I 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.<p>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?<p>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?<p>3) Will the businesses hosting/benefiting from the event pay a cut of their proceeds to TLF?<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Their site <a href="http://thislooksfun.com/" rel="nofollow">http://thislooksfun.com/</a> 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).<p>It's just an email gathering page, but a few minutes spent in an image editing program would give a much better first impression.
>“Current dating sites suck … an undergrad could build something better as a class project.” ~Paul Graham from his essay, How To Start a Startup<p>>we decided to take PG’s advice a bit further and take time off of school.<p>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.
"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."<p>From <a href="http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html</a>
When 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.
Dating sites don't inherently suck.<p>OKCupid is actually an amazing website. The problem, as always, is there will always, always be more men seeking women.<p>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.
dating 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.
The title is alarming: "Why we dropped out of Yale to start a dating website"<p>But the first paragraph is less concerning: "... taking time off from school to build and grow our company"<p>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 <i>drop out of Yale</i> for an idea with no traction. To take a semester, or possibly a year, for the same? That's a much less drastic proposition.
wishing 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 <i>very</i> 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.
I 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Just 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.<p>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.<p>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.
Be 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)
Do you know about the Yale Entrepreneurship Institute's incubator program. Just do the summer incubation program, and see what happens. Dropping out is risky.
Hi, just signed up to try your website.<p>2 comments:
1) the text box does not display underscore (_). A lot of emails contains _ character, so it could confuse ppl.<p>2) You should implement a 404 page. instead of the current error page when you go to thislooksgood.com/[xx]
Here's an idea:<p>The current problem with dating sites is poor response rates from women.<p>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.<p>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 <i>revealed preference</i>.
Developing 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).<p>Good luck!
I 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.
My 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.<p>Best of luck fellas!
I couldn't find a way to comment on the blog post or a way to contact the author:<p>"Diving into online dating - it’s not a zero sum game<p>Online dating is hear to stay,"<p>typo, should be "here to stay"
College 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.
Stay 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.