Meet the founders who are rewriting the rules of attraction
The fact that dating apps are so widely scorned isn't a reason to avoid the category — it's the strongest argument for overhauling it entirely. At Rebuild1, we spoke to a few of the founders who are reinventing and rebuilding the space.
"It's a lot of promises these platforms are making," Sebastian Schmid says of the incumbent apps. He's the founder of Tête-à-Tête, a Madrid-based dating startup prioritising – as the app's name suggests – people meeting face to face.
While his mother came up with the startup's name – "I didn't really like it at the beginning," Schmid says, but the mispronunciations across languages have made him warm to it – the face-to-face focus is his own invention.
“Because when you're requesting to go on a date, you're making a commitment”
Sebastian Schmid, Tête-à-Tête
It works by “getting users to create their own experiences and date proposals", he says, explaining that the platform partners with locations that users are encouraged to use – also as an added safety control. "Then the right people come to them; they're already aligned on where to go, what to do, what time, what day." There's no incessant chatting, endless flirting, or ghosting – because the date is already set.
Because of this intentionality, Tête-à-Tête's users skew older, 30- to 55-year-olds, give or take a few years. "Because when you're requesting to go on a date, you're making a commitment that if that person accepts, you have to show up," he says. So it's more attractive to intentional, committed daters, people who work a lot (and don't have time to chat) and also expats who've just moved somewhere new.
Feels is another dating platform present at Rebuild1. It targets a younger demographic, swapping overdone (and over-curated) dating profiles for Snapchat-style stories, so you can interact with potential matches in the same way you'd reply to a Reel your friend posted. Scrolling, not swiping.
Another dating app, or rather a new social dating concept, is Doubble. The name gives it away, but rather than playing the dating game alone, you get to bring a friend. Doubble the fun?
Then there's Cherrish, a matchmaking membership club to introduce ambitious women to men who aren't intimidated by female success. Bianca Praetorius founded the startup after one of her LinkedIn posts went viral. After speaking to a friend who'd been on a date with a man who kept subtly suggesting she couldn't possibly be good at her job, Bianca had posted her frustrations about the situation. The tidal wave of responses it received motivated her to build a solution.
“We're trying to be the antidote to the swiping, dopamine, consumer behaviour version of dating.”
Bianca Praetorius, Cherrish
Men can only sign up to the platform if they are vouched for by a woman – via a voicenote: "If you can't find a woman to say she trusts you, then maybe go think about it." Everything on the app is audio. Instead of mimicking the male gaze of Tinder and Hinge, the images on the app are blurred out, and only come into focus as a user is listening to an audio recording from their potential match. "We're trying to be the antidote to the swiping, dopamine, consumer behaviour version of dating."
Concept wrapped? Actually not. During Rebuild1, Praetorius engaged with the Prototyping Track to build a first version of the second segment of the app – the part that will ensure the longevity of their business without having to secretly hope members become single again: As people are onboarded onto the app, they'll be asked questions by an AI agent, that will learn everything about them and help them find a match. And when they don't need the matchmaking portion of the app anymore, their profile is deleted, but their AI agent – and their new partner's – will continue to exist.
Now, though, it becomes a relationship coach, armed with all the information it learned about the couple at the start of the process: "It's a safe space you can go to throughout your relationship."