2. If you could change dating…
• “I wish people were more truthful and
also more open to hearing the truth.”
• “More honesty and less ghosting”
• “There is a lack of communication
between people regarding what they
want and value.”
14. Anna’s
Response
He could always make
me laugh. His hair and
aviator sunglasses were
so dreamy. I was
crushing on him for a
year before we actually
started talking.
She was beautiful and
fun and we seemed to
get along right from the
beginning. She laughed
at my dumb jokes and
had a personality that
intrigued me.
Deryk’s
Response
What did you like the most
about the person you dated?
16. Market Landscape
• $2.4 billion dollar market
• 22 million Tinder
matches per day - CNN
• Over 35 million
Americans use online
dating *
• No direct competition
*Pew Research 2015
17. 1st Year Projected Financials
COSTS:
Developers: 150k
Marketing: 40k
UX Designers: 25k
Legal: 15k
Product Managers/CEO: 0
Customer Support: 0
Rent: 0
Total: $230,000
Revenue Model: Freemium model for 1st year with goal to
sell to existing dating app
Zach and Cindy both actively use online dating and we’ve both had similar pain points. We wanted to see what others felt so we interviewed and surveyed various people and asked them if they could change dating what would they change, and these were some of the responses we got.
As we can see there is a repeating theme of wanting more open communication
Which leads us to the problem: There is poor communication in dating and this causes ghosting, lack of closure and insufficient feedback
To validate that this was a problem, we tried various methods including surveys, using social media, engaging people via dating apps and guerrilla marketing.
For the survey we wanted to understand dating pain points regarding closure and feedback so we placed a link to the survey on Reddit and received over 280 respondents primarily
from the 18-30 year old, heterosexual demographic
And from all over the country and world (i.e. Toronto, Australia, Amsterdam, UK, Singapore)
Over 82% of people would want to know why someone was not interested in them
Over 70% would want to know the truth
And from this survey, 56 people provided emails for additional information and to beta test
We then we used Tinder and OKC to individually reach out to users. We engaged 100 Tinder users and 50 OKC users to ask them about their thoughts on ghosting and feedback. 80% of these users responded.
We also used social media such as Facebook and Instagram to gauge interest.
Next we created a landing page on Squarespace with a short description of the problem to gauge and track interest and followed the analytics. In total, we have had nearly 300 visitors.
Lastly, to advertise our landing page and further validate the problem we used guerrilla marketing by
handing out flyers personally in the Embarcadero and near GA
posting flyers surrounding GA with our web page and email address
From this we received emails from a tech reporter at the SF Chronicle and a reporter of PhillyVoice expressing their interest
http://www.beigenotes.com/
WHAT IS BEIGE NOTES
We'll ask the hard questions about your date so you don't have to. With these answers you will better understand your date's motives, receive feedback, learn tips for future dates and gain closure.
HOW DO WE DO THIS.
1. We provide you & your date with questions
2. You both answer the questions.
3. when we've heard from both sides, we’ll share answers
To validate the solution, we used various methods including dog fooding, wizard of ozing, making a clickable prototype and testing out our web app by offering starbucks gift cards to people on the street
Cindy reached out and experimented with her own dates and was able to get 25% of her dates to fill out reviews on her.
Of these people, she then reached out to do a follow up interview. One of her dates participated and said that he was curious to learn more about the app.
Another date which did not go well asked if we needed help.
We built a landing page on square space and created the surveys on Typeform. We then emailed the ~60 people from our Reddit surveyed who asked for additional information to see who would be willing to participate.
2 couples successfully completed the feedback loop - one of these couples was Anna & Deryk
Here is a snapshot of their answers to one of the questions
From our perspective we really enjoyed their sweet answers
4 mins
Competition
People
Lulu
Binder
What Went Wrong
Developers: 150k (1 developer full time , 1 developer part time—Average software engineer makes 100k annual salary)
UX Designers: 25k ( 1 consulting ux designer— 90k average annual salary)
Product Managers/CEO: 0 (2 founders are CEO’s—assume no pay for 1st year)
Customer Support: 0 (PM’s also focus on customer support to start)
Marketing: 40k (Using the general rules of thumb, calculate your company’s ideal marketing budget below: Total Revenue x 5% = Marketing budget required to maintain current awareness and visibility Total Revenue x 10% = Marketing budget required to grow and gain market share)
Legal: 15k (representation retainer)
Rent: 0 (founders apartment)
Food & Drink: 0 (BYOF&D)
1) Tinder integration - we built clickable prototype for this but we can target dating apps to integrate this feature into them
2) Dating Coach/ Mediator - for couples in relationships and giving advice when someone doesn’t respond
3) Build out a dating app where users are required to give feedback on dates
4) Build out platform for people to browse stories and reach out to people whose stories they like for a date