Mingout is the world’s first true dating app. Here’s the story.
December 14: Do you know how dating apps make money? Through people’s loneliness.
Imagine a shampoo – that makes your hair awesome. Because you want your hair to be awesome every day, you continue using the shampoo regularly. The company makes money BECAUSE you were happy.
Now take a dating app today. You start swiping, find a good match, and the two of you hit it off. You don’t need the app anymore. So you uninstall it. Thus, even though the app made you happy, you won’t give them money.
And that’s why today’s dating apps want you to be unhappy. Because if you find happiness early on, your Life Time Value in revenue terms decreases. But if you’re lonely, you’ll pay up.
And that’s because what they provide are ‘matches’, not dates. This is where the founders of Mingout decided to disrupt dating.
“During the pandemic times of 2020, a lot of people had started feeling lonely. Several friends had begun having anxiety and sadness, driven by a total lack of social interaction. More importantly, there was a complete lack of romance in the lives of people our age.” says Harshveer (who runs the popular Instagram page storysellercomics). “So we got together and started arranging virtual events where you could meet new people. We hosted online art workshops, storytelling sessions, concerts and whatnot. We called these events Fridates – a virtual blind date with someone you share a common interest with on every Friday 8 PM. In all, we connected about 500 people to each other over a common interest.”
“People loved these dates! You were doing something fun with someone who was interested in your idea of fun as well. There were instant connections, chemistry and in at least one case (we know because we were invited to the wedding!), a happily ever after.” adds Navdeep, co-founder and wing person in chief.
“And it was such a thrill! To see so many happy people messaging us, sharing their stories, and having fun in an otherwise morbid time was quite refreshing. So we thought about trying to build an app out of this.” – Devanshu, who heads product development.
But there are a million dating apps in the market – how is Mingout different? By doing exactly what dating apps promise but don’t actually do, i.e. help people date.
Apps today are built for matching – you swipe, and you ‘match’ with a person. What then? Conversations fizzle out, people get bored, and you end up just collecting zombie matches. But after enabling hundreds of dates in 2020, the founders of Mingout realized one thing – matching isn’t enough. There’s a lot more that goes into dating than just window shopping on profile pictures. And that’s when they decided to bring the ‘date’ back into ‘dating’.
The product is built around the idea that the business will make money when you are happy. Because even though you may match just once, you go on dates more often. And that’s the revenue – your happiness is the business’s incentive, not your loneliness.
Because with Mingout, you are not just finding ‘matches’. You are experiencing ‘dates’. And with added layers for safety and self-discovery, Mingout wants to make sure that you go on nice, happy dates. Doing things you love, with a hint of romance.
And that’s the value proposition – no complications, no over the top promises of finding your soulmate or forever after. Mingout offers something simple but the most important ingredient of any romantic journey.
A better first date.
Vijay Singh
