By Clay Lucas
People falling out of love with dating apps has sparked local entrepreneurs to take on industry giants such as Tinder and Bumble with a mix of in-person dating events and more delicate tech.
Three million Australians are now, in one form or another, on dating apps, and since their launch just over a decade ago, the technology has redefined romance for an entire generation. It’s also built a global industry worth more than $US5 billion ($7.5 billion).
Humpday co-founder Charlotte Vieira.Credit: Wolter Peeters
But app users, who typically spend 90 minutes a day swiping, are souring on the experience. Customer numbers for the big dating app companies Match Group (owners of Tinder and Hinge) and Bumble have flat-lined or are falling.
In response to growing ambivalence to dating apps, Australian start-ups and event companies are coming up with ways to compete with the behemoths of online romance, which collectively now have 349 million users globally.
Charlotte Vieira and her co-founder, Kara Zervides, last year launched Humpday — named for its in-person events on Wednesdays, and the double entendre is designed to stick in the mind.
Tinder’s advent more than a decade ago, Vieira says, was revolutionary.
“Go onto your phone, swipe through hundreds of profiles and meet people who you otherwise wouldn’t have met at work, in a bar, at church, wherever.”
But the dating app companies took on a lot of venture capital money and had to earn it back. Quickly. “So the experience has become worse,” says Vieira.
In 2023, she and Zervides began their Sydney and Melbourne events for those wanting to ditch the apps, and this year added their own app, giving members one match a day — with whom they can chat online only on a Wednesday.
“We want to be the closest thing to meeting people organically, but we realise that can be limiting,” says Vieira, who hopes their mix of matching on an app and meeting in real life is powerful enough to capture 10 per cent of the dating app market within five years.
She believes having a natural way to meet “re-humanises people rather than endless swiping, where you have this idea there are limitless numbers of people and the grass is always greener. We’re trying to reduce the number of choices.”
Also in the in-person business is CitySwoon, an events company that now views itself as much as a tech firm as a dating company. It runs more than 600 events in Melbourne, Sydney and other Australian capital cities each year.
CitySwoon chief operating officer Chris Marnie.Credit: James Brickwood
Its web-based app prompts you to create a profile when you sign up for a dating night hosted at a venue.
In 2023, they convinced a touch over 20,000 to attend their events — double the numbers of 2022 when there was still COVID-19 wariness.
Singles who come to events are set up on a series of speed dates and then, once the date is done, they rate it.
“[We] can quantify chemistry — you might get a message from the dating apps asking if you met up with this person, but we know what happened,” says Chris Marnie, the company’s chief operating officer.
The person you’ve just had a speed date with is only told it’s a mutual match if you both rate each other positively. If the vibe is negative, no one’s rating is shown to the other.
“If both give each other five stars, both get told,” says Marnie, who says over the years he has seen an increasing weariness with the dating apps.
Marnie says the mutual matching at his firm’s in-person events is at 85 per cent for at least one of those multiple dates people will go on. This is vastly higher than on dating apps.
“Dating shouldn’t be a job; it shouldn’t be about setting aside two hours on a Saturday morning to swipe.”
Spoony founder Nick Carlton.Credit: Justin McManus
One app about to launch is focused more on human connection for disparate groups that have something in common: social isolation.
Nick Carlton originally conceived Spoony — an app to connect people with a disability, neurodivergence, or chronic illness — as a dating app. “But we realised there was greater demand for friendship and social connection so we shifted.”
The app, which launches in July, now has a waiting list of 20,000 people. “Social isolation and loneliness is one of our time’s great scourges, particularly for people on the margins — those that might have a disability, be neurodivergent, or have a chronic illness,” Carlton says.
He says the response to the level of interest in a specific platform to connect people often left in despair from other efforts online to connect has been “incredibly moving”.
Red Flags dating app co-founders Matthew Hadchiti and Jamie Bang.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Carlton came up with the idea for Spoony after being diagnosed with a serious chronic illness and finding that traditional dating apps weren’t working.
His co-founder once worked for a disability support app in wide use across Australia, and the pair are aiming to become the peer-to-peer support network for people living with disability and health conditions.
Then there is Red Flags, an alarming name for a dating app. Which is kind of the point, says co-founder Jamie Bang.
“We want to be polarising in a saturated space,” says Bang, whose broader vision is ambitious: “To be the operating system for relationships, fostering deeper connection through tech.”
The app will require anyone who wants to use it to scan their driver’s licence or passport and verify that ID before any dates occur.
Bang says his app will help users “cut through the ineffectiveness of existing dating apps” to find people who genuinely want connection.
“We’re against charging users $50 to swipe on fake profiles,” he says. “Australians aren’t going to pay for bullshit dating apps, but they might for something that delivers real outcomes.”
Bang says the app hopes to make its money by being there “across the relationship lifecycle — not just the beginning part”.
“Instead of monetising the matching, we want to create value on the first date, second date, third date, the marriage, the counselling or coaching.”
Money could be made by selling relationship advisers to couples before therapists are needed: “Think BetterHelp but focused on dating,” Bang says.
“Whether it’s the logistics of booking dates or training you to learn more about yourself and your partner — all things that incumbent dating app companies are not financially incentivised to facilitate since they need you mindlessly swiping forever.”
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