Black singles.
You can look at that as a glass is half full or a glass is half empty and decided to look at it as a glass is half full and that there was a underserved market.
This is interesting because I think we've heard from a lot of users that are using the mainstream apps that are non-white that they do have the shittiest experience ever on them. You know, a lot of harassment or just like not getting any matches. And from what we've learned in our reporting is that the apps, Tinder, Hinge, etc., are like only now looking at these problems.
Right. They're like, they have not, they were not baked into the functionality from the get-go, but it's been 10 years. Yeah, I just wonder about volume. I don't know. I don't know if this is strong enough. Yeah. But I'm not buying that the indicators of money to come are strong enough. Mm-hmm. So unfortunately, I think I'm going to swipe left. You are correct, Sangeetha. Okay. Yeah.
Bay, unfortunately, no longer exists. But it did get acquired by a much larger app that folded both the Bay team and its users into that product. But Bay, as we once knew, is no more. When I look at Bay, I see an app trying to do something good and solve a real problem in dating.
But I don't feel like Bay had the best solution for that problem. The app was vaguely for Black millennial singles, its users, but it didn't have a clear intent or rally around other things like shared values or have key product differences. Brian Gerard, the former CEO, also told us that the app never made any money. In fact, it was always free and never had a paid tier because at the time, most dating app strategy was just to acquire a bunch of users and then figure out how to make money later.
So their only monetization strategy was to get acquired or raise a bunch of money. And unfortunately, investor after investor passed on Bay. A couple of reasons why. I think the problem wasn't well understood by the investment audience. And people like to invest in things that they empathize or relate to in the struggles of Black
women in the dating market and black men to maybe a lesser degree doesn't really resonate with people who write checks in today's world.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's just what we were talking about. Like, these apps are only just now looking at these problems. Sadly, this is a pretty common story for Black businesses in tech. But Gerard says dating apps in general are usually just a tough business. The exit strategies are limited, and when Bay was around, people hadn't really warmed up to the idea of paying for a dating app. Yet the investor logic at the time was that either you had to be huge like Tinder or you were going to fail. So not a lot of apps were getting funding.
Gerard says if he were to create Bay all over, he would have made a paid tier because nowadays users are much more comfortable paying for dating apps. He'd do that and really focus on cities with a high population of Black singles to localize the experience. He still thinks Bay could be a profitable business. The most common Black relationship is Black folks dating other Black folks. So I think there is an intent there as well, too.
You know, I think there's a business in there that can do tens of millions of dollars a year of revenue for sure. I think it was bad timing and just needed a slight tweak to the model. Yeah. Brian, come back. Come back. Try again.
All right, that's going to do it for Swipe Right, Swipe Left. Sangeetha, thanks for playing. Yeah, thank you for having me. It was fun. You got three out of four, which is good. It's like a, well, I guess it's a C, but I think that's really good. Yeah, Cs get degrees. One thing that stuck out to me while speaking to the CEOs of these now-defunct dating apps is that they all seem to think that if they'd just gotten a certain amount of funding, their apps would have succeeded.
It's possible. But as we know, it's incredibly hard to become profitable. It's even harder to go public. The most likely path ends in failure. Some companies do get acquired though, but oftentimes it's by that dating giant with deep pockets, Match Group. We've gone out of our way today to spotlight companies operating outside of the Match Group empire. But Match casts a long shadow because it's attempting to dominate the entire dating market, not just the mainstream apps.
It recently acquired The League, an exclusive dating app for ambitious, well-educated types. It owns Chispa, an app for Latinos, BLK, an app for Black singles, and Hawaia, an app for Muslims. It seems like for every niche app we looked at, Match has already acquired or launched a direct competitor.
But ultimately, users don't care about match. They care about matches and having a good experience on whatever dating app they choose, which often means not choosing using niche apps and mainstream apps. You don't have to pick either or. Everyone who's on Muzz is also on Tinder.
Leigh Isaacson, the founder of Dig and Tabby, said she always knew her apps were supplemental. You have a space that's dedicated to what you're looking for. You add it. And that's what we always knew we were filling that space. We weren't going to be the ones that you could scroll all day forever. We were going to be the ones that presented you with something you can actually take action on without having to spend that incredible amount of time sifting through and filtering.
In the end, most niche apps won't be able to provide that crucial part of the experience: having enough people to swipe through, aka volume and density. Meaning the majority of folks will continue to gravitate to the mainstream apps because, to put it simply, that's just where the people are. Zooming way out, my particularity is like, I want to find a partner. And they all seem to present that possibility.
And I think the ones that are more popularly used present like a deeper pool of potential candidates. And so I tend to actually meet up with people in person from Bumble and Hinge because there's just more people associated with those. Next week for our season finale, we discuss the future of dating and try to answer the question, where do we go from here?
Archival clips from CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Stock Exchange, Yahoo Finance Live, Shark Tank, The Drew Barrymore Show and Fox 8 WGHP.
Land of the Giants Dating Games is a production of The Cut, The Verge, and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Zach Mack produced this episode. The show's producer is Oluwakemi Oladesuyi. Cynthia Batubiza is our production assistant. Charlotte Silver fact-checked this episode. Joe Lee Myers is our editor. Brandon McFarland is our engineer and also composed the show's theme. Nicole Hill is our showrunner with additional support from Art Chung.
Jake Castronakis is deputy editor of The Verge and Nishat Korwa is our executive producer. I'm Lakshmi Rengarajan. My co-host is Sangeetha Sankerts. If you liked this episode, please share it and follow the show by clicking the plus sign in your podcast app.
