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<ul><li>The agrochemical company <keyword id="13053010" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="dharmaj-crop-guard" source="Orion">Dharmaj Crop Guard</keyword> is likely to announce its share allotment status on December 5. </li><li>Overall, the IPO saw decent demand from investors amidst volatile market conditions, being subscribed 35.49 times. </li><li>The shares will be listed on December 8 on the exchanges. </li></ul>The agrochemical company Dharmaj Crop Guard is likely to announce the allotment status of its initial public offering (IPO) on Monday, December 5. Overall, the IPO received decent demand from investors amidst volatile market conditions, being subscribed 35.49 times. The qualified institutional buyer portion was subscribed 48.21 times. The portion reserved for non-institutional investors witnessed a subscription of 52.29 times. The retail portion, on the other hand, was subscribed 21.53 times. The grey market premium (GMP) for the company’s shares stood at ₹55 per share. The Ahmedabad-based agrochemical company distributes and markets insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, plant growth regulators, micro fertilisers and antibiotics to the B2B and B2C segments. Here is how to check <keyword id="15699155" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Dharmaj-Crop-Guard-IPO-allotment-status" source="Orion">Dharmaj Crop Guard IPO allotment status</keyword> on the stock exchange websites: <ul><li>Go to the <a href="https://www.bseindia.com/investors/appli_check.aspx">BSE website</a> or NSE website<a href="https://www1.nseindia.com/products/dynaContent/equities/ipos/ipo_login.jsp"> here</a>. </li><li>On <keyword id="35140" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="bse" source="Orion">BSE</keyword>, Select 'Equity' and then from the dropdown, select ‘Dharmaj Crop Guard’. </li><li>Now, enter your application number and PAN. </li><li>Click on 'Search'. </li><li>Please note the details will only be available once the shares are allotted. </li></ul>You can also visit the registrar website (Link Intime India) to check your application status. <ul><li>Visit the registrar's website <a href="https://linkintime.co.in/MIPO/Ipoallotment.html">here</a>. </li><li>Click on 'Select company' and click on ‘Dharmaj Crop Guard’. </li><li>Once the company is selected, you will have to enter either your PAN details, the application number, or the client ID. </li><li>Enter the captcha code and click ’submit’. </li></ul>Once you hit 'submit', the status of your application will appear on the screen. Please ensure the details that you provide are correct. It will show the number of shares you subscribed to and the number of shares allotted to you. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/bank-of-baroda-expects-25-35-basis-points-rate-hike-from-dec-5-7-rbi-policy-meet/articleshow/95992359.cms">Bank of Baroda expects 25-35 basis points rate hike from Dec 5-7 RBI policy meet</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/this-mumbai-startup-is-making-tearable-laundry-sheets-bamboo-based-facial-tissues-and-more-to-replace-plastic/articleshow/95946533.cms">This Mumbai startup is making tearable laundry sheets, bamboo-based facial tissues and more to replace plastic</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/govt-approves-pli-scheme-for-making-drones-with-outlay-of-rs-120-cr-comes-out-with-norms/articleshow/95981288.cms">Govt approves PLI scheme for making drones with outlay of Rs 120 cr, comes out with norms</a>

Dharmaj Crop Guard IPO : Here’s how you can check the allotment status

Ben Keenan estimates that over the past year, he's spent somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 on dating. Despite spending a hefty sum on everything from drinks and food to tickets and Ubers, the 31-year-old Seattle communications consultant and content creator said the payout had yielded no real results: His relationship status is "nonexistent.""A lot of times I'm spending money just to get to know somebody out from behind a screen," he saidLike many younger Americans, Keenan is encountering a harsh reality: Not only is the modern <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-dating-declines-all-time-low-inflation-loneliness-friendship-2023-10">dating scene really tough</a>, but putting yourself out there adds up. To be smarter about his romantic spending, Keenan has become more selective with whom he meets — and instead of immediately suggesting pricey drinks, he's proposing lower-cost options like grabbing a coffee or going for a walk.As someone who's also been dating through whatever it is we've been doing romantically since 2020, I've noticed that my dating costs are going through the roof. There are, of course, the basic increases in just about everything, as anyone who's bought groceries or gas knows. In addition, new costs are getting layered on every day as the dating pool becomes tougher to navigate — relationship apps are barren unless you pay for access, and the new crop of exciting <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/speed-dating-better-than-online-dating-apps-2024-3">speed-dating events</a> will cost you (if they don't sell out first).In an age of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/loneliness-epidemic-decline-in-third-places-friends-parks-community-2023-9">increasing isolation</a>, an intimate relationship can be especially valuable. And, pragmatically, finding a partner can have some economic advantages — after all, things are cheaper when they're divided by two. But the price tag to find the right person is getting higher. Love, in this economy, is increasingly reserved only for those who can afford it.<h2>Bring in the dating coaches!</h2>There's no magical financial formula for a relationship (sadly), but to sketch out the new cost of love, I decided to ask several dating coaches a few questions that could help me develop a relationship road map: How long does it usually take to find out whether you're compatible? How much should a date cost? Who is expected to pick up the tab?The coaches said it usually takes about three months of seeing someone once or twice a week for most people to consider it a relationship. So that's at least 12 dates before getting into a relationship. Not every date is the same — costs and activities will vary by person, location, and what you're drawn to. Amy Nobile Messing, a New York City <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/love-amy-nyc-matchmaker-perfect-dating-profile-2020-2">dating coach</a> with a holistic and technology-based approach and clients aged 25 to 81, recommended a "mini screener date" for a first meetup before escalating to anything more."First dates should not be the traditional go out to dinner for four hours and spend a ton of money," she said. "They really shouldn't."Damona Hoffman, a Los Angeles dating coach, similarly recommended doing drinks because clients could otherwise end up overstaying their welcome and shelling out a whole lot of money."First dates should be something short and sweet," she said.After the first date is when the tabs get more substantial — a longer meal where you can sit across from one another and delve deeper. Daphney Poyser, whose <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fernconnections.com/press">Fern Connections</a> specializes in queer dating, recommended dinner and an activity like mini golf, ax throwing, or cooking classes.As things progress, another big question is who's picking up the bill — a decision that comes with a host of gendered assumptions and changing norms. Messing said that among her heterosexual clients, there's still an expectation that the man is paying for all the dates."If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you believe in chivalry, which, again, 95% of my clients do, then the man is paying, period, end of story," Messing said.But the answer is not as clear-cut for same-sex couples, couples who don't skew toward traditional heterosexual norms, or younger generations."My younger daters, they're like, 'Of course, we're going to split the cost of the date,'" Hoffman said. "That's a huge shift."Poyser tells her clients that everybody should expect to split the cost."If you like someone and they like you, then you should be willing to split the cost," Poyser said. Among Messing's queer clients, the rule of thumb has been that whoever asked the other person out or planned the date should pay — and they naturally trade-off as things progress.So for simplicity's sake, in our road map, let's assume that you're always splitting costs, with the expectation that straight men will pick up the bill more often.<h2>The nitty-gritty</h2>Now that we have a sense of the time, shape of the activities, and share of the bill, we can get a sense of what dating costs look like for a 12-date plan. Of course, these numbers are all approximations — your favorite restaurant or activity might cost more or less. But to get to rough estimates, I tried to stick close to real menu prices and approximate how much costs have risen.Since the coaches' first-date suggestions generally boiled down to drinks, I started the tabulation by looking at the average cost of a cocktail, which was <a target="_blank" href="https://conormclaughlin.net/2019/06/a-semi-scientific-study-of-american-cocktail-prices/">about $12 in 2019 across major US markets</a>. Adjust that for inflation, and it's about $14.50 in 2024 dollars. For alcohol-free drinkers, the average price of a coffee <a target="_blank" href="https://ny.eater.com/2024/5/9/24151420/price-of-coffee-nyc-latte-cold-brew">is about $6</a> in New York City, which is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/03/people-in-this-city-spend-the-most-on-coffeeits-not-new-york-or-la.html">comparable</a> with other markets."The cost of everything is more expensive," Hoffman said.For movies, prices vary across the country. The average ticket cost $11.75 in 2022, the research firm EntTelligence estimated; round up for recent inflation, and the average movie ticket costs about $12, plus $27 for a large popcorn, a drink, and candy. The same logic can be applied to museums: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/arts/design/museums-raise-admission-fees-guggenheim.html">Ticket prices across the country</a> have ticked up to the $30 range. I chose the American Museum of Natural History as our museum date spot because it is, inarguably, a great place to go on a date. The cost of an adult ticket: $28 for non-NYC residents. I also chose a premium concert experience for our daters since those <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jennifer-lopez-cancels-tour-slow-ticket-sales-concerts-prices-ticketmaster-2024-6">are less likely to get canceled than smaller shows right now</a>. Pollstar, a live-music industry publication, found that the average ticket price for a tour of the top 100 performing artists was $123.25 in the first quarter of 2024, up from $95.63 in 2020.Numbers got a little fuzzier when I looked at how much it cost to go out to dinner or order in. I chose my favorite date spot — Thai72 — as a menu example, and it tracked fairly closely with MoneyGeek's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.moneygeek.com/living/analysis/cost-of-a-date-in-major-cities/">estimate</a> that a romantic dinner out costs $96. Similarly, I used my favorite pizza spot — Mama's Too — to gauge the cost of a nicer takeout pizza and then added a Trader Joe's Caesar salad and a bottle of Josh rosé.After they have a few dates under their belt, I figured that many daters clustered in too-small urban apartments would want to get some breathing room. After all, there's nothing like a day trip to figure out what longer-term travel with your partner might look like. I looked at the cost of driving from New York City to Hudson, New York, a popular mini-road-trip destination (and, conveniently, a great way to visit Business Insider's economic-data editor, Andy Kiersz, who helped oversee these calculations). For our later dates, I also included a few spicier ideas, like a visit to the board-game café Hex&amp;Co., a pasta-making class, and a cheese tasting at Murray's Cheese, as fancier date activities.With these estimates, it's easy to see how dating adds up: Our hypothetical dater is spending $650 to make it to the 12-date mark.The estimates also don't take into account the subtler costs of dating. That could be as simple as the price of the commute to and from your meetup — which would cost you $5.80 if you took New York City's subway — or having to fill up your gas tank. The dating experts I spoke with also listed services their clients may want to invest in for dating, from hair and makeup to Botox and dating-app subscriptions.Hoffman, for instance, said that beauty norms had shifted: Skincare and different types of fillerl, along with Botox, are increasingly seen as necessary parts of a beauty regimen."All of these beauty enhancements, people aren't really thinking about the cost of them, but many times the reason that they're doing it is for attraction," she said. "I consider that a cost."Given these costs, I decided to incorporate a few of the major categories into the road map. An <a target="_blank" href="https://youprobablyneedahaircut.com/how-much-does-a-haircut-cost/">informal survey</a> of salons across the country pegged the average haircut at $56, so add one of those to the tab for the three-month getting-you-know-you period. In a 2023 survey by the data-analytics firm Inmar Intelligence, one-third of surveyed consumers said they <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/beauty-shoppers-still-spending-big-as-us-consumers-cut-elsewhere-2023-3">spent over $500 on beauty products in the past year</a> — that works out to $125 in beauty-product spending, if we're accounting for around a three-month period. Meanwhile, an informal 2022 report <a target="_blank" href="https://www.styleseat.com/blog/waxing-cost/">found</a> that the average cost of a full body wax was $152, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/a36462846/botox-cost-guide/">Cosmopolitan reported</a> in January that low-end forehead Botox would cost you $300. Taken together, that could mean up to $500 more in beauty spending alone.Modern dating also comes with a new cost: forking over money for dating apps. In a 2022 Pew <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/02/02/the-who-where-and-why-of-online-dating-in-the-u-s/?utm_source=npr_newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=20240202&amp;utm_term=9250242&amp;utm_campaign=money&amp;utm_id=8562679&amp;orgid=128&amp;utm_att1=#paid-to-use-a-dating-site-or-app">poll</a> of adults who were online dating, 35% said that they'd paid to use one. Messing recommended paying for HingeX — <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90849674/hinge-is-rolling-out-its-50-per-month-subscription-on-thursday">$50 a month</a> — and <a target="_blank" href="https://bumble.com/en-us/the-buzz/bumble-premium">Bumble Premium</a>, which runs about <a target="_blank" href="https://mashable.com/review/bumble-premium-review">$40 a month</a>. Hoffman doesn't have a uniform recommendation for dating apps but said people should pay for what's important to them. Similarly, Poyser recommended paying for Hinge preferences."The average dater that only started using dating apps in the last five or 10 years has what I feel like is an unrealistic expectation of what they should get from a free dating-app experience," Hoffman said. She added: "A lot of the apps are breaking out the different levels of service, different features that you can pay for, and it's kind of like streaming television. You just pay for the ones that you are going to use."You could also choose to employ a dating coach. Messing's services run $25,000 for a four-month program. Hoffman's costs range from $9 into the five figures; she said her most popular program was group coaching, which costs $2,500. Poyser said that she charged $200 for her initial one-hour session and then $150 for bundled sessions afterward.After adding up all the direct and implicit costs of dating, the price of finding that special someone rang in at about $1,000 for around 12 dates. Adjusting for inflation, that would've come out to about $800 in 2019 — without accounting for the loneliness and geographical shifts the pandemic caused, where people are willing to spend more to find friends. Notably, the $50 paid version of Hinge that our coaches recommended rolled <a target="_blank" href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90849674/hinge-is-rolling-out-its-50-per-month-subscription-on-thursday">out in 2023</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://fortune.com/2023/09/22/tinder-500-a-month-subscription/">pricier app</a> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.platformer.news/grindr-ai-boyfriend-wingman-monetization-paid-taps/">offerings</a> are a more recent invention all around.And that's just the cost to get into a relationship. Even deeper down the romantic path, couples face <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/average-wedding-cost-in-biggest-metro-areas-of-us-2023-2">the soaring cost of weddings</a> — not to mention the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/millennial-gen-z-parents-struggle-lonely-childcare-costs-money-friends-2023-11">rising price of being a parent</a>.<h2>What does that mean for all of us?</h2>The daters out there might not be too surprised to learn that getting into a relationship is expensive — though even I was taken aback by just how much I'd been sinking into finding a partner.But the rising costs of dating aren't just an issue for the lonely hearts of America, they also point to a growing problem for everyone in the US: The things that bring us joy, happiness, or meaning are all getting more expensive. Dinner out with friends is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/food-prices-cheapest-option-groceries-restaurants-fast-food-2023-12">more expensive</a>. Going on vacation is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/young-people-booking-vacations-despite-finances-debt-summer-economy-travel-2024-6">getting pricier</a>. Owning a pet <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/protect-finances-pets-likely-recession-2022-11">will cost you more</a>.Even those who have moved beyond the cycle of dating and into building a family are facing these price pressures. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/middle-class-marriage-is-declining-and-likely-deepening-inequality/">Research</a> <a target="_blank" href="https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.30.2.79">has found</a> that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/american-marriage-family-structure-kids-over-2023-9">marriage is becoming increasingly reserved</a> for the wealthy and more educated. Some people are happily opting not to have children, while others are finding themselves pushed into a child-free existence because they can't afford to have kids. But even with the high up-front cost of dating, getting into a long-term relationship might pay off in the long run. Solo Americans often come up against what's known as the "singles tax": They're <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rent-higher-singles-tax-living-alone-new-york-san-francisco-2024-2">paying thousands more than couples to live alone</a> and need to make nearly (if not more than) six figures to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/single-family-city-living-costs-income-nyc-la-inflation-rates-2024-3">live comfortably</a>.Keenan, the Seattle dater still looking for love, is keenly aware of the singles tax."Bills are made for a household," he told me. "I'm paying the same amount on my sewer and my garbage and my gas as I would if I had four people living in my apartment as I do with one person living in my apartment. There's nothing that is intended to be comfortable for one person."As things get more expensive, the singles tax gets worse — creating an ever-increasing price for singledom."Just because I haven't found my person, suddenly society's expecting me to pay more because I'm living alone," Keenan said.But Keenan's still out there. For about six to eight months, he tried to just meet people in person — which, as he noted, is often cheaper. Bumping into somebody at a bar means they probably already have a drink, and it's less formal than a sit-down dinner.Keenan's status, though, might be familiar to fellow beleaguered daters out there: He's back on the apps. It's a fate we all may have to resign ourselves to in the era of modern dating. It looks like those $12 first-date cocktails aren't going anywhere anytime soon (and they soon may be $20 cocktails). The only question is what new paywall might emerge in pursuit of a partner.<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/juliana-kaplan">Juliana Kaplan</a> is a senior labor and inequality reporter on Insider's economy team.

The heartbreaking cost of modern dating

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Lane Moore, a comedian and author, has been hosting "Tinder Live" for 10 years.</li><li>She said the show taught her how many nice people unknowingly have awful profiles.</li></ul>As anyone <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dating-apps-match-burning-people-out-these-reasons-hinge-ceo-2023-12">burned out from dating apps</a> will tell you, there are too many profile options to slog through. And many of them are laughably atrocious.From a comedy perspective, it's been a golden opportunity. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.lanemoore.org/">Lane Moore</a>, a comedian and author, has hosted "Tinder Live" for 10 years, where she swipes on real profiles in front of an audience.While rude or bizarre bios are often the subject of collective groans, Moore said she has been surprised by how many genuinely normal, nice people have offputting profiles."I hear that from so many men after Tinder Live shows where they're like, 'Oh, I didn't know that sounded that way,'" Moore told Business Insider. "They don't know that something that maybe you could say with a friend where they had your tone of voice and they knew who you were comes off really horribly on the apps."<div type="image" title="Lane Moore hosting &quot;Tinder Live.&quot;" height="683" width="1024" msid="112504782" hostid="261" sizebytes="39512"></div>Moore, who also takes on clients to rework their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dating-app-profile-tips-bio-photos-how-to-update-improve-2024-1">dating app profiles</a>, understands the struggle to come up with one that stands out. Unlike meeting strangers in real life, "we have to distill everything we are into a couple sentences and a few photos, which is not easy," she said.From her decade of hosting "Tinder Live" and experience with editing bios, she's encountered some mistakes over and over again. She shared the top three she sees all the time.<h2 id="4df97441-c2b1-42a4-9840-95c4505f06d2">Being too negative or judgmental</h2>Moore said the amount of negativity on dating app profiles still surprises her. Examples include "'Why are you going to put a group photo when you're not even the hottest one in there?' 'No fatties, no single moms.' 'I don't want to hear about your kid' — just yelling at this person you're going to be dating and already making them feel like crap," she said.Specifically, she sees many <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/do-not-list-ultimatums-dealbreakers-non-negotiables-in-dating-profiles-2023-11">negative lists of dealbreakers</a>, rather than people positively <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/matchmaker-reviewed-bumble-profile-remove-dealbreaker-write-more-about-self-2023-2">sharing more about themselves</a> or what they're looking for in a partner.<h2 id="dd56950a-75f5-4cd1-8224-a71ffcc8c62b">Leading with group photos</h2>When she first started the show, Moore had a segment called "Which One Is It?" where the audience would try to guess who the profile writer was in the group photo."There's just 10 Jasons, and sometimes if you even swipe to the second photo, it's multiple people, third photo is multiple people," she said. "All genders do this. Nobody likes it."She still can't believe that people <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crop-your-friends-out-photos-better-dating-profile-2023-10">don't crop their friends out</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dating-app-photos-arrange-pictures-matchmaker-2024-1">rearrange the photos</a> so the group shot isn't the first one."There was one photo that came up on a show recently where there were 30 people in the main photo," she said. "If someone's just going off of one photo, how is that your best foot forward?"<h2 id="9625f33b-a2a5-4d93-8480-fb7d99d0efd3">Not being vulnerable</h2>Moore said she often has to help clients redo their profiles to be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-optimize-dating-app-profile-man-2023-7">more vulnerable</a>. Instead of being open about their passions or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dating-coach-advice-profile-add-values-describe-dream-woman-2023-8">what they're looking for</a>, people often repost the same viral jokes or stories."I think there needs to be a little bit more earnestness, a little bit more humanity, honestly," she said. "But I think that people are so afraid of that. So then they list their demands, or they're yelling about all the things that they hate about this app. That's not how you're going to connect with somebody."While it seems scary to be that honest, Moore said it plays better than hiding behind dealbreakers or group pics. Occasionally, she'll stumble across a genuine profile during "Tinder Live." The room always "Aws."

A comedian has been roasting bad Tinder profiles for a decade. Here are 3 dating app mistakes she sees all the time. 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>New <keyword id="11911213" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="dating" source="Orion">dating</keyword> apps like Thursday and POM are testing in-person events in London and New York.</li><li>There's a growing desire among singles to meet people in person again, Thursday's CEO told Insider.</li></ul>Jessica Sultoo broke her collarbone at the last singles event she went to. A man she had met there picked her up on his shoulder and in a drunken stupor, dropped her. She was at an event in London hosted by Thursday, a <keyword id="11911255" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="dating-app" source="Orion">dating app</keyword> that has been running meet-ups for singles at bars across the city every Thursday since it launched in July last year.The experience was clearly an accident that would be enough to put anyone off. But Sultoo, 30, is certain it was an isolated incident, and it hasn't deterred her from coming back to the app's events."I'm very single and ready to mingle," she told Insider at one of Thursday's events on March 3 at a bar called Tonight Jospehine. "I've got four [dating] apps on my phone and they're not working!" <div type="image" title="Jessica Sultoo at one of Thursday's events in southwest London, March 3, 2022." height="1365" width="1820" msid="90170163" hostid="261"></div>Sultoo's sentiments capture a growing frustration with popular dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge, which many exhausted during the <keyword id="11896136" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="pandemic" source="Orion">pandemic</keyword>. Tapping on screens was the only way to meet someone new when confined indoors, and video chats or socially distanced walks the only dates of choice. Tinder reported 2020 as their busiest year yet, with its users also setting records for usage in early 2021. Hinge tripled its revenue from 2019 to 2020, and doubled it from that in 2021. The surge in dating app use spurred many of them to roll out a spate of new features such as video chats. But as the pandemic wanes, people are getting out again — and hoping to meet someone in person. Now a new crop of dating apps are leaning into that desire. "[During lockdown] people had saturated Hinge, Tinder, Bumble," Matthew Love, CEO of Thursday, told Insider."It's kind of gone back to the old school way where people don't want to be online and glued to their phones," he added. "They want to be experiencing something in real life." It's also what Mandy Mee, a dating coach at the MME Agency, has observed.The events are an alternative to the "typical cognitive overchoice, burnout, and catfishing experience that's inevitable where online dating is concerned," Mee told Insider.Love's app, which is available to Londoners and New Yorkers, with the odd event taking place in other UK cities, held its first event in London in November. More than 650 people rolled through the 400-person capacity venue where it took place.<div type="image" title="People line up to attend one of Thursday's events in southwest London, March 3, 2022." height="1239" width="1653" msid="90170165" hostid="261"></div>It's been growing in popularity since, with people using it in many ways."Some try and use it to have more one night stands, some try and use it to meet the love of their life. Some try and use it to see multiple people. Others actually use it just because it's social," said Love.Now the app is hosting up to 15 events across London and New York every week, many that surpass capacity.Users can only use the app on the day of week that holds its namesake — Thursday, which Love explained tends to be the most popular date night across Western cosmopolitan cities.Like other popular apps, people can swipe through profiles of others and land matches. As soon as the clock rolls into midnight, though, the app locks out until the following Thursday, erasing any matches or conversations.It also lists the events happening across the city that Thursday, enticing users early in the week with a notification of the current week's locations.It's what Sarah Kelly, 30, another user of the app, looks forward to each week. She's been using the Thursday events as an excuse to go out with her girlfriends, especially as she's busy working on the weekends."'Georgia, should we go?'" Kelly asks when the notification pops up each week, motioning to her friend there in attendance with her at the Tonight Josephine event, Georgia Freeman, 29.The two have been to several Thursday events, motivated to have a good time at bars again because they're bored of small talk on dating apps and have felt robbed of time during the pandemic.<div type="image" title="Georgia Freeman (L) and Sarah Kelly (R) at one of Thursday's events in southwest London, March 3, 2022." height="1365" width="1820" msid="90170167" hostid="261"></div>But socializing with friends isn't a priority for everyone at these app-facilitated dating events.Meid Adam, 24, came to Thursday's Tonight Josephine event alone, as he has at several of Thursday's events."I definitely feel like coming by myself will give me more opportunity to be able to meet someone new," he told Insider at the event. "Because I'm not coming over to spend time with someone that I already know." <div type="image" title="Meid Adam at one of Thursday's events in southwest London, March 3, 2022." height="1290" width="1721" msid="90170169" hostid="261"></div>In-person sociability is also a core premise behind another new app, Power of Music, or POM. This app connects users based on music taste and has held several music-centred events in London since its launch last July."Meet on our app? Brilliant. You know you have that fundamental emotional connection. Now go to one of our events and meet in person," POM's founder, Vihan Patel, told Insider. "At the very least, there's a great conversation starter, that conversation about the music."While POM is in earlier stages than Thursday, it's also growing, having hit 100,000 downloads this month. The app allows users to connect their Spotify or Apple Music accounts, which helps POM see what music is most popular in any given area, important fodder for hosting music events. Patel expects to be hosting one event a week soon.As for Thursday, the app's social media is flooded with comments with users globally asking it to come to their city. Love's priority is to build up its presence in London with new types of events such as running clubs, and to then take it across other cities in the US.It's clear there's an appetite for new ways of using dating apps that companies must adapt to stay relevant and boost customer satisfaction, Mee said."Dating apps will be required to think outside the box," she said.

Pandemic-weary singles are bored of Hinge and Tinder and desperate for new experiences. A new batch of apps are helping bring them together IRL.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Videos that appeared to show <keyword id="395536" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Matthew-Perry">Matthew Perry</keyword> and <keyword id="16037" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Ben-Affleck">Ben Affleck</keyword> matching with dating app users recently went viral.</li><li><keyword id="1557997" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="dating-apps">Dating apps</keyword> and celebrity advisors are dealing with increased concern over privacy and security.</li><li>Insider spoke to experts, celebrities, and influencers who explained how online dating is changing.</li></ul>A string of videos that appear to show celebrities like Ben Affleck and Matthew Perry connecting with dating app users are sending chills through both the <keyword id="4578" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="entertainment">entertainment</keyword> and dating app industries.Since its launch in 2015, invite-only dating app <keyword id="1667742" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Raya">Raya</keyword> has advertised itself as an elite platform catering to the needs of celebrities. But in early May 2021, Nivine Jay, an actor and model, <a href="https://www.insider.com/ben-affleck-tiktok-raya-nivine-jay-unmatched-dating-app-2021-5">posted an explosive TikTok</a> of a video purportedly sent to her by Ben Affleck after she says she unmatched with the actor on Raya. A few days later, Kate Haralson, a TikToker who is a personal assistant for reality TV stars Spencer and Heidi Pratt, similarly went viral by uploading a <a href="https://www.insider.com/ben-affleck-tiktok-raya-nivine-jay-unmatched-dating-app-2021-5">purported recording of a FaceTime session she said she had with Matthew Perry</a> after matching with him on Raya in May 2020. These incidents haven't just happened on Raya. In early June, Twitter user @Stardewlegend <a href="https://twitter.com/stardewlegend/status/1402074868850434048?s=20">posted purported screenshots </a>of "iCarly" actor Jerry Taylor's verified <keyword id="2307576" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="bumble">Bumble</keyword> profile along with a tweet, "I did not expect dating in LA to be like this."These videos have made headlines and received millions of views on social <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword>, shattering any assumption of privacy on dating apps. As dating apps adjust to the reality of leaking, the features and innovations they implement may have a broader impact not only on their most high-profile users, but also everyday people looking for the perfect match. Insider talked to publicists, dating apps, matchmakers, and influencers to explore how these recent exposures could transform online dating. <h2>Celebrity insiders and experts are more involved in their clients' dating lives than they may seem</h2><div type="image" title="Kelly Cutrone standing with microphone" height="1000" width="2000" msid="84554026" hostid="261"></div>Kelly Cutrone, the founder of <a href="http://www.peoplesrevolution.com/">People's Revolution</a>, a public relations agency, told Insider that celebrities using dating apps is a "bat---- crazy idea." She said that publicists should generally stay out of their clients' love lives, but that by using dating apps, celebrities were not just opening themselves up to potentially embarrassing scandals, but they were also making themselves vulnerable to people with bad intentions. <a href="https://www.interforinternational.com/team/">Don Aviv</a>, the president of Interfor International, a security consulting service that works with celebrities, echoed Cultrone's stance and said he advises high-profile people to avoid these apps altogether. He cited concerns over hacks, fraud, and scams, and argued that regardless of how the app advertises itself, online platforms come with too many risks. Other experts signaled that they were adjusting to stars seeking love in the digital realm. <a href="https://labreamedia.com/">Howard Bragman</a>, a Hollywood crisis manager, told Insider he believes celebrities are drawn to these platforms because they offer the chance to meet people outside of the entertainment industry. Since stars can't go to bars and nightclubs anonymously like civilians, they may relish the opportunity to find someone from the comfort of their home, he said."Celebrities are actual human beings who have feelings and would like to go out on dates and meet a loved one, so I don't see any reason they should be denied that," he said.Bragman said his celebrity clients have told him about their dating app usage, so he's prepared for the media fallout in the event of a leak. <a href="https://www.themomentlab.com/team">Matt Yanofsky</a>, a PR and brand specialist, told Insider that in the past, he and other publicists have assisted with curating clients' dating app profile pictures and interests and that in numerous cases, it's become an extension of their job of managing a client's public image. <h2>Influencers and celebrities are moving away from dating apps and using social media to meet people instead </h2>Some influencers have found ways to navigate public-facing apps. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/KazzyOfficial">Kazzy</a>, a YouTuber with almost 470,000 subscribers, told Insider he refuses to give out his phone number and personal address.Similarly, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/gwensinger/?hl=en">Gwen Singer</a>, an Instagram influencer, told Insider that on Bumble and Hinge she goes by an entirely different name, doesn't link to her social media, and uses non-model photographs because of privacy concerns and to see if she can find a genuine connection without the anxiety that people are treating her differently."Let's see if you're really interested in talking to me and getting to know who I am," she said.Others are moving away from traditional dating apps entirely.Comedian <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ashwinjacob/?utm_medium=copy_link">Ashwin Jacob</a> said he used to prefer Raya when it was more "curated," but that now, with more chats about networking and fears of being secretly recorded, Instagram is becoming the preferred dating app for many of his influencer friends. TikToker <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@gene.w.park?lang=en">Gene Park</a>, who has over 460,000 followers, echoed Jacob's sentiment that Raya has started to lose its allure. He said that for many influencers, Instagram's direct messaging platform works as a dating app, although he's dealt with catfishing and scamming attempts on it "multiple times." He said he hoped ther was "another Raya that comes out soon, that is a lot more exclusive," with a better filtering process. According to reporting from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/style/raya-dating-app.html">The New York Times</a>, in 2018 Raya had an 8% acceptance rate and there were 100,000 people still on the waiting list. Raya did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.<h2>Security concerns on apps are changing the face of online dating</h2>Regarding celebrities' concerns over privacy, a Bumble spokesperson highlighted the app's Incognito Mode. Included in Bumble Premium, a subscription service that comes with a myriad of features and costs $32.99 a month, Incognito Mode allows users to only be visible to other users whom they swiped right on. While this may make the app feel more exclusive and curated, it doesn't account for user behavior and hypothetically, Incognito matches are able to leak celebrity profiles to social media under the company's current privacy policy. Some apps are trying to solve this problem. Founded in late 2020, <a href="https://www.loxclubapp.com/">Lox Club</a>, a members-only dating platform for Jewish people, has drawn some <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/the-lox-club-dating-app">buzz</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/news/lil-yachty-bhad-bhabie-jewish-dating-app-1234989140/">celebrity investors</a> like Bhad Bhabie and Lil Yachty. According to co-founder Alec Lorraine, there are "around 50,000 people" on the app's waitlist. He cited his Lox Club's security measures, such as suspending users who screenshot too many times, and making it easy for people to contact his app to report abusive behavior. Lorraine told Insider there haven't been instances of leaks and believes that is thanks to the Lox Club's highly selective curation process which maintains its culture of privacy. "If you curate your community from the start, you get people that aren't as willing to leak celebrity profiles," he said. Lizz Warner, the founder and CEO of <a href="https://gleamdating.com/">Gleam</a>, a video-chat dating app that is currently only available in Los Angeles and New York City, told Insider that she had discussed the possibility of celebrity leaks with her team of developers. On Gleam, users can only communicate via scheduled video chat dates that solely exist within the app, and later, if there's compatibility, texts.According to Warner, since the video chats live on the app and automatically turn off if someone starts a screen recording, it can potentially be helpful for celebrities who are concerned with privacy. She told Insider that in Los Angeles, a number of influencers have already joined. Haralson, who leaked the purported video of Matthew Perry, said that while some people accused her of being the catalyst for Perry's split with his then-fiance, which she refutes, others responded positively, telling her she was highlighting the dating dynamic of how "easy it is for young girls to be wooed by these older men with money." Multiple sources told Insider that they noticed that celebrities became more drawn to dating apps during the COVID-19 lockdown. As restrictions are lifted, dating will potentially go back offline, with people returning to mingling in dimly lit bars and parties. But these concerns of safety and privacy will surely persist, leaving an opening for the next crop of members-only apps to continue to sell the elusive promise of digital exclusivity. <a href="https://www.insider.com/culture">To read more stories like this, check out Insider's digital culture coverage here.</a>

Insiders reveal how celebrities are responding to recent dating app profile leaks

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/digital-business-decoded"></div></div></div>Amy Nauiokas, founder and president of fintech investment firm Anthemis, says: "Big organisations can see where the markets have been, where they're going, they can identify those trends. But I think the startups are always going to be able to move a little bit more nimbly."Nauiokas worked in mainstream finance at places like Bear Sterns, Barclays, and Cantor Fitzgerald before setting up Anthemis in 2008."We spent quite a long time in this space trying to convince people of the future," she says. "You'd seem like a crazy person running around with a spreadsheet about how all the businesses were going to change on the back of technology and innovation. Some would listen and some wouldn't."Those who didn't are likely all ears now.<h2>Loans: 'They're doing things that were impossible 5 years ago'</h2>Perhaps the biggest area of upheaval has been in the way people and organisations lend and borrow money. Traditionally, banks had the monopoly on this. They took deposits, and extended credit. In the process, the banks make money by charging borrowers more interest than they offer savers.But recently a crop of startups have found a way to squeeze these margins and offer a better deal to savers and, often borrowers, by adapting an online model first popularised by music piracy - peer-to-peer.Platforms like LendingClub and Prosper in the US and Funding Circle and Zopa in the UK have exploded in popularity, doing hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds in loans and attracting huge valuations.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Peer-to-peer as a model first rose to prominence with personal and business loans, but companies like SoFi and Earnest are applying the model to student finance and specialist lenders are also springing up doing everything from mortgages to invoice financing."One of the big things that P2P lending is doing is really making it easier for people to borrow money - that's the big value proposition," says Peter Renton, the founder of global peer-to-peer conference LendIt.Where banks can take weeks to approve a business loan, peer-to-peer lenders take as little as 24 hours. The platforms automate huge parts of the underwriting process and plug into a myriad of data sources.Renton says: "It's easier, it's quicker, it's more user-friendly. These companies are not steeped in finance, they don't have necessarily this background thinking that things have to be done in a certain way. They're reinventing the wheel in a much more efficient way."Kabbage is the most innovative small business lender on the planet. They deliver a loan to a small business lender in 7 minutes. The way they do it is they connect all the data and the more data you connect with them, the cheaper it's going to be."It started off with eBay data. They pull in all your eBay data and see what's your daily sales volume, ratings. Now they pull in dozens of sources - UPS data, Amazon, QuickBooks, Yodlee, Yelp, Facebook. They're doing things that would have been impossible 10 years ago, that probably would have been impossible 5 years ago."Renton says that "this is the true innovation in this industry - the ability to work with data, databanks won't work with or can't work with."There are a crop of online-only loan companies who aren't following the peer-to-peer model but are still beating the banks at lending by simply using data in a smarter way, making them faster and easier for borrowers. Banks are starting to recognise the skill of many of these startups. SunTrust Bank acquired online lender FirstAgain in 2012, later re-branding it LightStream.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Christian Faes, boss of UK peer-to-peer platform LendInvest, says many of his biggest customers are banks that lend over the platform. LendInvest specialises in peer-to-peer mortgages.Faes says: "The short-term mortgage market is quite specialist. Banks see the short-term market as a good opportunity but they can't really be bothered to go set up a desk, to hire business development people, to originate deal flow, to hire underwriters."It's a lot easier to come along to a platform like LendInvest. That is really where peer-to-peer ends up. You get specialists in origination in particular asset classes and institutions come to them to get exposure of particular assets."<h2>Payments: Blockchain is coming</h2>Alongside the way people lend cash, the way we pay for things is also being overhauled."We're just coming out of probably a good 3 years of being pitched any and all payments model," says Pascal Bouvier, a partner at fintech venture fund Route66 and a <a href="http://finiculture.com/">fintech blogger</a>. "I'm personally suffering from payments indigestion."On the business side, companies like Sweden's iZettle and Square in the US are making it easier for small businesses to accept card payments through cheap terminals. Companies like Sweden's Klarna and Stripe in the US also make it easy for small businesses to accept card payments online.Meanwhile on the consumer side, services like Apple Pay and bitcoin are offering people new ways to pay for the good they buy.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>International money transfers are also being disrupted. UK companies TransferWise and WorldRemit have both attracted <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/transferwise-58-million-andreessen-horowitz-2015-1">big investments from Silicon Valley funds</a> for their approach to international money transfer.Like the lending startups, the key appeal of these money transfer businesses are they make sending money abroad easier, faster, and cheaper. TransferWise uses <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-transferwise-works-2015-1">peer-to-peer to match people with others sending money in the opposite direction</a>, saving fees.WorldRemit <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/worldremit-founder-ismail-ahmed-mobile-wallets-moneyconf-500-million-valuation-2015-6">specialises in sending money to mobile wallets in emerging markets</a>, essentially digitising the Western Union network.Bouvier says: "A lot of the investments to date were on the easy stuff - digitalisation of front-end distribution channel, personal payment solutions, some type of debit card coupled to an app."But now there are signs of deeper changes in payments, within the so-called "rails" - the deep-rooted infrastructure used to actually process payments within and between banks.22 banks from around the world, including JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, and Barclays, recently <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-barclays-and-others-join-r3-on-blockchain-project-2015-9">formed a coalition to develop common standards and use cases for the blockchain in banking</a>.The blockchain is the software that both powers and regulates cryptocurrency bitcoin. In its most basic form, it records ownership of bitcoin, as well as transactions.Transactions are signed off by the parties involved using the software, then added to the blockchain, a long string of code that records all activity.Once other transactions are added on in front of an exchange, the exchange is stuck there forever and can't be changed, in the same way you can't change a brick once it's been built into a wall.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>The software cuts out the need for a "trusted middleman" to sit in between parties in a transaction as it acts as that middleman. This makes transactions quicker, cheaper, and easier when compared to the current systems banks use. The coalition of banks looking to adapt blockchain to mainstream finance is headed by R3, a startup headed by 32-year Wall Street veteran David Rutter. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/13-new-banks-join-r3-blockchain-coalition-2015-9">22 top investment banks are now signed up.</a>Rutter <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-barclays-and-others-join-r3-on-blockchain-project-2015-9">told Business Insider recently</a> that while payments are one use for the blockchain in finance, his remit is to explore everything from issuing shares on blockchain to using it as a "smart contract", where the code generated is itself the contract.<h2>Investment: 'Platforms like ours deal with thousands of investors'</h2>The blockchain could have a big impact on investment then, as well as payments. And investment is another area of finance that has already undergone huge changes thanks to technology.The most noticeable change in investment over the last few years has been the rise of crowdfunding. A model pioneered in the US by Kickstarter, crowdfunding lets ordinary people fund projects online, either by lending them money or buying equity in the project or company.In the US, platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are dominated by idea or cause based crowdfunding campaigns - people can fund cool ideas like the Pebble smartwatch before they're built, or even a new project from a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/crowdfunding-isnt-just-for-the-little-guys-1404955610">big company like chip maker Marvell</a>. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>In the UK, however, crowdfunding on platforms like Crowdcube and Seedrs generally takes a different form. Established, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/brewdog-equity-for-punks-crowdcube-and-launches-bond-2015-9">growing businesses such as BrewDog</a> and JustPark are turning to crowdfunding platforms as a way to raise money.The "crowd" buy in just like traditional investors would when buying shares, rather than fund a specific project. The big difference between buying shares on the open market is there's no way to trade once you own them.But soon that could change too - Crowdcube, the UK's biggest crowdfunding platform, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/crowdcube-6-million-investment-numis-ipo-2015-7">recently partnered with City of London stockbroker Numis</a> and the pair plan to launch the world's first crowdfunded IPO next year.At the time the partnership was announced <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/crowdcube-6-million-investment-numis-ipo-2015-7">Crowdcube CEO Darren Westlake told Business Insider</a>: "IPOs are obviously public offerings, but if you look at what's happened over the last couple of decades it's been less and less possible for ordinary people to participate, as the majority of the listing have been filled out by institutions."The reason for that is because whoever's running the book, it's very difficult for them to deal with thousands of people rather than just one institution. However, platforms like ours have been set up to deal with thousands of investors - that's where our strength is."Another big development in investment is the introduction of social and gaming elements. Israeli platform eToro lets investors "follow" other traders to see what they're buying and selling. There's even a feature that lets investors automatically copy the trades of people they follow.And companies like <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/twitter-has-created-an-entirely-new-wall-street-ecosystem-here-are-the-companies-leading-the-way-2015-9">Acuity Trading, Selerity, and iSentium</a> are trying to harness data from platforms like Twitter to give an indication of investor "sentiment", which in turn gives them an idea of which way to trade.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/ecb-twitter-bullishness-stock-market-moves-2015-7">A recent study from the European Central Bank</a> found Twitter has a "statistically and economically significant predictive value" for stock markets in the US, UK and Canada.<h2>Challenger banks: 'You don't go to the banking sector for tech'</h2>There's plenty of competition in the US banking sector, but in Europe, and particularly the UK, the landscape is dominated by a few big players.That's starting to change, thanks to the rise of so-called "challenger banks", such as <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/metro-bank-history-2014-11">Metro Bank in the UK</a> and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/fidor-links-interest-rates-to-facebook-2015-9">Fidor in Germany</a>.This new crop of lenders prioritises technology. Atom Bank, Mondo, and Starling are 3 pre-launch challenger banks in the UK that are planning to have no branch network and operate primarily through mobile phone apps.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/atom-bank-gets-banking-licence-from-bank-of-england-to-launch-app-2015-6">Atom Bank CEO Mark Mullen told Business Insider in June</a>: "Our inspiration is not coming from banks. You don't go to the banking sector for technological excellence. We're working with tech companies with credits in the motor industry, gaming."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Not only are these new banks rethinking what a bank should look like, they're also re-imaging how it should work.Germany's Fidor was one of the earliest to pioneer a banking model that works more like an app store than a traditional lender.Fidor offers core services, but it also lets customers use third-party products like peer-to-peer loans or currency trading. The bank is more like a marketplace where people can shop around.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/fidor-bank-launches-in-the-uk-2015-9">Fidor CEO Matthias Kröner told Business Insider</a> he sees the role of a bank becoming the guardian of a customer's identity, acting as a trusted gateway in the same way Facebook does when you use it to log into other sites around the web.Kröner said: "A bank's role in future will be protecting your identity. Identity will be the biggest asset."<h2>The future: 'Things are barely beginning here'</h2>Not all parts of finance are being turned upside down though. One big area that has yet to be revolutionised is insurance. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/route66-ventures-and-anthemis-on-insurance-fintech-2015-9">Investors and companies want that to change</a> - an accelerator programme to help insurance startups grow is launching in London next January, backed by big names like UK car insurer Admiral and German insurer Allianz.<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/route66-ventures-and-anthemis-on-insurance-fintech-2015-9">Route66's Bouvier told Business Insider</a>: "Insurance companies need to be way better at sifting through universes of structured and unstructured data. Things are barely beginning here - the network of data that's going to be coming out of the internet of things is going to be massive."Insurance has plenty of room for new business models like peer-to-peer and efficiencies like automation that have hit finance over the last few years.More broadly, we're likely to see many of these innovations enter the mainstream. <a href="https://twitter.com/kaarmann/status/645994091038253056">TransferWise CEO Kristo Kaarmann recently tweeted</a>: "Hope we'll graduate from fintech to finance. We don't call uber cartech nor BI newstech."Banks and established financial firms are increasingly looking to work with fintech startups to help them keep up with the pace of change.UBS has <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/ubs-future-of-finance-fintech-competition-2015-8">launched a competition to find startups to work with</a>; Barclays <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/barclays-derek-white-on-bitcoin-and-blockchain-2015-9">runs a fintech accelerator programme</a>; and banks like Santander, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are all <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/santander-monitise-fintech-investment-joint-venture-2015-7">investing in companies in doing everything from bitcoin to peer-to-peer loans</a>.Anthemis' Nauiokas told BI: "I think where you'll see the success stories is with banks and financial institutions that recognise they can't do it all, but instead identify the areas in technology reform where they do have an edge and partner with someone to do the rest."That's going to be a model that will be very successful for some financial institutions."Fintech is going mainstream.

This is how a new crop of companies are trying to reinvent banking

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>After <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ipo-struggling-to-keep-investors-happy-uber-fiverr-lyft-2019-9">poor public performances by some of Silicon Valley's hottest private companies</a>, venture capitalists are decrying the traditional IPO process in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vc-investors-ipo-flops-direct-listings-techcrunch-disrupt-2019-10">favor of direct listings</a>.</li><li>The unconventional strategy for going public removes some of the more expensive and tedious processes associated with going public, and allows investors and employees to bypass a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-able-to-bypass-ipo-process-why-thats-rare-2018-1">traditional lockup period following a public debut</a>.</li><li>Many VCs blamed banks for overinflating share prices ahead of an IPO to profit off the fees they collect, but VCs stand to directly benefit themselves from a direct listing because they are able to sell at the opening price.</li><li>Direct listings are marketed to founders as a cheap, fair alternative to founders looking to make a public exit, but that is not always the case.</li><li>Some investors told Business Insider that a direct listing would be ideal for founders that want to avoid the scrutiny of an investor roadshow that precludes a traditional IPO.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/founder-frenemies">Check out Business Insider's special series - Founder Frenemies - for more stories on Silicon Valley's changing landscape for startup funding. </a></li></ul>With his long hair, proclivity for walking around barefoot and reputation for partying, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-inside-adam-neumanns-wework-reveal-a-wild-culture-2019-9">WeWork founder Adam Neumann</a> could have been straight out of central casting for a fictional "tech CEO" in a movie. That over-the-top persona is also what made Neumann a liability for WeWork in the eyes of straight-laced, conservative IPO investors. Neumann never had the chance to meet, or spook, investors in a pre-IPO roadshow for WeWork- he was ousted from the CEO job the week the roadshow was supposed to kick off, and the IPO was subsequently shelved.WeWork's cancelled IPO is now at the center of a broader Silicon Valley reckoning, as venture capital investors and others obsess over an IPO alternative called a "direct listing." The direct listing has been framed as a way for tech startups to list their shares without being beholden to an outdated process created by Wall Street bankers and designed to benefit their clients. But direct listings are still a new, relatively untested concept that may not provide the all-around salvation some expect. And while venture capital investors bash an IPO system they say is broken, their sudden zeal for direct listings is, in at least one major sense, the result of a problem they created themselves.The "founder friendly" movement in which VC investors deferred to startup founders, no matter how quirky or extravagant, has produced a crop of richly-valued companies with unconventional executives in the top job. And as many of these companies now look to go public, they're finding that an offbeat founder CEO is not always a selling point during a roadshow.A direct listing provides a convenient way to skip that conversation."When you do a direct listing, you don't have to put them up there," said one VC firm founder about inexperienced or unpolished management teams. "There's a negative side that the VCs see, but they can hide it behind the direct listings," he said.In a direct listing, a company simply lists its shares on a public exchange and the stock begins trading. There's no banks underwriting the offering, setting a price and selling it to institutional shareholders, as happens in an IPO. And while insiders, like VC investors and early employees, can sell shares right away in a direct listing, the company itself does not raise any capital.Lise Buyer, the founder of IPO advisory firm Class V Group, describes direct listings as an interesting alternative to IPOs that will work for certain companies but that's currently wrapped in a lot of hype: "It's the new shiny object that is aggressively and brilliantly marketed."<h2>"Ride the positive narrative" and avoid the hedge fund questions</h2>For now, direct listings exist more in the realm of theoretical and wishful thinking than reality. To date, only two companies - Spotify and Slack - have opted to go public this way. But <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-01/airbnb-is-planning-for-direct-listing-instead-of-traditional-ipo">according to a recent Bloomberg report</a>, Airbnb, the home-sharing service valued at $31 billion, is leaning towards a direct listing instead of an IPO when it goes public in 2020.That could help the company avoid uncomfortable questions about its management team's qualifications. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-ceo-brian-chesky-30-billion-startup-2016-8">Brian Chesky, the cofounder of Airbnb</a> who serves as CEO, has a background in industrial design and has never held a high-level role at any other company. Although Chesky has grown Airbnb into a juggernaut, his public company experience, and lack of the traditional engineering or business background, would likely get a hard look during an IPO roadshow, the founder of the investing firm speculated. "You could make a case for companies to just ride the positive narrative and just go out there with a direct listing because you don't want to answer all these extremely scrutinizing questions from some hedge fund guys," said Synovus Trust Company portfolio manager Dan Morgan about startups with novice or quirky CEOs.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>In years past, a seasoned executive might have been brought on to take the reins as the startup neared its IPO. But with founders now revered, and in some cases calling the shots thank to special supervoting shares, many of the most valuable startups are helmed by founders who may or may not have the chops to run a public company."A CEO/Founder with a quirky personality would be fine to do a direct listing and avoid all the scrutiny of a road show," Morgan said.Still, he stressed, everything changes after company's first earnings call as a publicly traded organization. And in the case of WeWork, he believes that even a direct listing wouldn't have saved it from a brutal reception in the public markets: "The model was not sound as there appeared to be no roadmap to profitability."<h2>The times have changed and IPO "needs innovation"</h2>Of course, plenty of unorthodox founders have made it through the roadshow process and gone on to lead successful publicly-traded companies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously caused a stir <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/zuckerberg-takes-heat-for-hoodie-on-ipo-road-show/">by wearing a hoodie to the pre-IPO investor roadshow.</a> Seven years later, the stock is up 374% and Facebook is worth $514 billion.And the two companies that have recently gone public through direct listings were not trying to hide unpolished or inexperienced CEOs from criticism. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-life-of-slack-ceo-stewart-butterfield-2015-9">Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield</a> is one of the tech industry's most respected, serial entrepreneurs, with a track record that includes creating photo sharing site <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/23/flickrs-acquisition-9-years-later/">Flickr and selling it to Yahoo for $20 million in 2005.</a>Slack had an optimal business model and enough brand recognition to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/slack-direct-listing-perfect-ipo-2019-6">pull off a direct listing</a> in June, said Jyoti Bansal, a startup founder and tech investor who is a big believer in the potential of direct listings.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>Bansal attended a special, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/benchmark-bill-gurley-valuations-are-causing-disappointing-tech-ipos-uber-2019-9">invite-only summit earlier this month</a> devoted to the merits of direct listings. The event took place in San Francisco and was organized by several VC firms in the wake of the disappointing Uber and Peloton IPOs, and the WeWork implosion."The way the IPO is done today is almost like a 25-year-old concept. It just needs innovation" said Bansal, who is the cofounder and CEO of enterprise startup Harness and cofounder of venture firm Unusual Ventures."Twenty-five years ago the primary purpose of IPO was that people didn't have access to growth capital, so you had to go to public markets to get growth capital. Now, everyone has it," he said.Class V's Buyer says the notion that direct listings are a cheaper and more democratic process than traditional IPOs is partially true. Since the company isn't raising funds, it doesn't need to work with a traditional underwriter and thus does not need to pay the associated fees. Still, she noted that a company must pay some banker fees, register with regulatory bodies like the SEC, and participate in an audit, all of which are costly undertakings.Spotify paid $32 million in fees for its 2018 direct listing, <a href="https://www.inc.com/guadalupe-gonzalez/spotify-cfo-direct-listing-ipo-slack.html">according to Inc,</a> compared to the $102 million that Uber paid in its traditional IPO.<h2>No lock-up is a big benefit - for some</h2>Clearing the path to a liquidity event is critical for VCs who have sunk tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars into startups.Buyer also noted that direct listings - which allow employees to sell all their vested shares right away, without the traditional several month "lock up" period of an IPO - could incentivize valuable employees to cash out and jump ship."I don't think it helps with [employee] retention. It actually is perhaps the opposite," Buyer said of direct listings.And for recently-hired employees with unvested stock, a direct listing can leave them at a disadvantage if the stock sinks.In the case of both Slack and Spotify, the companies achieved peak share prices in the first weeks or months of trading, and have only lost value since. That means early investors were able to cash out at near-peak pricing while employees with unvested stock and retail investors were left holding shares that were only becoming less valuable."Those who sold on Day One at Slack got a better price than those that sell today," said Buyer.

Silicon Valley's founder-led startups have lost their shine with IPO investors. But the obsession with direct listings won't fix the bigger problem.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>In honor of Valentine's Day, Business Insider has figured out why so many Americans have no reason to celebrate.
It turns out only 3.1% of young American singles are 'eligible' dates.
Now before you get up in arms about how we came to this conclusion, understand that this was all done by the numbers using 2013 American Community Survey microdata from the <a href="https://usa.ipums.org/usa/">IPUMS project at the Minnesota Population Center</a>. That means that we started off with a list of over 3 million records, and over 1 million of those records belonged to America's singles.
So, now onto the important part: how we decided what made someone eligible.
We recently observed that about <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-singles-bull-market-2015-2">half of all of adult Americans are single</a>. But that's generally not enough to make someone worth dating. 
Discounting this superficial stuff (like good hair, smelling nice, a great Spotify library) we decided to find how many of those young, single adults have got what (many consider) really matters in a partner - a good job/stable income, independant lifestyle, and high level of education.
Specifically, we pulled the following characteristics of 'eligibility' from the American Community Survey: 
<ul>
<li>Is actually single: The survey data let us see whether respondents are currently married or living with an unmarried partner. We filtered out the about half of all adults who are in such a serious relationship. Unfortunately, ACS data doesn't tell us whether or not respondents are in a relationship with someone they don't live with, so a few partnered people might have fallen through the cracks.</li>
<li>Is between the ages of 18 and 40.</li>
<li>Doesn't live with their parents: The data also tell us whether or not respondents live with one or both of their parents. People who have boomeranged were filtered out of our list.</li>
<li>Doesn't live in group housing, like a college dorm, prison, or mental institution.</li>
<li>Has at least a Bachelor's degree: The data include information on educational attainment. Since we're looking for the cream of the crop, we restrict our list further to people with a Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorate, or post-graduate professional degree.</li>
<li>Is employed.</li>
<li>Earns at least 80% of the median income of a full-time, year-round worker of their gender and metropolitan area (or state, if they don't live in a metro area).</li>
</ul>
After filtering through all of our above criteria, we were left with just 29,875 survey respondents that fall into our highly eligible single category.
That's right. Just 29,875 respondents out of a total of 3,712,827 respondents.
That means about 3.1% of the total pool of unmarried adults are highly eligible single Americans.
Good luck finding each other.

Only 3% of American singles are worth dating

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mesohungry/3512184506">jasonlam/Flickr</a>One of NYC's most famous speakeasies is inside this hot dog joint.</div></div></div>New Yorkers have a history of drinking in speakeasies dating back to the Prohibition.
These days, a new breed of speakeasy has cropped up around the city, featuring old-timey touches like hidden entrances, tin ceilings, and cocktails made with classic ingredients.
Here are some of New York's best speakeasies, from 67 Orange Street in Harlem to the new Featherweight in Bushwick.
Did we forget your favorite speakeasy in NYC? Let us know in the comments.

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