Some of the best ideas are born out of frustration. They often emerge to solve a problem for the creator. As a 3x founder and the creator of a video dating app, I know what it means to build for a problem, only to realize my assumptions were wrong. Maybe we were too early to market, or maybe we didn’t adapt fast enough to shifting social and cultural attitudes. Who knows?

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The Frustration

What I do know however is—alongside hundreds of millions of singles looking for connection, I am frustrated. I am frustrated with the plethora of new and what seems like daily, dating app founders who claim the app they built is revolutionary. Perhaps worse, they build features in an attempt to normalize a certain mode of behaviour for singles online when connecting and interacting with someone. Yes, safety is important but take for instance, anti-ghosting features, forced 5-minute-calls, or time-outs and suspensions for not responding in a certain period. These are but a sample of the hotly publicized features in the latest apps.

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Are we in kindergarten?

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Hot Take

Ghosting is a human behaviour problem that cannot be solved by a feature in an app. Yes, it might suck to get ghosted but dating app creators need to stop building features to govern social behaviour. People need to sort out for themselves how they interact and pay the price or get the reward for their interaction both in-person and online (by being unmatched, not landing a date, being told no and so on). Just like in person, if someone doesn't want to talk with you at a coffee shop or rejects you, no one punishes them for that and you should walk away with respect and dignity having learnt something from that interaction.

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‍It might be as simple as ok, then don't use our app. Fair enough but let's be clear:

• Singles aren't interested in features. They're interested in meeting other singles.
• Features are not what sell your app its the outcome of what singles can obtain in this case, a connection and a potential relationship or experience.
• Jargon doesn’t sell your app and does not produce any material benefits for single dating. It only sounds good to people in your industry who cheer you on.

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Your AI coaching tool and gamified experience might attract attention (which is good). But that doesn’t mean that you're building a sustainable business that facilitates connection. Features aren't the answer to the dating problem at least not anymore since Tinder has perfected the art of the swipe. There is nothing left here to discover from my perspective. Similarly, Instagram has perfected the art of immersive full-screen content for video and photos. No, future founders, we don’t need 3D dating with a Meta headset. The only problem to be solved for daters in a dating app experience is facilitating access to a pool or pools of single candidates for said dater to meet.

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Full stop.

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‍If features are your only sell, it’s why:

• You’re struggling to raise in a market that doesn’t favour dating apps and your approach.
• You’re having trouble getting singles on your app.
• Your app is losing its credibility in the marketplace.

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‍The Industry’s Biggest Lie

‍The news media in the online dating industry continues to over-hype and under-deliver on critical reporting of online dating. Every week, I see articles glamorizing another carbon copy of Tinder, Hinge, or Bumble—or paid coverage of yet another niche app (Kink, Vegan, Farmer, etc.) that is, of course, "set to revolutionize the industry." Please stop these baseless claims. Founders, you’re just as guilty. Selling the dream to get traction. Most of you won’t even make it to your next raise or if you have raised are you profitable? And I say this with love—if you know me, you know I’ve been in this space a long time, and I deeply care about it.

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I have never seen an industry so obsessed with jargon and empty promises. This is for me an indicator of how empty it' become in terms of providing the actual people were serving with value-singles. Yes there are lots of good founders in the space too and it's not all bad but there is a collective response that needs to be rallied to shift the current climate from its downward spiral.

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Matchmakers & Dating Coaches—You’re Part of This, Too

Matchmakers and dating coaches have contributed to this climate.

• Most singles have no idea what a matchmaker actually does, and matchmakers struggle to showcase what the experience is like for paying clients.
• The singles who do know are often skeptical about paying for matchmaking.
• Yet, I don't deny Matchmakers are needed and can reshape the online dating space.

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Matchmakers, Dating apps aren’t your enemy and dating apps, Matchmakers aren’t the enemy of dating apps. Both can and should coexist. Both can work together to reshape this industry and need to stop hosting roundtable debates of dating apps versus matchmakers. If the real goal is connection—not just retention rates or upsells—then the North Star metric for both should be this: How many successful relationships have been created via dating apps and matchmakers?

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What Everyone Is Missing

‍Now, what's being missed in all the over-hype of the online dating experience is not something a feature solves. It's examining closely what's going on in the social and cultural current of society across social platforms and the experience, behaviours and speech of the singles that you are aiming to speak to and attract as singles to your dating app regardless of nationality, age, economic status and so on. If you look closely, something is sitting in plain sight that no one is picking up on. Well, not no one.

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Day 1

This is day 1 of documenting the journey of building not another dating app or social group—it’s something so simple, you might laugh when you see it. And yet, I couldn’t see it until I spent 10000+ hours in the trenches, learning the online dating space, building a video dating app, talking to thousands of daters, then building my marketing and branding agency that works with dating apps, matchmakers, and dating coaches, all over the world. I've thought long and hard about the problem of connection and discovered something.

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‍Enter Spheres.

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The journey begins, follow along for weekly blogs and vlogs as my team and I build the future of connection.