Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

Stripe has probably been important for a certain class of businesses. You could also argue that paying through apps more generally (e.g. Lyft) are, in a sense, new payment methods.

Here are typical problems which nearly all dating sites run into:

1. Women got way more attention than men. Such environment stimulates aggressive strategies on both sides. Men must spend a lot of effort to reach as many women as possible. Women must filter out males as hard as possible. Men are discouraged to carefully read profile of women because probability of particular woman responding a message quite small. By the same reason, men are discouraged to write personalized first message. Such economics create hostile environment for both genders. Men got upset that women don't respond them or respond lazily (i.e. on your long sentence or question, she may just say - "nice"). Women got upset that they have inbox full of messages from men but nobody seems have deep interest in them. And I didn't even mention the case when lots of sexually unsatisfied men may harass women because it's cheap (i.e. no consequences). And just banning those men isn't viable long term solution. An apps like Tinder, where you can't write a message till you get mutual likes don't change dating economics at all.

2. Both genders are encouraged to participate in aggressive photos contest. I've had countless personal disappointments on the first date when I've seen completely different woman in real life than on pictures. They can use Photoshop, they can take selfies under specific angle. It's very often that pictures does not show real person at all.

3. Similarly, I've had countless personal disappointments because she turned to have completely different character in real life. The problem is that you used text messages in order to know each other. Dating is very subtle area and you cut off a lot of information if you rely only on text messages and 2D photos. There are much more information in non-verbal communication about your possible compatibility.

I've never seen a single serious attempt to solve this problem. Tinder doesn't even try to solve these problems, they just used mobile apps hype in order to get traction. I've seen the same model (mutual match before you can write message) in 2006.

Dating is area full of stereotypes and political correctness. It's easy to take side. Either feminist side and blame men for being sexual predators or you can blame women as being harsh filtering out men without giving any second thought.

Instead we should think for game theoretic data driven approach.

Now, we have advanced ML algorithms and big data. We can use ML, we can use game theory. Why not create online dating startup which encourages people to know each other well. And discourages aggressive behaviour on both sides. In other words, we should create totally different economics of online dating.

An online dating site which promotes quality over quantity and personalized behaviour.

P.S. I have no idea why I gather downvotes as problems with dating sites are very obvious. They are pretty hard to solve but it doesn't mean these problems do not exist.

Video content is moving in another direction with more walled gardens supported by original content. Maybe it's because of the costs required to produce quality content, or the size of the total library. Maybe it has something to do with how we watch video vs. listen to music (i.e. I may listen to a song or album 100x, but rarely watch any movie even twice).

[0] https://www.eff.org/files/eff-a-better-way-forward.pdf