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I develop https://firedating.me https://firedating.me - my hobby project and a place for FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) enthusiasts to find friend

I develop https://firedating.me https://firedating.me - my hobby project and a place for FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) enthusiasts to find friends and a partner. My goal is to help FIRE people build meaningful connections and decrease the amount of loneliness in the community. I don't make any money, instead I've spent around $130 and 400 hours so far. It is actually a lot of fun to learn web development and encounter various unexpected challenges everyday. There are also rewarding aspects - 9 couples, who met through the site, have reached out to me and were grateful. This feeling of changing people's lives in this way is amazing! I have no clue where this brings me, but I enjoy it so much. I try to spend at least 1.5 hours a day in 2021. In 2020 I had a goal to spend at a least 1 hour a day on my side projects and that's how firedating was born ;)

nelsonmandela 6y ago
What made you decide to show the ratio of male:female?
- cm2012 6y ago
  At 1/3 I think it's smart. I would have assumed a much worse male to female ratio without that.
  - firedating 6y ago
    I agree, I was also assuming a worse ratio. However, I tried comparing this with other dating sites and they report better ratios. At the same time, I suspect that FIRE community might be biased towards males (even though I heard that majority of Mr Money Mustache followers are women).
- galfarragem 6y ago
  It's a really smart move regarding sustainable growth. Males will refrain of signing up without an "healthy" ratio. Not doing it would just cause early abandonments and decrease goodwill. Everybody wins.
  - firedating 6y ago
    I personally perceived this as a signaling to female users to motivate them to join more. But the way you phrase this is also interesting. To be fair, the ratio was not public at the very beginning.
- firedating 6y ago
  To be honest, everyone was always asking for this. I already had a public stats page back then, so it was very easy to just include it there (to save my time calculating this manually).
atlgator 6y ago
Dude! I’m in!
- firedating 6y ago
  Happy dating and let the FIRE be in your heart!
h0h0h0h0111 6y ago
I love your analytics page! So cool to have a transparent view of what's going on on a website
- firedating 6y ago
  Thank you! I value transparency and happily share stats and why I make specific decisions. I've got an idea of such "open" page from levelsio's https://nomadlist.com/open https://nomadlist.com/open.
myroon5 6y ago
Any chance of open sourcing the code for others to contribute as well?
- firedating 6y ago
  To be honest, I am not sure whether engineering is a bottle neck as of now. Site's functionality has actually pretty much converged and it already works. Full blown open sourcing seems like a large endeavor and I just spend 1.5 hours a day. I tried finding collaborators, but unfortunately people just get busy with time and don't contribute. If you are interested to collaborate (Django/Python) or have specific ideas/advice on open sourcing, I would appreciate to discuss more (https://firedating.me/feedback https://firedating.me/feedback). My previous experience was that it was taking more of my time to collaborate than to do stuff on my own. I agree that this might change and that's why I am open to explore :)
szopa 6y ago
This is the sweetest and most wholesome thing I've seen in a very long time. Kudos to you!
- firedating 6y ago
  Thank you for your kind words! I definitely remember the first 3 months of development when I had 0 users and how it felt. I appreciate your support!
albertgoeswoof 6y ago
oh wow, this is peak FIRE Each to their own I guess!
asdev 6y ago
how did you get your initial users?
- firedating 6y ago
  I've got an idea during a FIRE meetup, so there was already initial interest (~10 people). Once I had the site running, I made a post on Reddit and people just joined. In 1.5 months around 500 users joined (there is a graph here: https://firedating.me/open/ https://firedating.me/open/). It was indeed a chicken and an egg problem, because a dating site without users provides 0 value. Fortunately, people joined even despite this. Nowadays, it is much easier. Just saying "we are 2800 users" is already much more convincing.

nelsonmandela 6y ago

What made you decide to show the ratio of male:female?

cm2012 6y ago
At 1/3 I think it's smart. I would have assumed a much worse male to female ratio without that.
- firedating 6y ago
  I agree, I was also assuming a worse ratio. However, I tried comparing this with other dating sites and they report better ratios. At the same time, I suspect that FIRE community might be biased towards males (even though I heard that majority of Mr Money Mustache followers are women).
galfarragem 6y ago
It's a really smart move regarding sustainable growth. Males will refrain of signing up without an "healthy" ratio. Not doing it would just cause early abandonments and decrease goodwill. Everybody wins.
- firedating 6y ago
  I personally perceived this as a signaling to female users to motivate them to join more. But the way you phrase this is also interesting. To be fair, the ratio was not public at the very beginning.
firedating 6y ago
To be honest, everyone was always asking for this. I already had a public stats page back then, so it was very easy to just include it there (to save my time calculating this manually).

atlgator 6y ago

Dude! I’m in!

firedating 6y ago
Happy dating and let the FIRE be in your heart!

h0h0h0h0111 6y ago

I love your analytics page! So cool to have a transparent view of what's going on on a website

firedating 6y ago
Thank you! I value transparency and happily share stats and why I make specific decisions. I've got an idea of such "open" page from levelsio's https://nomadlist.com/open https://nomadlist.com/open.

myroon5 6y ago

Any chance of open sourcing the code for others to contribute as well?

firedating 6y ago
To be honest, I am not sure whether engineering is a bottle neck as of now. Site's functionality has actually pretty much converged and it already works. Full blown open sourcing seems like a large endeavor and I just spend 1.5 hours a day. I tried finding collaborators, but unfortunately people just get busy with time and don't contribute. If you are interested to collaborate (Django/Python) or have specific ideas/advice on open sourcing, I would appreciate to discuss more (https://firedating.me/feedback https://firedating.me/feedback). My previous experience was that it was taking more of my time to collaborate than to do stuff on my own. I agree that this might change and that's why I am open to explore :)

szopa 6y ago

This is the sweetest and most wholesome thing I've seen in a very long time. Kudos to you!

firedating 6y ago
Thank you for your kind words! I definitely remember the first 3 months of development when I had 0 users and how it felt. I appreciate your support!

albertgoeswoof 6y ago

oh wow, this is peak FIRE Each to their own I guess!

asdev 6y ago

how did you get your initial users?

firedating 6y ago
I've got an idea during a FIRE meetup, so there was already initial interest (~10 people). Once I had the site running, I made a post on Reddit and people just joined. In 1.5 months around 500 users joined (there is a graph here: https://firedating.me/open/ https://firedating.me/open/). It was indeed a chicken and an egg problem, because a dating site without users provides 0 value. Fortunately, people joined even despite this. Nowadays, it is much easier. Just saying "we are 2800 users" is already much more convincing.