Dating apps are broken. Their goal is to keep users engaged and paying, not to help them find meaningful connections. Curation is poor, ghosting is rampant, and users often feel stuck in endless cycles of matching without meeting people. And the success rate for people that meet is too low.
The root of the problem:
Meeting someone in-person after a swipe-based match is inefficient. Here's a breakdown of the time and cost involved in a typical date through a traditional dating app:
Investing 4 hours and $100+ in someone, having no idea what their voice sounds like, what their mannerisms are, what their cadence, energy, and personality are like is stupid and inefficient.
On traditional dating apps, users frequently endure long, bad dates even when they know in the first ten minutes that there's no chemistry. No one wants to be the asshole that ends a date 10 minutes in once they realize the other person's voice is annoying.
The average person knows within 15 minutes whether they want a second date. So why are we wasting hours of our time?
In contrast, in-person first dates that stem from real-life encounters (at work, school, or social settings) make sense because some semblance of chemistry or vibe is established beforehand through some sort of 5-10 minute interaction.
We believe dating is an intelligent numbers game, constrained by the most valuable resource - time. The first ten minutes of meeting someone is by far the highest leverage time in dating. Maximizing the number of people you meet for high leverage minutes is the best way to play the numbers game. Swiping, matching, texting, commuting, and minute 11 through minute 120 of a date are all low leverage and should be minimized.
Within ten minutes of meeting someone, you often know if there's no potential. If not, you should move on.
Tenr helps people avoid the shittiest aspect of dating - bad, long dates.
What's a better use of 3 hours?
a) Meeting 1 curated person with a high percentage of that time spent in low leverage minutes
b) Meeting 18 curated people in high leverage minutes and deciding which of those 18 people are worth further investment
Obviously b).
In theory, speed dating is great. In practice, it has sucked.
Why?
It's not the norm, it's currently high effort, and people are not curated for each other. This is why people who do it seem desperate, which reinforces its stigmatization. Online dating once had this problem... now over 50% of couples meet online.
The key to speed dating being awesome is 1) curation and 2) low effort.
AI enables curation like never before. Computers can serve as that mutual friend who sets you up with someone who has high potential tailored to you.
Pre-COVID, video dates weren't a thing. They still are rare, mainly because people feel weird and judged even suggesting it as an option. Making it the default makes it not weird, making it seem less desperate and breaking the stigma.
The combination of AI curation and enforcing video dating as the default creates a 10x better dating experience vs. the status quo.
Tenr proposes an alternative. There will be no profiles, no messaging, no swiping. No wasted time.
Dating is a numbers game. Tenr stacks the odds in your favor by allowing you to spend more time in the minutes that matter, not the hours that don't.