
Show HN: Dating Ring (YC W14) – We do the work, you do the dating - laurenkay
https://www.datingring.com
======
goodside
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.

~~~
laurenkay
Also, to clarify, while I did personally message a ton of people during our
early days (CEO in her pajamas at 3am doing anything to get a site off the
ground) - this is not at all what we do now. Our Premium Matchmakers will
contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with.
You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help :)

~~~
adamio
"Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want
to set them up on a date with."

This is unsolicited spam. And likely against OkCupid's terms of use.

~~~
Meekro
Spam is in the eye of the receiver. Someone with an empty OkCupid inbox would
probably be glad to get a "I know someone you'd be perfect for!" message.
Maybe that's still against OkCupid's ToS, I don't know, but if I was the
recipient I wouldn't really care.

If it was just generic "come sign up for our new dating service!" messages,
I'd agree with you, but that's not what they were doing.

~~~
shostack
The problem with this is that every dating site out there looking to grow
their user base might see that as a viable strategy.

If it were to become more common (not sure how common it is
actually...probably very), that could result in an overall poor experience for
OKCupid users who would associate using the service with receiving spam that
never netted out to anything.

There is nothing wrong with OKCupid drawing the line on another service trying
to get "free" marketing on its dime and at the expense of its user experience.

~~~
Meekro
I agree with your last paragraph. If I were OkCupid, I would try to prevent
people from doing this. If I were Dating Ring, I would try to do this. And if
I were an OkCupid user, I would feel gratitude towards anyone who arranged a
date for me, Terms of Service be damned.

That said, if it never amounted to anything -- as in, I got Dating Ring spam
promising dates that never materialized, I would be pretty pissed.

~~~
shostack
If it did amount to something, sure, users would be happy.

However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It is
important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor in the
messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to use
OKCupid's platform to promote themselves.

OkCupid, barring the creation of a program/partnership specific to this case,
has decided that overall, it is worth filtering out. If they thought it added
value based on the data they had, they would try to partner with Dating Ring.
Heck, it would likely have been fine if Dating Ring purchased ad inventory on
their site. As it stands, it seems they view this approach as spam per the OP.
If it is against their terms, Dating Ring doesn't have much leg to stand on as
that would make it a pretty black and white situation.

Part of me wonders if a Cease & Desist is en route to Dating Ring's office.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _However my point was that it is not exclusively Dating Ring doing this. It
> is important to consider the overall signal to noise ratio when you factor
> in the messages from Dating Ring and any other company out there trying to
> use OKCupid 's platform to promote themselves._

Such situations are exactly the kind where Kant's categorical imperative
applies. If something is clearly wrong when everyone does it, it should not be
OK for a particular company to do.

------
potatolicious
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.

~~~
listic

        Spam. Spam spam spam spam spam spam. More spam.
    

Could you please elaborate? Do women get spammed a lot? Do men have to spam to
be spoken to?

~~~
pyre
Women receive more messages from men then men receive from women. From
complains that women leave in their OKCupid profiles I would say that a lot of
these messages are not from people trying to intelligently converse with the
women that they are trying to connect with. Seemingly common things:

\- Messages that are too short. E.g. "hey babe" doesn't mean much, when a
women gets 10 - 20 "hey babe" messages in a day.

\- There are men that get frustrated at the lack of response from women, and
start turning their messages into "form letters" which don't show any level of
having read the woman's profile.

\- Initiating conversation with sexual propositions.

\- Depending on the platform, sending unsolicited pictures of genitalia.

While some of these might not qualify as "spam" compared to a 419 scammers
emails, I would say that wading through all of that seems akin to wading
through one's spam folder...

~~~
jared314
If OKCupid has all of these messages, couldn't they algorithmically rate your
message (based on sender patterns, receiver patterns, and/or site wide
patterns) before you send it. While it wouldn't be perfect, it would act like
the minimum reading level from most grammar checks. (This feels like something
that must have been tried, or dismissed, before.)

~~~
Bootvis
I believe it will increase message quality but maybe not in a good way: now
it's easier to train oneself in sending message that score well but are still
a bad conversation starter. What gets measured, gets improved. Unfortunately,
measuring real success is quite hard because successful stop using the dating
site.

~~~
slig
> Unfortunately, measuring real success is quite hard because successful stop
> using the dating site.

IIRC, when the user disables/deletes his/hers OkC account, they can specify
the reason: "met someone on OkC (they can type the other person username)",
"met someone elsewhere", "not interested anymore", etc. So they probably have
lots of good data on success.

~~~
potatolicious
Assuming the self-reporting is truthful. How many people are selecting the
"this sucks I give up" box?

Self-reporting in general is fraught with problems, doubly (quadruply) so when
it's something as close to the ego as dating.

Also assuming the account is shut off at all as opposed to simply idled.

------
smacktoward
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.

~~~
laurenkay
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.

------
searine
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)_/¯

------
DontBeADick
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
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
You didn't answer the question. He asked you why you think your matchmakers
are better. Not for a page about them.

~~~
laurenkay
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.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Do you have any data or evidence that says matchmakers outperform random
chance (random chance within certain parameters, basically age and sexual
orientation)?

I'd be interested in the odds of two people selected at random forming a
relationship vs the odds of two people selected by a matchmaker forming a
relationship. As well as two people selected by a computer algorithm vs two
people selected by a matchmaker. And two people selected by some random
asshole off the street vs two people selected by a matchmaker.

I'm guessing not.

You need to demonstrate with data your "service" is useful to convince people
to use it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _You need to demonstrate with data your "service" is useful to convince
> people to use it._

The thing is, you don't.

All you need to do is to market the living shit out of this idea, and since no
one can reliably answer whether it beats random chance people will use it. You
get to earn the benefits for as long as it takes for someone else to actually
do the studies that debunk you _and then_ one-up you at marketing.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
You're right! I was more talking about the people here asking questions that
weren't being answered with a straight answer. Surely people do use unproven
(or even disproven) products all the time. I was just frustrated with the non
answer marketing talk.

I've been doing a little googling (and I do mean a little) and it seems as
these matchmakers will offer dubious value for predicting long term
relationship satisfaction.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/online-d...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/online-
dating-sites-dont-match-hype.html?_r=0)

>Because they gather data from singles who have never met, the sites have no
way of knowing how two people will interact once they have been matched. Yet
our review of the literature reveals that aspects of relationships that emerge
only after two people meet and get to know each other — things like
communication patterns, problem-solving tendencies and sexual compatibility —
are crucial for predicting the success or failure of relationships. For
example, study after study has shown that the way that couples discuss and
attempt to resolve disagreements predicts their future satisfaction and
whether or not the relationship is likely to dissolve.

>the information that they do collect — about individual characteristics —
accounts for only a tiny slice of what makes two people suited for a long-term
relationship.

>According to a 2008 meta-analysis of 313 studies, similarity on personality
traits and attitudes had no effect on relationship well-being in established
relationships. In addition, a 2010 study of more than 23,000 married couples
showed that similarity on the major dimensions of personality (e.g.,
neuroticism, impulsivity, extroversion) accounted for a mere 0.5 percent of
how satisfied spouses were with their marriages — leaving the other 99.5
percent to other factors.

Sure it will get you to meet singles, but there probably isn't anything
special about it other than that. Adding someone who majored in theater arts
is unlikely to add value for the cost involved.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I feel your frustration about the non-answer marketing talk.

To be honest, were I not in a relationship at the moment (and if I lived in
SF/NYC), I'd probably sign up for this. For me, the primary value is not
however their Premium Matchmakers beat random chance; it's taking away the
work required to find a date.

After you finish high school, or graduate from university, finding a potential
date gets incredibly more difficult. You no longer spend majority of your day
with hundreds of people, many of whom could be your potential partners - you
have to work to expand your social circle and meet people (most of whom are
already in stable relationships anyway). I'd gladly pay Dating Ring for the
sole reason of helping me meet people who are also looking for a date.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Oh, I agree it has value for just that reason. Just I didn't like the supposed
magic sauce that got throw around to justify the value without proof. I dont
believe the value is in the matchmakers (who might as well be a computer
algorithm) but access to singles also looking for a date or relationship with
little work. It is overpriced for what it is though. If I were single I might
be interested in a service that did similar at a lower price point that didn't
emphasize on "how great our matchmakers are. Trust us."

I know how hard it is to meet new people to date. Especially when you get
older and all your friends all are busy with families and what not.

------
shkkmo
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.

~~~
icambron
I think the key on the rejection thing is to remember that the other person is
also on the hook for $20, and won't get another match if they reject you. So
if the service is even basically working from a matching perspective [1], you
should get a date. Rejecting you is basically saying, "this person is so bad
that I'd rather give up my $20 than trust them that this might be a match". I
also think it's interesting that you focussed on the possibility of you being
rejected as opposed to you rejecting the match.

[1] A big if. I'm skeptical about the whole thing, specifically about the "we
match people, not profiles" claim, which makes little sense to me, since your
profile is all they know about you. But my point is that the economics of it
seem OK.

~~~
laurenkay
Ah, correct. I meant to say also that we used to send people on dates for $20,
and the few times people had bad times, they said they would have rather paid
$20 not to go. So it's better to spend $20 and not waste time, than it is to
spend $20 and go on a date that you know instantly isn't a good fit.

[1] We should explain this better, but when you sign up, you'll see you can
tell your matchmaker a lot more about yourself, and we use feedback from each
match / date to improve matches. Plus, of course, we're using all of the
research we've collected on what makes people compatible. So it's definitely
off of more than just a profile, but I get what you're saying.

~~~
laurenkay
@genericuser A big value add to what we do is that we will offer advice to
people who keep getting rejected. If it's that their expectations are too
high, we have it on our list to guide some people toward Premium. Not so we
can make more money from them (our margins on Premium are lower) but because
some people need coaching more than they need matches.

~~~
genericuser
That doesn't really answer the question of the reject pool.

To me it just kinda says you will fault the user if their matches don't result
in a date, but try to keep 'helping' them while you are getting paid.

As a further question how do you even out demand for the different matches.
Assuming the number of matches contracted by men for women is not the same as
the number of matches women for men? Do some people not get matches do some
people get surprise double matches(in which case if they were only expecting
one date a month won't they generally reject the lesser of)?

I mean honestly I would rather not be matched and not be charged than matched
with someone who got extra matches all the same day they weren't expecting.

------
enraged_camel
"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
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.

~~~
enraged_camel
I totally understand where you're coming from. However, consider that there
are more fake Facebook profiles on the Internet than fake online dating
profiles. Facebook itself does not to any sort of identity verification, so
the benefits of relying on it to filter spam are dubious.

~~~
laurenkay
Additionally, our matchmakers review each profile before approving a member.
So Facebook definitely isn't perfect, but it helps to prevent some spam, as
well as multiple signups from the same person. It also makes the signup flow a
lot faster for members.

------
Meekro
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.

------
jonathanjaeger
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.

~~~
colmvp
> 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.

~~~
laurenkay
Predicting who people will be attracted to is not actually that hard, and if
you get a match and aren’t attracted, you tell us why and we’re able to
improve future matches. Heck, some people email us pictures of their exes and
we use that to send them better matches. You’re right that similarity /
interests / and whether you’re attracted are all important. This is something
that we can predict really well. A big part of this though is that people
(especially women) are so inundated with ‘matches’ and messages on other sites
that they never meet. OkCupid had a great recent blog post that showed that
the power of suggestion is just as important as the matching algorithm. So
what’s nice about our service is that people are much more likely to meet,
since they only get 1 match and because of the matchmaker suggestion. This is
not to say that it’s not worth using OkCupid or going to bars or picking up
hobbies but I’d say to do them all. What’s $20 if it means a 1% higher chance
of meeting your next partner? I know people hate putting a value on love, but
the happiness I get from my partner is worth at least a million bucks (he
cooks and cleans..). I was single for 3 years before meeting him, and if
someone had told me there was a 1% chance of meeting him, that would be equal
to $10,000. So even if you don’t agree with my math, $20 is still a far cry
from 10k, and I would have paid a lot of money to have spent less time single.
Of course, tons of people are fine being single or dating around, so it
definitely depends on your priorities.

------
hangonhn
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
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.

------
swolebird
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-W...](https://datingring.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/203302640-What-happens-if-none-of-my-matches-want-to-meet-\[2\])

>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)?

------
jack-r-abbit
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-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-dating-ring-is-raising-
money-to-fly-women-from-nyc-to-sf-because-dating/) [2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455138)

~~~
12bit
_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).

------
devindotcom
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
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
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.

------
kcarlton
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.

------
Bootvis
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
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
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.

------
listic
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?

~~~
Meekro
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
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.

------
DanBC
Holy crap YC needs a PR cheat sheet.

Some tiny web page with a bullet point list of things to do or not do.

------
gnopgnip
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
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.

------
Beasting247
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.

------
genericuser
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'

------
throwaway_abc
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
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=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867...](http://us4.campaign-
archive1.com/?u=7bc3b2bd2f03996c6dbee867c&id=c1db8fed38)

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
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
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.

------
reillyse
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?

------
jumpz
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.

------
jglauche
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
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
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)

------
dl8
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
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
Awaiting the Boston launch.

------
serradate
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/)

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

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

~~~
laurenkay
We were in beta for a year (and never did a Show HN). We just relaunched as a
pretty different service.

~~~
klipt
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?

