19 ms·

Show HN: Dating Ring (YC W14) – We do the work, you do the dating

125 points by laurenkay 12y ago

thebiglebrewski 12y ago
I thought this service already existed? Isn't Show HN kinda meant to show new products?
- laurenkay 12y ago
  We were in beta for a year (and never did a Show HN). We just relaunched as a pretty different service.
  - klipt 12y ago
    I signed up during your beta, why do I have to resubmit all my information to sign up again? Don't you still have it somewhere?
- minimaxir 12y ago
  The original service was group dating. You signed up for the service, pay $20, and get put on a group date customized by the service. (I attended a group consultation for the service, but wasn't impressed enough to pay and continue with the date) The startup pivoted because, unsurprisingly, single dates are more popular.
deleted 12y ago
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enraged_camel 12y ago
"Sign up with Facebook" No thanks. I'll stick with OKCupid. edit: since this is a YC company, I'll add some content to my criticism (even though most of this should be obvious). 1. This is a new service, and people don't know you yet. Asking them to sign up with their Facebook account is asking for too much, because there is no trust element established. Consider having a stand-alone sign-up mechanism that enables some bare-bone features with the option to hook up to Facebook for additional benefits (i.e. 5 matches per week vs. 2 matches, promise for more accurate matching, etc.). Users need to see some value out of the service before they volunteer their Facebook info. 2. Lots of people don't use Facebook, and even more of them are leaving Facebook. There are also lots of people who are cynical towards it and use it as little as possible. You are certainly alienating them by requiring a Facebook account.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Ha, we definitely get that that's a dealbreaker for a lot of people. Most top dating sites are populated by a ton of fake profiles, so while logging in with Facebook isn't ideal, it helps us as a small startup to prevent spammers. We don't post to members' walls / we basically just ask for birthdate and photos.
  - Xdes 12y ago
    Then I should make a fake facebook so I can make a fake profile? One more layer of indirection doesn't necessarily add more security.
    - lmm 12y ago
      Facebook can afford to have dozens of smart people working full-time on eliminating fake profiles. A small startup can't.
  - jonathanjaeger 12y ago
    OkCupid has fake profiles but it's not THAT bad (maybe Tinder has spam problems, or so I've heard, but they're spammed because they are at scale). Nothing a reverse-image search on Google can't usually solve.
    - mdupont 12y ago
      I used to work there. Fraud/fake profiles are one of the hardest & most important problems to solve, and one of OKC's main competitive advantages is doing so in a scalable way. It's not a problem from the user perspective, but that's a testament to a lot of intelligent effort, not a reason why fake profiles aren't an issue.
      - shostack 12y ago
        I've always been fascinated by that aspect of dating sites. Could you share some of the technical specifics as to what the hardest challenges are that still remain to be solved and how the cat-and-mouse game has evolved?
devindotcom 12y ago
Seems a little weird to me, honestly. I mean, we started curating our own dating on the web to get away from this type of haphazard matchmaking, didn't we? This seems a bit like reinventing the horse and carriage. And anyway, since when was flirting with people online work?! It's also a little insulting to not even be the one selecting your date. I know we get set up by our friends now and then, but they are our friends, not some random service on the Internet. This service has not built trust, and its results seem to me fundamentally dubious.
- gyardley 12y ago
  I thank whatever powers are out there that I'm married, because when I see the time and effort my single friends sink into meeting people online, it certainly looks like work.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    From both observation and personal experience I believe that for typical person from a western city finding a partner gets orders of magnitude more difficult the moment you finish college. In high school and at university, you're constantly exposed to hundreds of possible dates, but after that your social circle tends to shrink to your family, friends and coworkers. Expanding the circle and eventually finding someone starts to require effort.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  We're still primarily in the first wave on online dating - where we've added a layer of technology to make something as important as finding dates easier. But as with any first wave of technology, there are tons of flaws, and on average it takes 7 hours on an online dating site to line up a date. The majority of online daters are dissatisfied with how long it takes to get a date, and the quality of dates they meet in person. Additionally, 90% of people lie in their online profiles, and most people are not very certain about who they're looking to date - much less who they're looking to date based on just browsing an online profile. If you do want to select your date, there are tons of these 'first wave' online dating websites to do that. But we wanted to provide a different experience, and use matchmakers to make the overall experience better. In other industries, it is accepted that you need an expert to help out. You wouldn't have a friend perform heart surgery on you. But societally, there's a huge stigma against needing professional help to find dates, which is quite silly, when it's one of the top drivers of life in general and when statistically, no matter who you are, it's really, really hard to find people you connect with. In terms of building trust, that's what our relaunch is all about. If you sign up, we'll send you a promo code for a free match, and we do much more than any other service to gain our users' trust - from monthly parties with everyone who works at the company, to live chat through our site, to personalized notes about why each match was selected (plus, of course, email support). Creating a great dating site that people trust is a really, really challenging feat, and not one achieved overnight, but we're working as hard as we can to get there.
jonathanjaeger 12y ago
Not to hate on a startup, but I've dated on OkCupid before, and while it's not foolproof, you can meet someone who seems perfect online and then you don't hit it off in person. Having limited matches is just a dealbreaker. Sure there's the idea of too many possibilities leading to the 'paradox of choice' or 'fear of missing out', but let's be honest, you really need to have a lot of options to meet someone who's right for you (unless you're really lucky). "Your matchmaker will send you a new match each week" -- a match, singular, is just not going to work for the majority of the population.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Perfectly valid comment, and not hating on us at all. If this were just a random match each week, you'd be completely correct. Dating is definitely a numbers game, and it takes a lot of choices in order to find the right person. But there is a whole lot you can do behind the scenes to improve those odds. We've gone through the research, we've met thousands of members in person and coordinated thousands of dates, and we've learned how to greatly improve the odds when it comes to personal introductions. I'd say a big reason other dating sites don't do this is because the more clicks they get, the more money they make. But we're not in it for clicks.
  - Benjammer 12y ago
    OkCupid and other sites also use algorithms to increase the chances, but you also get way more than 1 "match" a week, and you can also peruse tons of random profiles as often as you want (and these still usually give some kind of compatibility score). You could very conceivably set up a new date every night with someone who has gone through some sort of "algorithm" to match up with you. Is your algorithm/method so much better than any other site that you can afford to only send one match per week and hope to achieve the same (or, hopefully, better) results as other sites? When it comes to dating, I don't think success/date matters as much to people as success/time.
- colmvp 12y ago
  > Having limited matches is just a dealbreaker. I guess your mileage may vary. I don't consider wide options to be a positive for me in online dating, as the total number of potentials is particularly deceiving. OkCupid for me had the most results for people I could message but had the poorest ratio of time invested in messaging to time spent dating. eHarmony had significantly fewer results for me but had a much better outcome. Personally, I'd rather have one potential match a week with a higher chance of actually going on a date, than messaging many people a week with little to no response. Granted, I realize I'm making the assumption that this service will actually provide a higher probability.
potatolicious 12y ago
I see some pessimism in these comments, but IMO one needs to consider the problem from both genders (assuming we're talking about straight dating exclusively for a sec). The problem with OkCupid is that the experience is horrendous for women. While the men would love to have choice, and "unlimited" matches, in reality this only means one thing: Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam. The success of Tinder should be in large part attributed to the fact that the basic interaction model removes spam. Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches", making women the actual gatekeepers of conversation - and this model works, though you obviously lose a lot of nuance and depth along the way.
- hangonhn 12y ago
  Yeah I've heard total horror stories from women. It's like men on OKCupid took the idea of "numbers game" way, way too far. Consequently I also didn't want to be on there and be lumped in with those guys either.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      I don't think so. While most spammers aren't particularly sophisticated, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you can copy-paste formulaic messages to hundreds of women in only a few minutes. Even a user who isn't particularly nefarious and say, sends 20 original (not copy-pasted) messages each session, it's still an overwhelming amount of messages for women to sort through. It's important to note that when I say "spam" I don't just mean "bad actors who deliberately attempt to game the system". I mean that even what appears to a user as a "natural" amount of messages in fact makes the system nearly unusable. It's almost trivial for female users to end up with literally hundreds of messages per day - just managing the messages themselves is a chore, much less viewing the profiles associated.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Long story short, men discovered that being a well-behaved actor is a losing strategy on dating sites.
hangonhn 12y ago
I glanced through it but it's unclear to me why your service is better than any other. Basically you say you make the match but that requires that I give up my agency over something that is at least somewhat important to me. I might be willing to go along with it but maybe a little clearer or obvious explanation of how your magic works would make it an easier sell? I might be an outlier though. Ask, the Facebook thing is uncomfortable.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Thanks, this is great feedback for us. We explain more in our FAQ: datingring.com/faq . We're going to work on improving the explanation and building in a free match, because the easiest way to explain why what we do is better is just to experience it. (Since most of how we match is private.) We definitely realize that Facebook is problematic. The pros are that it helps some with security, we don't post to your wall, and it makes the signup flow much faster. But we're considering adding a way to sign up without Facebook since it's definitely the top complaint we've heard since the relaunch.
gnopgnip 12y ago
With fewer dates you are more invested in the individual relationships. This is the opposite of something like OK Cupid where you may message 100 people and only get a few replies.
- dl8 12y ago
  Well it's about efficiency too, Coffee Meets Bagel does the 1 day a match thing and after 4 weeks of non matches (either I wasn't attracted to them or they to me) I just quit the site. Compared to a minute spent swiping 30 people on Tinder, or a minute or two reading someone's profile on OKC.
listic 12y ago
1. How will the matchmaking site with real live matchmakers scale? 2. Why do you think the matchmaker will know who I'm seeking for, better than myself?
- obvious01 12y ago
  Thoughts on 1: a) Each match generates $30-40 worth of revenue. b) the number of matches per week grow linearly with the number of uses (n/2) c) the matches are determined with assistance from an algorithm. (They automate away the complexity generated by the growing user graph, so the human only needs to use their intuition / follow common sense guidelines to decide if the pair could be a match) d) they probably have standardized copy for "Why we with you'll hit it off" info provided with every match. This minimizes the amount of time spent per worker per date and reduces the set desired qualifications for their hires. They could get by with recent liberal arts college grads for sure. e) Therefore they could easily afford to hire freelance "matchmakers" linearly with the number of users. The main issue is that if this takes off too fast they will be dealing with rapidly growing organizational complexity / overhead. They will have to set up good managers, good customer service, good training and good q/a.
- Meekro 12y ago
  I think it could scale the same way that, say, a massage parlor scales: by hiring and training more people. Except in this case you don't run into space limitations since everything is done online. If folks are willing to pay their premium rates [1], it could work! $350/mo is pretty steep, but I'd rather pay that and get results than $0/mo and no dates. [1] https://www.datingring.com/premium https://www.datingring.com/premium
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    Thanks Meerko, right on point. The more people using your service, the less work for each matchmaker. Most premium matchmakers spend most of their time recruiting. We don't need to do that since we have so many users. We also have a lot of technology that automates the non-personal stuff, like sorting through age, height, etc. In terms of knowing what people are looking for - we met our first few thousand users and arranged a few thousand dates by hand. We learned a lot about what matters, and what doesn't - for instance, how active people are tends to matter a lot more than their political preferences. I hate to pull the whole 'proprietary' card, but we're not very public about how we match beyond that .. will try to add more info to the site soon.
Meekro 12y ago
I'm surprised to see all the negativity towards this. If I was single, I'd be signing up right now. The biggest objection seems to be that OkCupid is like a buffet, and now they're being asked to eat at a restaurant where the chef interviews you and brings you what he thinks you'll like. If the buffet was working great for them, I can see why they'd object to the change. OkCupid wasn't so great back when I used it though. I'd send out many messages (personal, customized ones -- not spam) and get next-to-no replies. It felt like I was spinning my wheels and going nowhere. Were my opening messages poorly written? Did my profile need work? Maybe. But that's why I think I'd benefit from having a professional matchmaker, who's a better writer than I am and can present me in the best possible light.
smacktoward 12y ago
UX suggestion from someone who decided to give you a try and fill out your application form: If you're only open for business currently in NYC and SF, maybe mention that before you have me fill out the long form rather than waiting until after I've submitted it, OK? Because otherwise the user who doesn't live in one of those places feels like you just wasted a bunch of their time.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  I would hope they are saving the application for when they do launch in your city? Saying that up front would be nice though.
- istorical 12y ago
  Cosigned. Pretty disappointed.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Sorry about that - great suggestion. Will add that to the form. shkkmo is right that the reason we have you fill it out is so that we have the ability to launch new cities faster.
- shostack 12y ago
  This is something that is a difficult decision for a fledgling startup trying to get traction with a highly local product. It is hard enough to get traction in one market because you don't have an email list to start necessarily. However if you collect all this great segmentation data and email addresses from people in other cities, suddenly you have a huge head start when prepping to launch in new markets. I am not for one moment disagreeing that it is a poor user experience. Just saying that from a business standpoint, I can see where they may make the decision to frustrate some users initially who aren't in their active markets to get a leg up when they expand. Sure you could argue that if they piss you off here, you'd be unlikely to consider them in the future, but then it becomes a numbers game. People who have a hard time finding a good date may still have that problem if this company grows into their market in the future, and may still be willing to give it a shot at that time since the chance for finding love probably outweighs that one time they had a less than ideal user experience. Anyway, just thought I'd play devil's advocate here as you hit on an interesting lead generation point.
shkkmo 12y ago
I really like this idea ... but: Give use access to your facebook and $20 a month. In return, you get ONE match a month. If they don't want to meet you, that's too bad. You paid $20 to be rejected. The two things you would need to do to sell me are: 1) Allow access without facebook. I'd be fine scanning a driver's license for you that matches the name on the credit card I pay with. 2) If you don't provide a good match (i.e.) one that wants to meet me, you should provide another match.
- Meekro 12y ago
  Those objections sound reasonable, but why do you think that you only get one match per month? I don't see that text on the front page -- do they tell you later?
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    I read their FAQ: 1 match per month at $20 https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202344714-How-much-does-it-cost-to-become-a-member- https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202344714-H... Policy on matches that don't want to meet: https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-What-happens-if-none-of-my-matches-want-to-meet- https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-W...
    - laurenkay 12y ago
      Thanks for this feedback - very helpful. 1) It's now on our list to add signin without Facebook, since that's been such a popular request. 2) The problem there is that if you don't like your second match, then what? What's hard is that matchmaking isn't a common thing you pay for, so people aren't used to the risks involved. If you go to a restaurant, you generally don't ask to try out a meal for free, or ask for a second one if you don't like the first. If we were to provide two choices, we'd have to raise the price. We're the one matchmaking service where a personal matchmaker is going to send you a match for $20 .. most charge thousands. Additionally, it's not so much about the business model as it is about trying to change the way people so quickly write one another off. If you know you only get one shot, and this person has been chosen specifically for you by a matchmaker, there's a much higher chance you'll give them a shot, which is what we want. People are far too picky and miss out on lots of great people. If you want 1,000 chances, there's always Tinder :) And lastly, we're going to build a free match into the signup flow, so there's at least that :)
DontBeADick 12y ago
What makes your matchmakers any better than a random stranger? Or a computer algorithm? Or a pile of bricks? I searched through your whole website trying to figure out why your matchmakers are worth my time and money but it doesn't seem like you've made any attempt to address those concerns, which is extremely odd since their matchmaking skills are the core of your business. Am I missing something? Based on the (lack of) info on your website, your matchmakers really could be random people you pulled off the street.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Have a page about our matchmakers that we'll be adding back this week, and you also get more info about your matchmaker after signing up. You're completely right that we should have more info on the matchmakers featured prominently on the site. Appreciate that feedback and will be changing that soon! (In short - they've been with us for the past year and matched thousands of people.)
  - imaginenore 12y ago
    You didn't answer the question. He asked you why you think your matchmakers are better. Not for a page about them.
    - laurenkay 12y ago
      We have 5 full-time matchmakers with varied backgrounds, mostly in psychology, theater, and working at other matchmaking agencies. We often get questioned more on what makes our matchmakers good, than another company would get questioned on what makes their engineers, or other employees good. This is both because matchmaking isn't a common profession, and because matchmaking is a majority female profession that tends to get undervalued and not viewed as a 'real' profession. Our matchmakers stay up to date on trends, have exceptionally high EQs, have experience matching thousands of people, and we accept under 1% of people who apply for the job.
      - QuotedForTruth 12y ago
dl8 12y ago
Signed up and got put on waiting list. Used OkC and Tinder before, let's see how different this is. Also will be interesting to see if this follows a lot of the online dating trends that was outlined in Christian Rudder's Dataclysm book.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Are you in SF or NYC? Those are the two cities we're live in. Will be launching LA / Boston next. If you are NYC or SF and are on the waitlist, we're able to get most people off within a week. Email me - lauren@datingring.com if you're still waiting.
  - dl8 12y ago
    Awaiting the Boston launch.
throwaway_abc 12y ago
Whatever happened to the group dating model that you guys were going with previously? A blog post about it would be really interesting in my opinion.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Thanks - I definitely need to update our blog since we made so many major changes. (We've explained in our newsletters but I should make those public.) Here is our newsletter explaining the changes: http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867c&id=c1db8fed38 http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867... The group dating piece: A lot of you wrote about missing group dates. Ah, we do too! While we are big fans of the magic of groups, we realized that we could either focus on compatible matches, or keep group dates -- but we couldn’t do both well at the same time. Since you expressed that compatibility with one person is more important than meeting three singles at once, we decided to focus on 1-on-1 dates. Scheduling 6 compatible people in cities like NYC and SF was just not as feasible as scheduling 2 compatible people.
  - 12bit 12y ago
    Have you considered scheduling dating events for your members? I imagine you could charge more than a club night for such events. You would allow members to exchange contact details, but you could also play matchmaker after the event ("remember that guy in a suede jacket, david, didn't get a chance to say hello but would have liked to ...") and charge for the convenience.
    - laurenkay 12y ago
      Ah, yes, we have been doing this since we launched. The $20/month gets you access to free, exclusive Dating Ring parties (lotsss of people find dates through those) as well as that one match a month. We should definitely surface that better.
goodside 12y ago
Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users. Behaving like that doesn't inspire much confidence in your service.
- railsdude 12y ago
  It's not "spamming", it's Growth Hacking ™.
  - pocketheyman 12y ago
    I'm going to write a Grease monkey script to prevent the word "hacking" from ever being displayed on my screen.
    - jacalata 12y ago
      what are you going to replace it with? "butt" is already taken and wouldn't fit grammatically anyway. [https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt]
      - philsnow 12y ago
        s/Hacking/Jacking/g
      - lalos 12y ago
        hack -> buzz, hacking -> buzzing
      - Fuzzwah 12y ago
        s/hacking/licking/g would be my pick
        prawn 12y ago
        Snacking? Growth snacking? Snacking on some code?
      - 12y ago
Bootvis 12y ago
I tried signing up but it was really unfriendly to us non-American folks: - Height in feet and inches - Pretty limited locations - I'm neither Democrat nor Republican - It's called American Football and Football, not what you have (OK, I let that one slide) - ... I get that the non-English speaking world is harder to reach but on the other hand: English is not a problem for the higher educated in most of Europe and I see no real reason to limit this service to just the US. A profile is a profile.
- Bootvis 12y ago
  Ah, from the e-mail after signing up: Thanks so much for submitting your info! Right now, we're unfortunately only located in NYC and the Bay Area. But we really appreciate your reaching out, and we will let you know as soon as we expand to your city! I think it would be nice to display this more prominently. You get a nice 'conversion' out of this but I'm not sure this counts.
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    We added that to staging based on a previous comment, and the change will be live by tomorrow. And getting signups in other cities doesn't help our stats or conversion rates (it actually lowers them). We have it available since we plan to launch in other cities, but when we do launch in Europe that is great feedback for us to have, and we'll be changing quite a bit before then.
jack-r-abbit 12y ago
That thing they did where they shipped hot single ladies from NYC to meet rich single techies in SF[1] left a bad taste in my mouth. I know lots of people thought it was a great idea and lots of other people didn't. So, we'll just have to agree to disagree about it. And then there is this allegation of spamming OkCupid users[2] (which didn't really get denied). This also leave another bad taste in my mouth. Add to that the general tone of the founder's comments in this thread. Each of those things are some what subjective. But, I would have a hard time recommending this site to any of my single friends. In fact, if any of them told me they were looking in to Dating Ring, I would actively try to convince them not to. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-dating-ring-is-raising-money-to-fly-women-from-nyc-to-sf-because-dating/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-dating-ring-is-raising-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138
- 12bit 12y ago
  That thing they did where they shipped hot single ladies from NYC to meet rich single techies in SF Couldn't find any mentions of looks or wealth in the TechCrunch article. Did you see it mentioned somewhere else? I think you'd find that the dating industry is filled with companies that are ethically-challenged (or have been at some point in their history).
serradate 12y ago
Since I rarely see any dating-related topics appear on HN I thought it would be reasonable to share a quick link to where the dating site I'm working on will eventually live. Right now there's just a simple Wufoo form so I can gather input from users I can use to build the first version of my site...I have my own personal experiences with a lot of the free/paid services out there and ran into issues with fake profiles or being asked for credit card information so I'm working on an initial design right now, that should be nice and simple, won't require a credit card at all, and will have a healthy dash of security thrown in...but I'd love your input as well so if you have a few quick moments to share it that would be great :-): http://serradate.com/ http://serradate.com/
jglauche 12y ago
Why do all the new dating things (also as an example Tinder) require Facebook these days? I know quite a number of people staying away from that social network (including myself). Aren't you making it yourself too easy to rely on one thing to authenticate/verify people?
- bdlbdl 12y ago
  It's because a Facebook connected user is just a much more valuable user to your service. You have access to their friend list, photos, likes, etc. And it's easy. Sure, they could do the work to let non-FB connected users in as well, but given the scale of FB and the value of FB data, it's really hard to justify that work until you've hit product market fit. When you only have one path to sign up and register it's really easy to focus and make that path as high quality as possible. Later you can add support for the people that want to use your product but don't have FB.
mc32 12y ago
This reminds me of Slavoj Zizak's quips: "You want coffee without the caffeine, you want beer without the alcohol and you want to fall in love without the fall." or words to that effect. [1] So, as he says, we want the Other deprived of its Otherness. [1]http://www.lacan.com/zizekdecaf.htm http://www.lacan.com/zizekdecaf.htm
DanBC 12y ago
Holy crap YC needs a PR cheat sheet. Some tiny web page with a bullet point list of things to do or not do.
genericuser 12y ago
In the account creation settings you don't necessarily cover all options with your drop downs. For instance the "It is very important that my partner: " you have 4 options: No Preference, Wants kids now, Wants kids in the future, and Doesn't ever want kids As someone who absolutely does not does not want kids 'now' but is indifferent to them in the future I really wish there was a an option called. 'Doesn't want kids now'
searine 12y ago
So here is a perspective from one of your users. I signed up for Dating Ring in NYC in like March, and have generally had a good experience. Probably been to a dozen dates/events. Of that I've only been on two "bad" dates. I define that as dates where I felt we just didn't have anything in common and/or they were completely not my type. Most were mediocre, but we had fun, mostly because I know how to be entertaining over drinks. A couple I was interested in but never really had a good relationship develop from it. In general, I had fun so it was money well spent. I'm new to the city and the site was a great way to meet totally new people frequently without having to jump through all the hoops of stuff like OkCupid. I have to say I am curious about this "pivot" in how you are approaching matchmaking. It is nice to have an "out" and not waste my time if it is clear that I won't find the person attractive mentally or physically. Honestly I think I've stuck with the site out of curiosity, and not really the expectation of having a good date. Over the past year I've had much better success finding relationships using OkCupid in NYC than your service. Mostly because I can better select dates that are attractive and interesting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
reillyse 12y ago
Judging from your landing page 4 out of 8 users of your service are gingers... is this a service for people blessed with red hair?
dusklight 12y ago
I will never try this service because it requires a facebook login.
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kcarlton 12y ago
Lots of feedback here seems to be very critical and for the purpose of pointing out everything you've done wrong. That's totally fine, and exactly why posting to HN can result in useful feedback. I just wanted to say that I think you have a great idea here, and if in the future, I find myself single again, I'll take another look at your service.
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swolebird 12y ago
1) How about this: Instead of you both pay $20 and either one can reject the date and you're both out $20- whoever rejects the date is out the $20, and the person who didn't reject the date gets a refund. That would REALLY put the onus on the matchmakers to do a good job making matches. People who are open to going on the date don't lose anything if there's no date, or end up going on a date. And if people continue getting bad matches that they reject, they won't pay the $20 for very long before leaving. Otherwise, why would people stay on the site if they keep getting hit for $20 AND don't go on any dates? 2) https://www.datingring.com/premium[1] https://www.datingring.com/premium[1] https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-What-happens-if-none-of-my-matches-want-to-meet-[2] https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-W... >You can also sign up for Premium Membership to get further date coaching and feedback, as well as two guaranteed dates per month. How do you guarantee a date (or two)?
Beasting247 12y ago
I'm going to provide my ideas/feedback. Unlike a lot of the other people on here, I like the Facebook integration, provided of course nobody else on my Facebook can see that I've added this app. It saves the hassle of having to upload pictures and lowers the proportion of fake accounts. As a male (23 years old), I've completely written off online dating. Sites like OkCupid make total sense if you're a female because you don't actually have to do any work, but they absolutely suck for men. Women are inundated with messages and rarely respond, and thus as a male you have to spend hours and hours sifting through profiles and sending tons of messages. On top of that, very few of the women on dating sites are even attractive. That's why I prefer Tinder, although it'd be nice to have a middle ground between the shallowness of Tinder and a dating site. It's great that this site saves time on the user's part (mainly the male). The problem is that it doesn't seem like I can see what my potential match looks like. Being a male, looks are pretty important. That's why I stopped going on Groupers - my last one hooked us up with 3 unattractive women. It sounds shallow and fucked up, but that's just the reality of it. Until a service comes along that hooks me up with women that I know will be physically attractive enough from the get-go, I'm not going to pay money for it. And since most hot women are already inundated with guys trying to ask them out in real life, I'm not sure if a site like that could ever exist.
jumpz 12y ago
Worst service ever. I paid for $40 for 3 dates back in May, didn't hear from them until after 2 months in and was matched with 1 date. I still haven't gotten any additional "dates". I don't recommend this site to anyone, you would just be wasting your time. There are other sites that are a lot better when it comes to online dating.

125 points by laurenkay 12y ago

thebiglebrewski 12y ago

I thought this service already existed? Isn't Show HN kinda meant to show new products?

laurenkay 12y ago
We were in beta for a year (and never did a Show HN). We just relaunched as a pretty different service.
- klipt 12y ago
  I signed up during your beta, why do I have to resubmit all my information to sign up again? Don't you still have it somewhere?
minimaxir 12y ago
The original service was group dating. You signed up for the service, pay $20, and get put on a group date customized by the service. (I attended a group consultation for the service, but wasn't impressed enough to pay and continue with the date) The startup pivoted because, unsurprisingly, single dates are more popular.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

enraged_camel 12y ago

"Sign up with Facebook" No thanks. I'll stick with OKCupid. edit: since this is a YC company, I'll add some content to my criticism (even though most of this should be obvious). 1. This is a new service, and people don't know you yet. Asking them to sign up with their Facebook account is asking for too much, because there is no trust element established. Consider having a stand-alone sign-up mechanism that enables some bare-bone features with the option to hook up to Facebook for additional benefits (i.e. 5 matches per week vs. 2 matches, promise for more accurate matching, etc.). Users need to see some value out of the service before they volunteer their Facebook info. 2. Lots of people don't use Facebook, and even more of them are leaving Facebook. There are also lots of people who are cynical towards it and use it as little as possible. You are certainly alienating them by requiring a Facebook account.

laurenkay 12y ago
Ha, we definitely get that that's a dealbreaker for a lot of people. Most top dating sites are populated by a ton of fake profiles, so while logging in with Facebook isn't ideal, it helps us as a small startup to prevent spammers. We don't post to members' walls / we basically just ask for birthdate and photos.
- Xdes 12y ago
  Then I should make a fake facebook so I can make a fake profile? One more layer of indirection doesn't necessarily add more security.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Facebook can afford to have dozens of smart people working full-time on eliminating fake profiles. A small startup can't.
- jonathanjaeger 12y ago
  OkCupid has fake profiles but it's not THAT bad (maybe Tinder has spam problems, or so I've heard, but they're spammed because they are at scale). Nothing a reverse-image search on Google can't usually solve.
  - mdupont 12y ago
    I used to work there. Fraud/fake profiles are one of the hardest & most important problems to solve, and one of OKC's main competitive advantages is doing so in a scalable way. It's not a problem from the user perspective, but that's a testament to a lot of intelligent effort, not a reason why fake profiles aren't an issue.
    - shostack 12y ago
      I've always been fascinated by that aspect of dating sites. Could you share some of the technical specifics as to what the hardest challenges are that still remain to be solved and how the cat-and-mouse game has evolved?

devindotcom 12y ago

Seems a little weird to me, honestly. I mean, we started curating our own dating on the web to get away from this type of haphazard matchmaking, didn't we? This seems a bit like reinventing the horse and carriage. And anyway, since when was flirting with people online work?! It's also a little insulting to not even be the one selecting your date. I know we get set up by our friends now and then, but they are our friends, not some random service on the Internet. This service has not built trust, and its results seem to me fundamentally dubious.

gyardley 12y ago
I thank whatever powers are out there that I'm married, because when I see the time and effort my single friends sink into meeting people online, it certainly looks like work.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  From both observation and personal experience I believe that for typical person from a western city finding a partner gets orders of magnitude more difficult the moment you finish college. In high school and at university, you're constantly exposed to hundreds of possible dates, but after that your social circle tends to shrink to your family, friends and coworkers. Expanding the circle and eventually finding someone starts to require effort.
laurenkay 12y ago
We're still primarily in the first wave on online dating - where we've added a layer of technology to make something as important as finding dates easier. But as with any first wave of technology, there are tons of flaws, and on average it takes 7 hours on an online dating site to line up a date. The majority of online daters are dissatisfied with how long it takes to get a date, and the quality of dates they meet in person. Additionally, 90% of people lie in their online profiles, and most people are not very certain about who they're looking to date - much less who they're looking to date based on just browsing an online profile. If you do want to select your date, there are tons of these 'first wave' online dating websites to do that. But we wanted to provide a different experience, and use matchmakers to make the overall experience better. In other industries, it is accepted that you need an expert to help out. You wouldn't have a friend perform heart surgery on you. But societally, there's a huge stigma against needing professional help to find dates, which is quite silly, when it's one of the top drivers of life in general and when statistically, no matter who you are, it's really, really hard to find people you connect with. In terms of building trust, that's what our relaunch is all about. If you sign up, we'll send you a promo code for a free match, and we do much more than any other service to gain our users' trust - from monthly parties with everyone who works at the company, to live chat through our site, to personalized notes about why each match was selected (plus, of course, email support). Creating a great dating site that people trust is a really, really challenging feat, and not one achieved overnight, but we're working as hard as we can to get there.

jonathanjaeger 12y ago

Not to hate on a startup, but I've dated on OkCupid before, and while it's not foolproof, you can meet someone who seems perfect online and then you don't hit it off in person. Having limited matches is just a dealbreaker. Sure there's the idea of too many possibilities leading to the 'paradox of choice' or 'fear of missing out', but let's be honest, you really need to have a lot of options to meet someone who's right for you (unless you're really lucky). "Your matchmaker will send you a new match each week" -- a match, singular, is just not going to work for the majority of the population.

laurenkay 12y ago
Perfectly valid comment, and not hating on us at all. If this were just a random match each week, you'd be completely correct. Dating is definitely a numbers game, and it takes a lot of choices in order to find the right person. But there is a whole lot you can do behind the scenes to improve those odds. We've gone through the research, we've met thousands of members in person and coordinated thousands of dates, and we've learned how to greatly improve the odds when it comes to personal introductions. I'd say a big reason other dating sites don't do this is because the more clicks they get, the more money they make. But we're not in it for clicks.
- Benjammer 12y ago
  OkCupid and other sites also use algorithms to increase the chances, but you also get way more than 1 "match" a week, and you can also peruse tons of random profiles as often as you want (and these still usually give some kind of compatibility score). You could very conceivably set up a new date every night with someone who has gone through some sort of "algorithm" to match up with you. Is your algorithm/method so much better than any other site that you can afford to only send one match per week and hope to achieve the same (or, hopefully, better) results as other sites? When it comes to dating, I don't think success/date matters as much to people as success/time.
colmvp 12y ago
> Having limited matches is just a dealbreaker. I guess your mileage may vary. I don't consider wide options to be a positive for me in online dating, as the total number of potentials is particularly deceiving. OkCupid for me had the most results for people I could message but had the poorest ratio of time invested in messaging to time spent dating. eHarmony had significantly fewer results for me but had a much better outcome. Personally, I'd rather have one potential match a week with a higher chance of actually going on a date, than messaging many people a week with little to no response. Granted, I realize I'm making the assumption that this service will actually provide a higher probability.

potatolicious 12y ago

I see some pessimism in these comments, but IMO one needs to consider the problem from both genders (assuming we're talking about straight dating exclusively for a sec). The problem with OkCupid is that the experience is horrendous for women. While the men would love to have choice, and "unlimited" matches, in reality this only means one thing: Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam. The success of Tinder should be in large part attributed to the fact that the basic interaction model removes spam. Men will swipe right on the majority of "matches", making women the actual gatekeepers of conversation - and this model works, though you obviously lose a lot of nuance and depth along the way.

hangonhn 12y ago
Yeah I've heard total horror stories from women. It's like men on OKCupid took the idea of "numbers game" way, way too far. Consequently I also didn't want to be on there and be lumped in with those guys either.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    I don't think so. While most spammers aren't particularly sophisticated, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you can copy-paste formulaic messages to hundreds of women in only a few minutes. Even a user who isn't particularly nefarious and say, sends 20 original (not copy-pasted) messages each session, it's still an overwhelming amount of messages for women to sort through. It's important to note that when I say "spam" I don't just mean "bad actors who deliberately attempt to game the system". I mean that even what appears to a user as a "natural" amount of messages in fact makes the system nearly unusable. It's almost trivial for female users to end up with literally hundreds of messages per day - just managing the messages themselves is a chore, much less viewing the profiles associated.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Long story short, men discovered that being a well-behaved actor is a losing strategy on dating sites.

hangonhn 12y ago

I glanced through it but it's unclear to me why your service is better than any other. Basically you say you make the match but that requires that I give up my agency over something that is at least somewhat important to me. I might be willing to go along with it but maybe a little clearer or obvious explanation of how your magic works would make it an easier sell? I might be an outlier though. Ask, the Facebook thing is uncomfortable.

laurenkay 12y ago
Thanks, this is great feedback for us. We explain more in our FAQ: datingring.com/faq . We're going to work on improving the explanation and building in a free match, because the easiest way to explain why what we do is better is just to experience it. (Since most of how we match is private.) We definitely realize that Facebook is problematic. The pros are that it helps some with security, we don't post to your wall, and it makes the signup flow much faster. But we're considering adding a way to sign up without Facebook since it's definitely the top complaint we've heard since the relaunch.

gnopgnip 12y ago

With fewer dates you are more invested in the individual relationships. This is the opposite of something like OK Cupid where you may message 100 people and only get a few replies.

dl8 12y ago
Well it's about efficiency too, Coffee Meets Bagel does the 1 day a match thing and after 4 weeks of non matches (either I wasn't attracted to them or they to me) I just quit the site. Compared to a minute spent swiping 30 people on Tinder, or a minute or two reading someone's profile on OKC.

listic 12y ago

1. How will the matchmaking site with real live matchmakers scale? 2. Why do you think the matchmaker will know who I'm seeking for, better than myself?

obvious01 12y ago
Thoughts on 1: a) Each match generates $30-40 worth of revenue. b) the number of matches per week grow linearly with the number of uses (n/2) c) the matches are determined with assistance from an algorithm. (They automate away the complexity generated by the growing user graph, so the human only needs to use their intuition / follow common sense guidelines to decide if the pair could be a match) d) they probably have standardized copy for "Why we with you'll hit it off" info provided with every match. This minimizes the amount of time spent per worker per date and reduces the set desired qualifications for their hires. They could get by with recent liberal arts college grads for sure. e) Therefore they could easily afford to hire freelance "matchmakers" linearly with the number of users. The main issue is that if this takes off too fast they will be dealing with rapidly growing organizational complexity / overhead. They will have to set up good managers, good customer service, good training and good q/a.
Meekro 12y ago
I think it could scale the same way that, say, a massage parlor scales: by hiring and training more people. Except in this case you don't run into space limitations since everything is done online. If folks are willing to pay their premium rates [1], it could work! $350/mo is pretty steep, but I'd rather pay that and get results than $0/mo and no dates. [1] https://www.datingring.com/premium https://www.datingring.com/premium
- laurenkay 12y ago
  Thanks Meerko, right on point. The more people using your service, the less work for each matchmaker. Most premium matchmakers spend most of their time recruiting. We don't need to do that since we have so many users. We also have a lot of technology that automates the non-personal stuff, like sorting through age, height, etc. In terms of knowing what people are looking for - we met our first few thousand users and arranged a few thousand dates by hand. We learned a lot about what matters, and what doesn't - for instance, how active people are tends to matter a lot more than their political preferences. I hate to pull the whole 'proprietary' card, but we're not very public about how we match beyond that .. will try to add more info to the site soon.

Meekro 12y ago

I'm surprised to see all the negativity towards this. If I was single, I'd be signing up right now. The biggest objection seems to be that OkCupid is like a buffet, and now they're being asked to eat at a restaurant where the chef interviews you and brings you what he thinks you'll like. If the buffet was working great for them, I can see why they'd object to the change. OkCupid wasn't so great back when I used it though. I'd send out many messages (personal, customized ones -- not spam) and get next-to-no replies. It felt like I was spinning my wheels and going nowhere. Were my opening messages poorly written? Did my profile need work? Maybe. But that's why I think I'd benefit from having a professional matchmaker, who's a better writer than I am and can present me in the best possible light.

smacktoward 12y ago

UX suggestion from someone who decided to give you a try and fill out your application form: If you're only open for business currently in NYC and SF, maybe mention that before you have me fill out the long form rather than waiting until after I've submitted it, OK? Because otherwise the user who doesn't live in one of those places feels like you just wasted a bunch of their time.

shkkmo 12y ago
I would hope they are saving the application for when they do launch in your city? Saying that up front would be nice though.
istorical 12y ago
Cosigned. Pretty disappointed.
laurenkay 12y ago
Sorry about that - great suggestion. Will add that to the form. shkkmo is right that the reason we have you fill it out is so that we have the ability to launch new cities faster.
shostack 12y ago
This is something that is a difficult decision for a fledgling startup trying to get traction with a highly local product. It is hard enough to get traction in one market because you don't have an email list to start necessarily. However if you collect all this great segmentation data and email addresses from people in other cities, suddenly you have a huge head start when prepping to launch in new markets. I am not for one moment disagreeing that it is a poor user experience. Just saying that from a business standpoint, I can see where they may make the decision to frustrate some users initially who aren't in their active markets to get a leg up when they expand. Sure you could argue that if they piss you off here, you'd be unlikely to consider them in the future, but then it becomes a numbers game. People who have a hard time finding a good date may still have that problem if this company grows into their market in the future, and may still be willing to give it a shot at that time since the chance for finding love probably outweighs that one time they had a less than ideal user experience. Anyway, just thought I'd play devil's advocate here as you hit on an interesting lead generation point.

shkkmo 12y ago

I really like this idea ... but: Give use access to your facebook and $20 a month. In return, you get ONE match a month. If they don't want to meet you, that's too bad. You paid $20 to be rejected. The two things you would need to do to sell me are: 1) Allow access without facebook. I'd be fine scanning a driver's license for you that matches the name on the credit card I pay with. 2) If you don't provide a good match (i.e.) one that wants to meet me, you should provide another match.

Meekro 12y ago
Those objections sound reasonable, but why do you think that you only get one match per month? I don't see that text on the front page -- do they tell you later?
- shkkmo 12y ago
  I read their FAQ: 1 match per month at $20 https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202344714-How-much-does-it-cost-to-become-a-member- https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202344714-H... Policy on matches that don't want to meet: https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-What-happens-if-none-of-my-matches-want-to-meet- https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-W...
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    Thanks for this feedback - very helpful. 1) It's now on our list to add signin without Facebook, since that's been such a popular request. 2) The problem there is that if you don't like your second match, then what? What's hard is that matchmaking isn't a common thing you pay for, so people aren't used to the risks involved. If you go to a restaurant, you generally don't ask to try out a meal for free, or ask for a second one if you don't like the first. If we were to provide two choices, we'd have to raise the price. We're the one matchmaking service where a personal matchmaker is going to send you a match for $20 .. most charge thousands. Additionally, it's not so much about the business model as it is about trying to change the way people so quickly write one another off. If you know you only get one shot, and this person has been chosen specifically for you by a matchmaker, there's a much higher chance you'll give them a shot, which is what we want. People are far too picky and miss out on lots of great people. If you want 1,000 chances, there's always Tinder :) And lastly, we're going to build a free match into the signup flow, so there's at least that :)

DontBeADick 12y ago

What makes your matchmakers any better than a random stranger? Or a computer algorithm? Or a pile of bricks? I searched through your whole website trying to figure out why your matchmakers are worth my time and money but it doesn't seem like you've made any attempt to address those concerns, which is extremely odd since their matchmaking skills are the core of your business. Am I missing something? Based on the (lack of) info on your website, your matchmakers really could be random people you pulled off the street.

laurenkay 12y ago
Have a page about our matchmakers that we'll be adding back this week, and you also get more info about your matchmaker after signing up. You're completely right that we should have more info on the matchmakers featured prominently on the site. Appreciate that feedback and will be changing that soon! (In short - they've been with us for the past year and matched thousands of people.)
- imaginenore 12y ago
  You didn't answer the question. He asked you why you think your matchmakers are better. Not for a page about them.
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    We have 5 full-time matchmakers with varied backgrounds, mostly in psychology, theater, and working at other matchmaking agencies. We often get questioned more on what makes our matchmakers good, than another company would get questioned on what makes their engineers, or other employees good. This is both because matchmaking isn't a common profession, and because matchmaking is a majority female profession that tends to get undervalued and not viewed as a 'real' profession. Our matchmakers stay up to date on trends, have exceptionally high EQs, have experience matching thousands of people, and we accept under 1% of people who apply for the job.
    - QuotedForTruth 12y ago

dl8 12y ago

Signed up and got put on waiting list. Used OkC and Tinder before, let's see how different this is. Also will be interesting to see if this follows a lot of the online dating trends that was outlined in Christian Rudder's Dataclysm book.

laurenkay 12y ago
Are you in SF or NYC? Those are the two cities we're live in. Will be launching LA / Boston next. If you are NYC or SF and are on the waitlist, we're able to get most people off within a week. Email me - lauren@datingring.com if you're still waiting.
- dl8 12y ago
  Awaiting the Boston launch.

throwaway_abc 12y ago

Whatever happened to the group dating model that you guys were going with previously? A blog post about it would be really interesting in my opinion.

laurenkay 12y ago
Thanks - I definitely need to update our blog since we made so many major changes. (We've explained in our newsletters but I should make those public.) Here is our newsletter explaining the changes: http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867c&id=c1db8fed38 http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867... The group dating piece: A lot of you wrote about missing group dates. Ah, we do too! While we are big fans of the magic of groups, we realized that we could either focus on compatible matches, or keep group dates -- but we couldn’t do both well at the same time. Since you expressed that compatibility with one person is more important than meeting three singles at once, we decided to focus on 1-on-1 dates. Scheduling 6 compatible people in cities like NYC and SF was just not as feasible as scheduling 2 compatible people.
- 12bit 12y ago
  Have you considered scheduling dating events for your members? I imagine you could charge more than a club night for such events. You would allow members to exchange contact details, but you could also play matchmaker after the event ("remember that guy in a suede jacket, david, didn't get a chance to say hello but would have liked to ...") and charge for the convenience.
  - laurenkay 12y ago
    Ah, yes, we have been doing this since we launched. The $20/month gets you access to free, exclusive Dating Ring parties (lotsss of people find dates through those) as well as that one match a month. We should definitely surface that better.

goodside 12y ago

Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users. Behaving like that doesn't inspire much confidence in your service.

railsdude 12y ago
It's not "spamming", it's Growth Hacking ™.
- pocketheyman 12y ago
  I'm going to write a Grease monkey script to prevent the word "hacking" from ever being displayed on my screen.
  - jacalata 12y ago
    what are you going to replace it with? "butt" is already taken and wouldn't fit grammatically anyway. [https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt]
    - philsnow 12y ago
      s/Hacking/Jacking/g
    - lalos 12y ago
      hack -> buzz, hacking -> buzzing
    - Fuzzwah 12y ago
      s/hacking/licking/g would be my pick
      - prawn 12y ago
        Snacking? Growth snacking? Snacking on some code?
    - 12y ago

Bootvis 12y ago

I tried signing up but it was really unfriendly to us non-American folks: - Height in feet and inches - Pretty limited locations - I'm neither Democrat nor Republican - It's called American Football and Football, not what you have (OK, I let that one slide) - ... I get that the non-English speaking world is harder to reach but on the other hand: English is not a problem for the higher educated in most of Europe and I see no real reason to limit this service to just the US. A profile is a profile.

Bootvis 12y ago
Ah, from the e-mail after signing up: Thanks so much for submitting your info! Right now, we're unfortunately only located in NYC and the Bay Area. But we really appreciate your reaching out, and we will let you know as soon as we expand to your city! I think it would be nice to display this more prominently. You get a nice 'conversion' out of this but I'm not sure this counts.
- laurenkay 12y ago
  We added that to staging based on a previous comment, and the change will be live by tomorrow. And getting signups in other cities doesn't help our stats or conversion rates (it actually lowers them). We have it available since we plan to launch in other cities, but when we do launch in Europe that is great feedback for us to have, and we'll be changing quite a bit before then.

jack-r-abbit 12y ago

That thing they did where they shipped hot single ladies from NYC to meet rich single techies in SF[1] left a bad taste in my mouth. I know lots of people thought it was a great idea and lots of other people didn't. So, we'll just have to agree to disagree about it. And then there is this allegation of spamming OkCupid users[2] (which didn't really get denied). This also leave another bad taste in my mouth. Add to that the general tone of the founder's comments in this thread. Each of those things are some what subjective. But, I would have a hard time recommending this site to any of my single friends. In fact, if any of them told me they were looking in to Dating Ring, I would actively try to convince them not to. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-dating-ring-is-raising-money-to-fly-women-from-nyc-to-sf-because-dating/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-dating-ring-is-raising-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138

12bit 12y ago
That thing they did where they shipped hot single ladies from NYC to meet rich single techies in SF Couldn't find any mentions of looks or wealth in the TechCrunch article. Did you see it mentioned somewhere else? I think you'd find that the dating industry is filled with companies that are ethically-challenged (or have been at some point in their history).

serradate 12y ago

Since I rarely see any dating-related topics appear on HN I thought it would be reasonable to share a quick link to where the dating site I'm working on will eventually live. Right now there's just a simple Wufoo form so I can gather input from users I can use to build the first version of my site...I have my own personal experiences with a lot of the free/paid services out there and ran into issues with fake profiles or being asked for credit card information so I'm working on an initial design right now, that should be nice and simple, won't require a credit card at all, and will have a healthy dash of security thrown in...but I'd love your input as well so if you have a few quick moments to share it that would be great :-): http://serradate.com/ http://serradate.com/

jglauche 12y ago

Why do all the new dating things (also as an example Tinder) require Facebook these days? I know quite a number of people staying away from that social network (including myself). Aren't you making it yourself too easy to rely on one thing to authenticate/verify people?

bdlbdl 12y ago
It's because a Facebook connected user is just a much more valuable user to your service. You have access to their friend list, photos, likes, etc. And it's easy. Sure, they could do the work to let non-FB connected users in as well, but given the scale of FB and the value of FB data, it's really hard to justify that work until you've hit product market fit. When you only have one path to sign up and register it's really easy to focus and make that path as high quality as possible. Later you can add support for the people that want to use your product but don't have FB.

mc32 12y ago

This reminds me of Slavoj Zizak's quips: "You want coffee without the caffeine, you want beer without the alcohol and you want to fall in love without the fall." or words to that effect. [1] So, as he says, we want the Other deprived of its Otherness. [1]http://www.lacan.com/zizekdecaf.htm http://www.lacan.com/zizekdecaf.htm

DanBC 12y ago

Holy crap YC needs a PR cheat sheet. Some tiny web page with a bullet point list of things to do or not do.

genericuser 12y ago

In the account creation settings you don't necessarily cover all options with your drop downs. For instance the "It is very important that my partner: " you have 4 options: No Preference, Wants kids now, Wants kids in the future, and Doesn't ever want kids As someone who absolutely does not does not want kids 'now' but is indifferent to them in the future I really wish there was a an option called. 'Doesn't want kids now'

searine 12y ago

So here is a perspective from one of your users. I signed up for Dating Ring in NYC in like March, and have generally had a good experience. Probably been to a dozen dates/events. Of that I've only been on two "bad" dates. I define that as dates where I felt we just didn't have anything in common and/or they were completely not my type. Most were mediocre, but we had fun, mostly because I know how to be entertaining over drinks. A couple I was interested in but never really had a good relationship develop from it. In general, I had fun so it was money well spent. I'm new to the city and the site was a great way to meet totally new people frequently without having to jump through all the hoops of stuff like OkCupid. I have to say I am curious about this "pivot" in how you are approaching matchmaking. It is nice to have an "out" and not waste my time if it is clear that I won't find the person attractive mentally or physically. Honestly I think I've stuck with the site out of curiosity, and not really the expectation of having a good date. Over the past year I've had much better success finding relationships using OkCupid in NYC than your service. Mostly because I can better select dates that are attractive and interesting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

reillyse 12y ago

Judging from your landing page 4 out of 8 users of your service are gingers... is this a service for people blessed with red hair?

dusklight 12y ago

I will never try this service because it requires a facebook login.

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kcarlton 12y ago

Lots of feedback here seems to be very critical and for the purpose of pointing out everything you've done wrong. That's totally fine, and exactly why posting to HN can result in useful feedback. I just wanted to say that I think you have a great idea here, and if in the future, I find myself single again, I'll take another look at your service.

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swolebird 12y ago

1) How about this: Instead of you both pay $20 and either one can reject the date and you're both out $20- whoever rejects the date is out the $20, and the person who didn't reject the date gets a refund. That would REALLY put the onus on the matchmakers to do a good job making matches. People who are open to going on the date don't lose anything if there's no date, or end up going on a date. And if people continue getting bad matches that they reject, they won't pay the $20 for very long before leaving. Otherwise, why would people stay on the site if they keep getting hit for $20 AND don't go on any dates? 2) https://www.datingring.com/premium[1] https://www.datingring.com/premium[1] https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-What-happens-if-none-of-my-matches-want-to-meet-[2] https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203302640-W... >You can also sign up for Premium Membership to get further date coaching and feedback, as well as two guaranteed dates per month. How do you guarantee a date (or two)?

Beasting247 12y ago

I'm going to provide my ideas/feedback. Unlike a lot of the other people on here, I like the Facebook integration, provided of course nobody else on my Facebook can see that I've added this app. It saves the hassle of having to upload pictures and lowers the proportion of fake accounts. As a male (23 years old), I've completely written off online dating. Sites like OkCupid make total sense if you're a female because you don't actually have to do any work, but they absolutely suck for men. Women are inundated with messages and rarely respond, and thus as a male you have to spend hours and hours sifting through profiles and sending tons of messages. On top of that, very few of the women on dating sites are even attractive. That's why I prefer Tinder, although it'd be nice to have a middle ground between the shallowness of Tinder and a dating site. It's great that this site saves time on the user's part (mainly the male). The problem is that it doesn't seem like I can see what my potential match looks like. Being a male, looks are pretty important. That's why I stopped going on Groupers - my last one hooked us up with 3 unattractive women. It sounds shallow and fucked up, but that's just the reality of it. Until a service comes along that hooks me up with women that I know will be physically attractive enough from the get-go, I'm not going to pay money for it. And since most hot women are already inundated with guys trying to ask them out in real life, I'm not sure if a site like that could ever exist.

jumpz 12y ago

Worst service ever. I paid for $40 for 3 dates back in May, didn't hear from them until after 2 months in and was matched with 1 date. I still haven't gotten any additional "dates". I don't recommend this site to anyone, you would just be wasting your time. There are other sites that are a lot better when it comes to online dating.