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Why we dropped out of Yale to start a dating website
- engtech 15y agoI couldn't find a way to comment on the blog post or a way to contact the author: "Diving into online dating - it’s not a zero sum game Online dating is hear to stay," typo, should be "here to stay"
- CJM13 15y agoFixed! Thanks! You can email us at Chris@thislooksfun.com or Greg@thislooksfun.com
- jemka 15y ago>“Current dating sites suck … an undergrad could build something better as a class project.” ~Paul Graham from his essay, How To Start a Startup >we decided to take PG’s advice a bit further and take time off of school. A lot has changed in the online dating world. Hopefully they have a better argument than a 6 year old quote from one person, albeit being from PG.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- GGNH 15y agoWe've recognized some of the changes that have occurred, but think we can change it even more. Thanks for the feedback!
- steve-howard 15y agoI imagine that "dating sites suck" is a way of saying "it's really hard to make a dating site that works for people." Sure, lots has changed in the dating world, but I would not be surprised if there is substantial room for improvement for a long time to come.
- CJM13 15y agoThere is definitely room for a ton of innovation and improvement in the online dating industry. Online dating isn't going anywhere and will continue to grow. Social networks and dating sites can be a great way to meet new people. We want to limit the online interaction and have people share an offline experience together as soon as possible. The artificial contact that current online dating platforms provide cannot replace the interpersonal connection that happens in the real life.
- ashconnor 15y agoI think OKCupid pretty much nails online dating. I even mulled a dating project myself but they'd be hard to beat.
- jluan 15y agoWere you guys onstage for Office Hours at Startup School?
- jeffchuber 15y agoBe sure to get a fantastic front-end engineer/designer on board. It strikes me the online dating space more needs better design than algorithms. (even OKcupid is just OK. pun intended)
- jcfrei 15y agowishing you guys all the best - but you've probably picked one of the most difficult business models imaginable. building a user base for a dating site is even harder than building a new social network and competing against giants like match.com is gonna be very difficult. my advice; try to appeal to a niche segment - don't target the masses. as far as I can tell online dating sites aren't broken, it's in most cases just a lemons market.
- CJM13 15y agoThanks for the comment/advice!
- MatthewB 15y agoI had this exact same idea about 8 months ago - connecting singles around events. I was a little more focused on bringing local businesses into the mix to promote the events though. I thought through it quite and bit and my conclusion was that it doesn't really differ much from a singles night. An app that made facilitating a singles night easier is a pretty solid idea, however, selling it as a dating website is not the right way to go in my opinion. The main demographic for dating websites has always been men. The problem with trying to put together a singles night is that the main value proposition (women) is difficult to come by with an online dating website. Additionally, a lot of people who try dating websites are there for a few main reasons: 1) they are too busy to go out and meet people 2) they are too shy to go out to meet people. Either way, this solution doesn't solve those problems. I actually built out a good portion of the backend of this product but have since pivoted into something different. They also will run into the chicken and egg issue, although with a little facebook marketing that's pretty easy to solve.
- CJM13 15y agoWe appreciate the feedback! Like every dating site we will have to address the chicken and egg problem of getting a solid user base (particularly women). However we are working on some clever ways to attract women to the site. More specifically we are developing a matchmaking component which will allow users to pick out dates for their friends and decide not only who their friend goes out with but also what they do. Thanks for the comment!
- moreorless 15y agoFree cupcakes for the fairer sex that sign up. Chicks love cupcakes.
- commanda 15y agoIs it true that there is a dearth of women in online dating sites in general? If so, where did you see that info? Or is that an assumption you're working from based on the gender ratio in bars/clubs?
- knuspermuesli 15y agoHow is this really different than HowAboutWe?
- GGNH 15y agoWe differ from HowAboutWe in that we're going to offer prearranged events for our users. We want them to avoid decision paralysis when picking a date or date idea, so we give them something fun, tested, and popular to try while meeting someone new who wants to do the same thing.
- kyledr 15y agoTheir site http://thislooksfun.com/ http://thislooksfun.com/ is currently unimpressive. It's noticeably slow on my broadband connection. Why? Huge background images changing on a relatively quick timer (sizes as large as 4.5mb, 7.56mb). It's just an email gathering page, but a few minutes spent in an image editing program would give a much better first impression.
- BlackJack 15y agoMy suitemates and I (BR '14) were talking about what it would be like to drop out of Yale. We realized that the school would pretty much take you back whenever as long as you were doing something cool in the spare time. That's a really nice "psuedo-assurance" to have imo. Best of luck fellas!
- GGNH 15y agoThanks! Would love to connect if you're interested in knowing more. Shoot us an email!
- akavi 15y agoYeah, Yale makes this sort of thing a LOT easier than many schools thanks to how generous its leave policy is. The math would be a lot different for a school where dropping out meant losing your seat entirely.
- jluan 15y agoI have to disagree on this one -- Yale's policy actually really sucks. I am currently taking time off, and was told that not only must I take course credits from an outside school to get readmitted from a personal withdrawal, but also have to go through an abridged re-application process. A lot of time commitments and question marks there.
- adrianwaj 15y agoI think it'd be smarter to put groups of people together and send them to events or create events for it. So long as the ratios are even, or could be set. The advantage of groups is that it's not a make or break situation, like a 1-on-1. And groups of friends can be matched with other groups of friends.
- vaksel 15y agodating is really a niche that's more or less guaranteed slow growth, taking time off from school to pursue something this generic doesn't strike me as smart...since you'll spend a ton of time waiting for your user numbers to climb.
- dmix 15y agoThat's a bit of a fallacy to assume that more time = more users. User growth doesn't happen by itself because you have a product out (outside of the rare viral hit). It takes months of hard work and focus to build a user base.
- jsavimbi 15y agomonths of hard work that should be spent hitting the books, learning something about the world and gaining the experience required in order to properly provide a solution for educated and experienced people over the age of thirty who can spot an immature product with their laptop closed. I'm not saying there isn't a market for lbs dating sites, what I am saying that from what I'm reading it appears that a couple of intelligent people are dropping out of school at a young age to pursue what amounts to some low-hanging fruit.
- CJM13 15y agoWe decided to take time off from school because we wanted to fully commit to whatever idea we pursued. We realized that we could not create something meaningful in our spare time. It has already been a tremendous learning experience and we don't regret our decision.
- ilamparithi 15y ago"Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem." From http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- helipad 15y agoDating sites don't inherently suck. OKCupid is actually an amazing website. The problem, as always, is there will always, always be more men seeking women. I'd like to see what would happen if a dating site somehow tried to keep the ratio of men to women more appealing to both sexes.
- jcfrei 15y agothere's likely a deeply rooted social and demographical reason for the skewed ratio, which is probably impossible to change. in the western society women till age 30 are usually the ones who choose their partner and not men - hence there's less of a need to join a dating site. interestingly this switches somewhere around 35-40, after which men are in a better position (ironically in part because men have a shorter life expectancy).
- noodle 15y ago> The problem, as always, is there will always, always be more men seeking women. i don't think this is the case, exactly. after talking to people about it, the issue seems to be that men are just more aggressive about it, which turns away a significant segment of women. the women are out there, some just don't like putting up with the crap they get on dating sites.
- michaelchisari 15y agothe issue seems to be that men are just more aggressive about it If that's the case, then it would be interesting if a site like OKCupid had a limit on the number of emails per day a straight guy could send to a straight woman. Say, only one every few days. That would require male users to think very carefully about who they email. It's an arbitrary thing, but it would be interesting to see how the dynamic changes.
- noodle 15y agoagreed. i've always thought that an interesting idea to try would be to create a (mostly) zero sum dating system where you have to respond to people in order to initiate conversations with others. it de-incentivizes sending rapid-fire copy/pasted messages as well as completely ignoring messages. levels things out a bit.
- damonpace 15y agoGood luck guys...don't let all the negative comments get you down. Power through and stay on task.
- GGNH 15y agoThanks. We really think that you have to be an unflinching optimist to be an entrepreneur!
- rayk 15y agoDeveloping this space as a college undergrad means you should be able to do some things really well. Event planning, for one, seems like something people in their mid or early-twenties could disrupt. It'll be interesting to see how your perspective translates to older users. Especially because you can't dogfood a dating site (even OkCupid's founders never used it). Good luck!
- CJM13 15y agoThanks for the comment! We're gathering a lot of different events that cover a variety of interests, so we're hoping that we will have something to offer for everyone.
- rsheth 15y agoguys - your "tweet this" link is broken. Once I sign up thro the pop up, it goes to a dead page. Look fw to it though.
- bravenewdude 15y agoDo you know about the Yale Entrepreneurship Institute's incubator program. Just do the summer incubation program, and see what happens. Dropping out is risky.
- PureSin 15y agoHi, just signed up to try your website. 2 comments: 1) the text box does not display underscore (_). A lot of emails contains _ character, so it could confuse ppl. 2) You should implement a 404 page. instead of the current error page when you go to thislooksgood.com/[xx]
- breathesalt 15y ago...teach ourselves how to code How are you guys going about doing this?
- CJM13 15y agoFriends of ours started an open lecture/workshop series called HackYale. Besides that there are a ton of great resources on the web. My best advice would be to just start building something and practicing a lot. Tutorials and classes are a great place to start but there is no substitute for actually starting a project from scratch and figuring things out as you go along. Let me know if you have any more questions!
- breathesalt 15y agoThanks for responding, I ask because I'm currently mentoring a friend who's trying to learn and I'm curious to see what works for others. When I was learning programming I did more or less the same thing, but also found choosing the right technical books to be instrumental.
- CJM13 15y agoWhat books do you recommend in particular? Thanks
- jorkos 15y ago- take out 'revolutionizing' verbiage - describe benefits in a few sentences - offer something concrete for signup - address page load issues
- tomkinstinch 15y agoJust some feedback: I didn't see an easy link to your main page on the blog (not in the header, sidebar, or footer). There were plenty in the body text, but I didn't look there first for a link. In signing up, I also had to re-enter my email address after the first username I tried was taken. You could repopulate the email address field based on the prior submission in the event that a username is unavailable. As others have said, the background images on the splash page are huge. Even on my 15Mb connection I had to wait a moment for them to load.
- tryitnow 15y agoI tried to think of some constructive criticism (since that's more useful than "good luck guys!"), but couldn't really figure anything really penetrating, but here's my best shot at some question to think about, constructive criticism, etc. 1) how is this different than people just going out to events with friends and then randomly meeting friends of friends to date? My best guess is that this is different because there's more of a recognition that people are looking. How does this change the dynamics? 2) My guess is that this is going to be kind of a platform for matchmakers too. What, if anything, do they get out of it? 3) Will the businesses hosting/benefiting from the event pay a cut of their proceeds to TLF? 4) Will people who meet on the site attend the events as pairs? Or will it be like a singles event? If the latter, then we'll see an "alpha male" problem where a handful of males will be desired. The betas will drop out and more importantly many women will be turned off by the competition for a few men. 5) Finally, and most importantly, any play in the dating space is most likely not going to be a tech play (that's been done - OKCupid and eHarmony among many others have all sorts of fancy algorithms). Like most social media today, the business model will stand or fall based on very nuanced understanding of human nature, in particular very nuanced understanding of male/female romantic and sexual interactions. Now, no offense, but when I think of "very nuanced understanding of male/female romantic and sexual interactions" the image of two college guys who read HN does not come to mind. Nothing personal, I would apply the same reasoning to myself (which is one of the reasons I have not started a dating site). It's just something to be aware of, you're stepping into an area that is one of the most misunderstand social arenas for our species. All of the above are just my musings intended to plant some seeds in your head. I think this is a great idea and you should go for it with gusto. The only real advice I have: If you don't already have one, get a woman on your team. Gone are the days where dating sites are just tech/algorithm plays, like I said above you've got to understand the psychology and there's just no way to do that with 50% of your target market missing from your founding team.
- ceol 15y ago>we'll see an "alpha male" problem where a handful of males will be desired. The betas will drop out and more importantly many women will be turned off by the competition for a few men. I've never heard of this "alpha male problem"; I've only heard stories of there being too few women. Could any frequenter of singles events elaborate on this?
- true_religion 15y agoHere's an idea: The current problem with dating sites is poor response rates from women. Many sites have tried to solve it by scoring candidates and only letting you see candidates that meet criteria---i.e. reduce messages sent, and boost chances of being a match. Why don't we instead treat it like a SPAM problem. Only show people the type of messages that they've responded to in the past. Don't necessarily believe what they say about what they like, trust their revealed preference.
- khill 15y agoOr why not create a dating site which only allows women to contact men? By creating a one-way dating channel, you can filter out a lot of the behavior which drives women away from sites. Make it a virtual Sadie Hawkins dance.
- startupcto 15y agoStay in school.. I can't imagine why you guys are dropping out of school to "start a dating website". That said, good luck and I'm sure will learn a lot.
- aaronf 15y agoAgreed. I love your excitement and energy, but there's no reason you can't explore this idea while at Yale, or during a summer break. When you do a startup, you should look at the worst case scenario - you may regret falling behind in studies. The odds are you're going to fail, and things take much longer than planned - are you okay with that? Oh, and if you want to raise money any time soon, you may want to think about a different market. I don't want to be a downer, but I think it's important that the startup fantasy be balanced with reality. Good luck!
- crazygringo 15y agoI agree. I went to Yale and wouldn't trade those semesters for anything. You've got your whole life to start a company, but the opportunities you get to build yourself at a place like Yale don't often come up again. And especially for another dating site -- this is a market that many smart people have spent a lot of time thinking about, and unless you have something truly revolutionary which is hard to replicate, the odds seem stacked against you. But again, best of luck. And think about using Yale resources as well like YES, your summers, etc.
- georgieporgie 15y agoFacebook was the ultimate online dating site, until they removed/restricted the search-within-network feature.
- kqueue 15y agoreminds me of http://chirpme.com/ http://chirpme.com/
- daimyoyo 15y agoWhen you read about most founders who dropped out, they already had significant traction before making the leap. In my honest opinion you shouldn't drop out of college until you have a finished product(even if it's only a MVP) with traction and can show that this is a better alternative. Obviously you're free to do whatever you want but from an impartial observers perspective, this move seems unecessarily risky until you have a finished product, and enough users to prove it's viability.
- carbocation 15y agoThe title is alarming: "Why we dropped out of Yale to start a dating website" But the first paragraph is less concerning: "... taking time off from school to build and grow our company" Yale is generous in terms of granting leaves of absence, so the knowledge that you're not actually dropping out really changes my view of your decision (for the better). You'd be crazy to drop out of Yale for an idea with no traction. To take a semester, or possibly a year, for the same? That's a much less drastic proposition.
- dustineichler 15y agoCollege is one of the best times of your lives. Don't drop out, I'm glad you're only taking leave. Work will be waiting for you when you're done, I promise.