3 sisters who built an 'anti-Tinder' and turned down $30 million from Mark Cuban just launched their dating app in the UK
The latest entrant to an increasingly crowded scene that includes OKCupid, Hinge, Happn, and of course Tinder, the smartphone app distinguishes itself through a radical focus on the quality of the matches it offers rather the quantity - namely, by offering just one a day.
Every day at noon, users are offered a single match, or "bagel," selected using info inputted by the user. Don't like them? Tough, wait until tomorrow and try again.
It's this hyper-selectivity - the exact opposite of the approach most other dating apps take - that has had it frequently described as the "anti-Tinder." It's an assessment cofounder Dawoon Kang told Business Insider she agrees with "to an extent."
The company doesn't disclose revenue or user numbers, but closed an $8 million Series A funding round earlier in 2015 - and notably turned down a $30 million buy-out offer from Mark Cuban on "Shark Tank" (the American version of "Dragon's Den"). Asked about size, Kang points to 25 million matches, and 15,000 couples (the company knows about) - which admittedly pales in comparison compared to Tinder's 8 billion matches.
However, Tinder's "quantity over quality" focus is inherently "male-orientated," Kang says. Tinder is so wildly popular precisely because its game-like simplicity moves beyond the typical dating app demographic - but this can leave people with an unsatisfying experience, matching with other people looking for very different things.
Three-years-old and cofounded by Dawoon Kang and her two sisters Arum and Soo, the app is already live across the US, and three other cities - Hong Kong, Sydney, and Toronto. Kang says London is an ideal next step, apparently containing "the highest concentration of singles" of any city in the English-speaking world apart from New York.