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Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet
Hey HN!
Ryan and Shaz here. We’re building muzmatch (https://muzmatch.com https://muzmatch.com), an app that helps single Muslims meet their partner. We refer to ourselves as a dating app largely for SEO but the reality is our users don’t tend to date, they marry!
Marriage is central to many Muslims’ upbringings and ethnic, family, and religious pressures make it a difficult search. The casual Western apps don’t cater for this market and the existing Islam-specific offerings are outdated, ineffective websites.
As a practising Muslim, Shaz experienced this problem firsthand. He quit a 10 year career in banking to write and release an MVP back in April ’15. With promising traction, he found me (Ryan) on LinkedIn in the then New Year. It was clear it could be a massive opportunity but I believed it needed to broaden its appeal (then it was as an ultra serious marriage service) and modernise its branding/marketing to position it for the new generation: this seemed like a great challenge!
We’ve tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic’s culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:
- Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations
- Full privacy: Users can blur their photos and use a nickname to remain anonymous to friends and family
- Fully verified: All manually approved, Selfie, GPS, and SMS verified users
- Relevant: Profile information that matters to many in their search, like Islamic, sect, and ethnicity filters
We’re now ~2 years in with 200,000 users and are thrilled to have helped over 6,000 find their partner.
We’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
- fwrt3w4s 9y agoDoes the App allow "marrying" multiple wives? (This is allowed in Islam)! We need this feature.
- plandis 9y ago"We welcome Walis. Women can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind." That seems incredibly sexist to me. Women need a guardian, wtf...
- JessOpearlo 9y agoHow many marriages have happened through your app our of interest?
- rotemy 9y agoI think I remember, something like 6000, right?
- brod_ie 9y agoClose! 6,000 couples have met here and left muzmatch with 600 now confirmed to be married
- brod_ie 9y agoWe've had 600 confirmed weddings and 6,000 couples leave after finding each other within the app We think the former is likely higher too as many choose to keep it private
- Cenk 9y agoLink for the lazy: https://muzmatch.com https://muzmatch.com
- dang 9y agoAdded above. Thanks!
- rexicus 9y ago> You must be at least 17 years of age to access and use the Service. That's too old for Muslim men.
- cheez 9y agoUgh.
- notamy 9y agoSeriously? Ugh. There's no need to be like this.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoComments like this do not belong on HN. Please discuss constructively.
- dearsaturn 9y agoPlease refrain from being an asshole.
- sctb 9y agoWe've banned this account for violating the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- philsit 9y agoGreat market. You should look for some help with the copy writing. I had to read some sentences twice.
- navalsaini 9y agoPretty cool guys. I can see from the play store comments that your users love the app. Best wishes. Whats 'Halal, free, and fun'? Whats you tech stack like?
- navalsaini 9y agoA few harsh comments in play store are interesting too :p and many downvotes are because there are in-app purchases. Seems to be quite a problem with play store. They should have an algorithm or UX flow to weed out such reviews.
- brod_ie 9y agoI know right! We began monetising in March but our existing features remained completely free, you wouldn't think that from the reviews though
- navalsaini 9y agoAnd what is the reason for not having a teaser video? I hear they improve the download rates.
- brod_ie 9y agoAbsolutely, look out for one in 3.5
- brod_ie 9y agoThank you! Halal being "ok" Islamically, free as the old competition are very expensive, and fun so the process sounds noncommittal (many are put off by fearing being rushed into something they're not necessarily ready for) It's a LEMP stack heavily utilising Memcached for performance and XMPP for real time functionality
- frik 9y agoHow have you initially launched it so hat it got traction? Sending mails to your friends? at an event? posting in FB group?
- nrclark 9y agoHow does the Wali part work? do you employ conversation reviewers? Does one dater recruit an outside person?
- anindha 9y agoDating apps right now feel a little like pre-Facebook social networks. There is one for every niche. I wonder why there isn't a platform for single people where dating companies are just apps on top of the platform. Seems like bad user experience that a user needs to maintain multiple accounts. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but I think the really big company in this space will be a platform for single people.
- detroitcoder 9y agoYou mean facebook?
- losteric 9y agoFacebook doesn't have open APIs and blatantly opposes non-advertising extensions
- anindha 9y agoFacebook login works fairly well to grab data once.
- anindha 9y agoThis is a good point! Most dating apps have Facebook login and grab a bunch of information from Facebook. Maybe this platform for single people grabs data from Facebook. I like the idea of having LinkedIn and not just adding all my work contacts on Facebook. I want to be sure that the information I share on the dating platform and Facebook don't mix too easily. Curating my Facebook data once when signing up to a dating app is fine.
- navalsaini 9y agoDifferent dating apps cater to different mindsets towards dating. Some ban pictures in favor of words; while others only work if you have great pictures; then others want one to mention their annual income ranges.
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- fwrt3w4s 9y agoAlso, do you allow other religions to use the App? Why? why not?
- biztos 9y agoThis looks like a really good idea. I wonder if there is a wider opportunity beyond the Muslim-specific context for some kind of Anti-Tinder. Out of curiosity, how does "all profiles being verified manually" scale?
- brod_ie 9y agoThank you It definitely keeps us busy 24/7 but we've built some internal tools to make this as quick and efficient as possible We're definitely nearing the point of needing a dedicated Community Manager to take over this function
- fwrt3w4s 9y agoI wholeheartedly approve of this approach to move Muslims out of the conservative mold. I have lived in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Dubai. The younger generating need a way to move past the older people's restrictions which were put in place 100's of years ago.
- bathtub 9y agoI am not happy about such ideas and usually don't use explicit words on HN but this startup is a bit off for a YC startup. It's surprising that a well-known fund invests in such a venture. Why do you want to keep people from specific religions stick together? It's for a society always better if groups mix instead of a ghettoization. I know that still many try to stay with their people which is totally fine but why enforcing it? You write yourself that there is a strong 'religious pressure'. With your product you make this pressure even worse. Oh I have to find someody of my religion and skin color, everything else is forbidden. It's not, it's 2017. It's just not right. Imagine I make tomorrow a dating app for white Christians. Just with this description, I exclude other religions and skin colors and probably imply that those folks are inferior, you get it? The biggest issue that all people who look like your target demo suffer from these stereotypes you create and enforce. Oh look at this dark skin guy, he probably looks for a wife wearing a headscarf 24/7, doesn't eat pork and prays on a carpet five times a day. Nothing bad about this lifestyle, it's a totally fine way of living which I respect, but please do not create stereotypes. There are many of your target demo who are happily fine to marry someone not from their religion. And dating as a business is super though (eg banned by FB Ads) and since Tinder almost impossible. Unsure about your growth potential. Religous folks still use traditional ways (parents and co) and the other use traditional dating apps. And2: Paul himself wrote himself many times, do not do dating. Why does YC still do dating?
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- colmvp 9y agoIf you made an app just for white Christians, as a non-white non-Christian I'd be fine with it because it saves me from having to a) look at their profile, b) potentially get matched up with them, and c) waste my time. Chances are they want someone who shares a lot of their same beliefs and more importantly want someone faithful to God. Like it or not, people have preferences. A few year ago, I joined Match. You know how many of my 'matches' explicitly stated they don't want to date my ethnicity and only want to date their own? A lot. Then I joined CoffeeMeetsBagel. And while I never explicitly mentioned a preferred ethnicity, they kept matching me up with women of my own ethnicity despite the fact that 50% of the people in my city are not my ethnicity. Again, how much of that is women explicitly stating they don't want to be matched up to men of my ethnicity? My point is that even though some apps have a generalized population, the idea of intermingling is a minority. In the U.S. I think interracial marriages are like 10% of all total marriages. And religion has way more differences in terms of life style and philosophy than ethnicity.
- botrot 9y agoIn terms of gender, I am fluid. Does muzmatch have plans to support additional gender options? The current format only allows "Male" or "Female".
- Cenk 9y agoYeah, this should be an option
- leesalminen 9y agoDoes the religion allow for this? Not sure that it does.
- botrot 9y agoI don't think this is the place for a discussion on theology. Might I suggest a slightly different question: do gay and gender fluid Muslims exist? The answer is clearly yes. One need not go far to see stories of extremist groups throwing them off of buildings for being so. So, this leads to my original question of whether the product will enable this. I'd hate (probably too strong of a word) to see a product get awesome HN coverage that actively works against ('discriminate') LGBTQX folks. @abbasiddartha > beat me to it. I agree.
- xupybd 9y agoThey are serving a narrow niche. I don't think you can term that discrimination. Perhaps if You see a business opportunity you could create an app that serves the Muslim LGBTQX community?
- 1123581321 9y agoCommenting on the wali/chaperone feature: I'm actually surprised that MuzMatch is the first network I've seen with support for unobtrusive third parties in conversations. I think there might be a general business opportunity there if they execute the limited dating application well. CCing/BCCing in a business setting is a limited communication management tool vulnerable to political distractions. Idling in chat is unproductive.
- brod_ie 9y agoTotally Don't get me started on email..!
- praneshp 9y agoNice service! Is the "Wali" a human being? If yes, how will that scale?
- newscracker 9y agoIt'll be a verified email address that the member selects, to whom the chat transcripts are sent. [1] > How do I include a Wali or Guardian on muzmatch? > We want muzmatch to be a Halal and safe place for all our members to find their partner. > Women can enter a Wali or Guardian's email address in Menu → Settings to give them extra peace of mind. > Once their email has been confirmed they’ll receive weekly transcripts of your Chats on muzmatch. [1]: https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or-guardian-on-muzmatch https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or-guardian...
- fwrt3w4s 9y agoWhy cant men also request a Wali? I am not being a pain point here.. Just pointing out that Men might get scammed too.. and might need a guardian. Please add the feature to avoid gender discrimination - usage by either gender is up to them.
- brod_ie 9y agoIslamically the concept of a Wali applies only to women but we totally agree, this will be expanded to both genders.
- brod_ie 9y agoThanks, I love seeing the FAQ being used! You can probably tell this is our own custom tool, we want to build more of a community around product Q&A and support in the future.
- tboyd47 9y agoMy wife is a user of this app (she has used to to help her sisters look for husbands) and so far I think it's a good product. You were wise to include the wali/chaperone option because that is clearly a key feature for many sisters. She always mentions how she's puzzled over the "Always pray / sometimes pray / never pray" options under religious practice. Can you explain your thought process in coming up with those options? I want to say that I can see why your app would be a tremendous challenge from a product development standpoint. What you have as a user base in America are basically a mix of many different immigrant cultures that each have their own idea of Islamic traditional marriage customs - Somalian vs. Arab vs. Indopak vs. West African vs. Cham vs. vs. vs..., as well as clashes between youth & elder viewpoints, as well as a large indigenous (I use the term loosely - we're all immigrants to an extent) American Muslim population as well (something that foreigners usually are shocked to hear - Americans becoming Muslim?! What!!). Do your research well & don't give up I ask Allah to guide you to a product that is beneficial for the Muslims - and also materially successful! Edit: Also, my email address was used at one point as the "wali" contact but I stopped getting digest emails from the conversations inexplicably. You may need tighter QA around that pipeline
- brod_ie 9y agoVery happy to hear that and thank you Absolutely it's a challenge and we're aiming to be as inclusive as possible Interesting, if you email me (ryan@muzmatch.com) I can look into this further for you Thanks again
- tboyd47 9y agoThanks. I think she's taking a break from the searching for now but I'll save your email address in case it happens again.
- bogomipz 9y ago>"We refer to ourselves as a dating app largely for SEO but the reality is our users don’t tend to date, they marry!" If your users "don't tend to date" then why are you optimizing for the word "dating" why not SEO for term "marrying app"? >"We’ve tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic’s culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:" I'm sorry but women having chaperones, blurring photos and filtering by sect and ethnicity doesn't sound very "fun and light" to me.
- Cyph0n 9y agoThe options are available. You are not forced to use them. This way, the app can be used by people of different cultures and beliefs.
- bogomipz 9y agoI understand that the features are optional but the copy reads as stating the app is fun and light and then doesn't go on to list any of the features that make it "fun and light." There is a colon at the end of the third to last sentence that uses the phrase "fun and light" but then those optional features in the hyphenated list that follows are things that most adults don't generally associate with lightheartedness or fun. Perhaps you could describe what the light and fun elements of your app are so as to provide contrast to those other optional restrictive and conservative features?
- brod_ie 9y agoWe found the common terminology is Muslim dating even though the intent is very different, kind of like how the smartphone is simply called "phone" but isn't (largely) used for that purpose All of those features are optional, to most it's very much fun and light
- iloveroasties 9y agoIs there an option to show if someone is a virgin? I'd imagine this would be important to some people.
- igorgue 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itAOGRiYRLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itAOGRiYRLI
- marrone12 9y agoYour hero div has some weird overlap issues in smaller screen heights http://imgur.com/a/yxyHr http://imgur.com/a/yxyHr
- brod_ie 9y agoThank you for bringing this to my attention, I never foresaw such a small vertical to horizontal ratio screen!
- craptocurrency 9y agoFirst I thought it's Music Match.
- craptocurrency 9y ago400M single muslims is a lot!
- funwithjustin 9y agoWho did your icon illustrations? They're great!
- brod_ie 9y agoThanks, I do all of our design but I can't take credit for these other than some colouring and minor alterations, they're from a generic set I bought a while back
- smegel 9y ago> Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations Sounds like a pretty unique feature in the world of chat apps. Were there any technical difficulties in implementing that?
- brod_ie 9y agoGreat question. Not particularly as the current Chaperone system works as an email digest of conversations sent to your confirmed guardian. In the future we want to explore adding full muzmatch account functionality here so the chaperone can sign into the native apps and view conversations in a more realtime manor.
- ashayh 9y agoThe HN description says: "users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations " The site says: _Women_ can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind. Which is correct?
- err4nt 9y agoAs long as some 'users' are also 'women' both can be correct at the same time. I don't necessarily see a conflict between the two statements! :D
- brod_ie 9y agoThe chaperone feature is coming to both genders in the next major version. Historically it was just for women as we used to refer to it as a "Wali" which Islamically is only for this sex
- ramgorur 9y agoAn ex-muslim (hafiz) atheist here, the services for Wali and other stuffs are pretty cool, but I have more suggestions: 1. The minimum age for women subscribers should be made as young as 9 years old. 2. There is already an app that offers muslim polygamy service (http://www.secondwife.com http://www.secondwife.com) which is also pretty cool. But unfortunately it's very difficult to find a service that offers sex slaves, this will be solid addition to your app. 3. A seamless "crowd stoning" service, where the stoning procedures can be shared over the social media. 4. Hassle free assassins hiring for honor killing. 5. Post marriage wife beating consultancy service. 6. Your app can also be used for the muslim LGBT community, you can lure them using your app to fling them off the roof.
- verdverm 9y agoyou could be more respectful
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- knodi 9y agoThat comment made me sad. It was deleted before i could reply to it. So much sweeping hate and judgement.
- dang 9y agoReligious flamewar is not allowed on HN, and this is one of the worst examples I've ever seen. If you post like this again, we will ban you.
- orthoganol 9y agoIt's obviously great from a business perspective, you found a niche and you're serving a community's needs. Kudos for being a smart startup. It's also funny if Ryan isn't actually Muslim... lol. But I mean elephant in the room, I don't like religious institutions or traditional societal norms based in religion, any religion. Goes without saying but it's all on the way out anyways, since we now know magical people who live in the sky or magical books full of the truth of magical people are not actual things, and it's ultimately dividing us, if even just opportunity cost of the world we could build together if there were no magic people making you feel content with how things are, or making you think of some other group as 'others'. So yeah, I don't agree with the app on that level. Sorry to be preachy, since HN is basically my self-indulgent fun of the day when I'm procrastinating from work.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago> Sorry to be preachy Then don't.
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- lorenzorhoades 9y agoI used to agree with you, then I read sapiens and it introduced me into the importance of religion in human development and society.
- orthoganol 9y agoThat's funny because if you look at my recent past comments, one is a review on Sapiens. It's a very preachy low-citation work whose interesting parts are the early chapters, but which you would already know the content of if you had taken a college anthropology class. To address your argument, there is no reason to emulate our pre-historical past, if we even could.
- whatnotests 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgdjRlo36h0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgdjRlo36h0 Good luck with all that.
- frik 9y agoWould be interested in your relaunch 2015+ - how have it got traction? Was it rebranding? How have you got the initial traction? Sending emails to closed real world community? Postings on FB?
- the_common_man 9y agoCan you explain, how you make money? In the play store there are some bad reviews about in-app purchases. What is your pricing and what do you price for? Thanks
- brod_ie 9y agoWe monetised through a mix of In App Purchases for products like Extra Swipes (see more profiles daily) and Instant Match (guaranteed to be seen to a soecified user) as well as a Premium subscription offering that includes some supplemental features as well as bundles of the IAPs. People don't always like the realities of the app economy but in truth we didn't monetise anything that was previously free. The free product is still as functional as ever. We modify pricing from time to time, you can see these in-app and in-stores, thanks.
- turbinerneiter 9y agoThe two biggest problems (Europe has) with the integration of Muslims in our society are our societies prejudice and the forming of parallel society by the immigrants, leaving them isolated from the greater society they are supposed to join. How do you address this issue? After all, this app could be seen as reinforcement of the stereotype that Muslims do not want to mix with non-Muslims. And, to be honest, having "Islamic, sect, and ethnicity filters" - this sounds just wrong to me. Do other dating apps have ethnicity filters, too?
- Oras 9y agoAn important point indeed regarding isolation but just in case you don't know, Islam prevents muslim women from marrying non muslims and I guess this is the main issue. For men, it's fine to marry Christian or Jewish woman.
- celticninja 9y agoi think its fine for men if the wife joins Islam or at the least the children are brought up in the islamic faith.
- johnpython 9y ago> The two biggest problems (Europe has) with the integration of Muslims in our society are our societies prejudice and the forming of parallel society by the immigrants, leaving them isolated from the greater society they are supposed to join. Why are Muslims integrating well in US and Canada, but not Europe? Perhaps it has more to do with bigotry and lack of opportunity afforded to them rather than refusal to integrate. > After all, this app could be seen as reinforcement of the stereotype that Muslims do not want to mix with non-Muslims. A Muslim wanting to marry another Muslim means they don't want to mix with non-Muslims? > Do other dating apps have ethnicity filters, too? Are people not allowed to have preferences? Muslims are a very diverse group and this sounds like a feature many would want.
- turbinerneiter 9y agoImmigration in the US and Canada works very differently than in Europe. Our immigration mostly comes from refugees, not carefully selected people with good education like in the US. In Germany, we also took in about one million people in a single year, which is not exactly something anyone knows how to handle right. And we are not doing a good job I think. Also, I included prejudice in my first sentence. I never said anything putting the blame solely on the immigrants. But I also live in country where some immigrants managed to not learn the language even after 30, 40 years. The US and Canada doesn't even allow people in unless they prove command of language. Also, none of my questions were meant to pass ultimate judgement. Muslims wanting to marry Muslims doesn't mean anything much. But I think it's fair to bring up the point and think about how this relates to white people opposing mixed-race marriage. I honestly don't have a problem with this app, but there are aspects that can be problematic. That's why I'm playing devil's advocate to extract more information. And given the LGTB-positive answer of one of the founders to another question here, I'm basically already convinced that they are doing the right things. Now, I won't deny that there is subconscious bias at play and there is a good chance that I wouldn't have seen any problems if it was different kind of group-specific app.
- MarkMc 9y agoInteresting that you seem to have gained traction even though your competition has been around for 10 years or more. Good luck!
- brod_ie 9y agoThank you! The older the company (typically) the harder and slower it is to innovate, we think they've completely missed to opportunities smartphone present.
- teej 9y agoI'm annoyed that you came in, advertised your product, took up front page space, and didn't bother to answer any of the interesting questions. I feel as if you are taking from the community and not giving back.
- brod_ie 9y agoSorry to hear that, I thought I chimed in on most topics! All hands on deck for demo day, having another read through now