What I Learned About the Business of Dating Apps After Trying to Build One
Your goal is love, but what exactly is their goal?
I was once the executive assistant to the CEO of a tech conglomerate. One day, my boss came to me with a fun idea: Create a dating app, and make it gain enough traction for the big guns to buy him out.
“Fun way to make a small fortune!” he buoyantly declared. This was my multimillionaire boss’s idea of a side hustle.
In just a few weeks, I hired a team of coders, and off we trampled into the business of love. Since I’m a writer with marketing experience, my boss left the PR to me. I began doing research on other dating apps — how they promote themselves, what companies own which platforms, etc. Then I spoke with some lawyers to find out what companies like ours could and could not legally promise consumers.
Slogans and marketing, but no promises
The first thing I learned was that dating platforms cannot guarantee or promise the following results: that using their service will help you find love, achieve happiness, fall in love, meet someone you like, or find any other type of romantic fulfillment. Instead, marketing teams will try their best to convey a message about romantic connection that will, they hope…
