Is it time to break up with your dating app?

or investors, writes venture capitalist and LinkedIn Top Voice Jessy Wu. However, she argues they often lack innovation and that for a dating app to be succesfull and profitable, it usually needs to keep users engaged and swiping, rather than helping you find ‘the one’. “Tinder / Bumble / Hinge are broken. Genuine connections are rare, few matches lead to a date, users spend years on the apps without success, and regular users report increased anxiety and depression,” she writes. She suggests dating apps could focus on driving high quality matches or limit the amount of time people spend ‘doomswiping’. Read Wu’s full post below then let us know in the comments section – is swiping for love going out of fashion? You can also share your idea of the day on any topic to get people talking. Click this link to write your #IOTD post:

Wu explains that one of the most common startup pitches she gets is for new dating apps

What’s one of the most common ideas I get pitched as a VC investor? Dating apps. The core insights are similar, and irrefutable: ?? Tinder / Bumble / Hinge are broken. Genuine connections are rare, few matches lead asiandate to a date, users spend years on the apps without success, and regular users report increased anxiety and depression. ?? There is an opportunity to focus on driving high quality matches – e.g. by creating ‘highly compatible’ matches. ?? We can limit the amount of time people spend ‘doomswiping’ by restricting them to one quality match per day / week. ?? Instead of monetising through ads, we could monetise through playing a larger role in the relationship lifecycle (e.g. venue collaborations, brand collaborations). But I’m always left with these questions / concerns: ?? Most dating apps monetise the way entertainment apps do. A significant proportion of Tinder’s revenue comes from ads interspersed through profiles. For them, ‘success’ looks like keeping users on the app for longer. Alternative apps focused on accelerating to high quality matches need to find alternative ways to monetise. ?? Dating apps have a ‘cold start problem’ – and one ‘side’ of the marketplace is significantly harder to acquire: women. A new dating app needs to bring a novel insight into how they’re going to acquire women. In its early days, Tinder targeted sororities on college campuses, while Bumble counter-positioned against Tinder by promising an app experience where women would feel safer and more in control. ?? To grow, an app needs viral engagement loops. Social apps reach ‘escape velocity’ where one user ‘session’ triggers 10 other users to open their app. Dating apps do this well with the ‘match’, and the ‘super like’. Alternative apps focused on fewer, high quality matches need to find an alternative engagement loop to drive organic growth. ?? In reality, many people on dating apps aren’t serious about finding love. For some, it’s an entertaining gallery of area singles who occasionally like their photos or witty Hinge captions. For others, it’s a way to procrastinate actually putting themselves out there because they’re not over their ex. This ‘non-serious’ segment is hard to monetise directly, but they’re required to make the app experience work for ‘power users’. Founders need to be clear eyed that many dating apps only ‘work’ because they serve customers with a diversity of (not always aligned) jobs to be done. Do you think there’s room for innovation in the ‘dating app’ idea maze? Will AI unlock a new ‘form factor’ for finding love? I’d love to discuss in comments! I’m also thinking of writing a series about common ideas I’m pitched and the questions I have about them. Let me know what you’d be interested to see discussed! #venturecapital #startups #dating #consumer