In this episode we had a chance to grill Sanjay from elatedate.com to find out how dating apps really work and how to make them work for you.

Transcription

Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the podcast helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips. Sanjay is the creator of a dating app called Like If I just pass you over, Sanjay, you want to just give people a little bit of details about what what I can find out from you.

And yeah. So yeah. So I think I'm seeing some of you guys on this floor.

But yes, I'm the founder of a dating app called a late just kind of launching at the moment.

And I not traditionally from the dating world, like I actually worked in kind of marketing and business. And it's kind of different companies I go to and stuff. But we got into the dating world more recently and working with a kind of a company called Nucleated to build this app and trying to build something a little bit different. So, yeah. So it would be really interesting to hear what you guys kind of think and what your frustrations and stuff with the generally.

And then I'll try and give you a little bit of an insight on what it's like to kind of build one and what it's like to kind of try and match people in an app.

Okay. Well, thank you for being here, Sanjay. Well, while we're waiting for everyone to get on, what we'll do is we'll breakout into breakout rooms. And a topic of discussion is what what is your biggest frustration with dating apps? Hi, and I would say for me on my personal experience, like over the past, I'll say eight years, like it started off with plenty of fish and plenty of fish. And eventually, I got to say, this was like a year ago, I finally decided I just gave up without and deleted it off of delete.

It did not, like, clear my whole profile on the actual site. So I just delete the app because basically. On plenty of fish, for example. I was just never getting any messages from girls that I was interested in. I was just so basically I would always browse through girls close close to my area and I'll drop a message. I'll drop a message I try to make. I tried my best to make the message. The first message, like how you call.

Not to basic, but some to some until I start a conversation, and even now I still get I don't get a single message. I know they've seen my message. They've lots of high profile, but they don't respond back. So that's one. That's one. That's one frustration.

Okay, I'll just put you there. That's what we're going to do, is we're going to go into breakout rooms so we can discuss this in smaller groups. So if you want to discuss it there and what we're going to do is come back to Sanjay's brains of how to find a solution for you.

OK, OK, so I'm just going to send everyone in, will go for 12 minutes, so I'm going to force you should be about four minutes each. I cut you off. I don't know if you want to carry on where you were. Lost from my screen tastelessness. OK, I'll start off like I've been I've been on pretty much every social media to dating sites over the over the years, and for me, me and girls is basically just anything I do to try and like, I just try and get any girls I want.

It's just nothing seems to work for me because I never get anywhere because. Do you think I get with girls it's just endless rejections or time wasters who they're not interested, but they enjoy, like wasting my time one way or another. So I've tried many dating sites from 10 to from Playfish to tender to Cupid to him, you name it. And as I mentioned before, with with plenty of fish, I've actually had plenty of fish over a year ago because I was I wasn't getting nowhere like.

And every girl that I've met on that, no no one wanted to say basically, I just got one girl have got back to me, lots of my profile, but none of them got back to me. So I finally gave up without Amontillado are still on Tinder, but I just barely use it nowadays because. I already get a match, and if I get a match and I'll try to get conversation out of them, just enough conversation so I can get so we can like Gulfton, they'd like see like taxand what's up?

And they don't even even talk back or they'll just say a few messages and then you never hear from them again. OK. Yeah, okay, so that's quite a general thing about dating sites in general is not particularly about the app. It's about like online dating.

Yeah, yeah. OK, so so that's going to be about I don't know if you want to jump in, Sanjay, but I'm just going to say, if I was looking at that, that would be about who you were targeting. The profile that you've got. Something is is evah, not the right matches or that. But I but I think the focus we're going to talk about mostly here is how you can make the algorithms work for you, how what kind of profile.

Whereas I think this is more of a dating question than a dating app. Does that make sense, this is what you think, Sanjay? Yeah, so much on that, and I think it comes down not just to say hello.

Yeah, I can hear you. Can you can you hear, Sanjay this? Yes, well, I think one of the things that I was thinking about this is, you know, it's definitely a frustration that you will experience on one day. There's a couple of things that are fundamentally a problem with the industry that mean it's more like happen. The first one is the massive skew towards male users compared to female users.

So this stat is 60 40 in terms of the 60 percent men vs. 40 percent women. But that's like a general kind of industry wide thing. But it's on some it's far, far worse. So, like the likes of plenty of fish tend. I mean, there's been some there's some statistics that say that Tinder's like nine guys for every one woman, even on Bumble, which are apps that are designed for women or marketed to women, are it's it's way, kind of way more this way more men than there are women.

So that's the first problem. That is just something that unfortunately you just kind of have to deal with. The second thing is in terms of you talking about time wasters and and just kind of not getting anywhere. Another thing to consider is that not all dating apps like that, what you're trying to get from the app in terms of what you're looking for in terms of relationship makes a big difference to the type of that you should use. So I would say never use something like plenty of fish if you're looking for a relationship.

Never use something like Tinder just because the way that the apps are designed aren't made to optimize to a relationship. So Tinder is primarily superficial, even though if you try really hard because it has the most amount of users, you could probably find a relationship on that. My ex I've met on Tinder a few years ago, but ultimately it's a it's a much harder slog because it's a lot harder to find out who is there for what. And then and the other thing to think about is, is the barrier to entry in terms of how easy it is to set up an account.

The easier it is to set up an account, the more time which is you're going to have basically because there's no qualifying of the person who's coming onto the app. If you're going on Tinder, you can do it with a couple of pictures and not say a single thing. And so there's no guarantee that they're actually going to be worthwhile talking to. And a lot of people and there's a lot of stats and data that shows that actually there's a good proportion of people who you go on dating apps like Tinder simply for, you know, to to to kind of pass the time as a game.

I mean, if built like games for a reason, because it keeps people in the. Mm hmm. And another thing like like because if our belly still use and send up a hell of a lot less, because with the experience which I've mentioned before and I've been watching different many YouTube videos, like, I know different Maysam, go out and meet girls outside of the online world as well as. And that unlocks a different day in culture and political parties where they say like, oh oh to do like to go out and meet girls, oh, you must say they saw you must do this or do they do that and go out, go out in the open public knowing in the streets like.

So if we can pull out in a sense and I see girls walking about and just go out and start approaching them all, like our approach goes in on the nightlife life, like she's been looking at looking outside the box, like not limiting myself to just only looking at dating apps.

But guys, I'm going to stop you there because I want to talk about for everyone is so that we can get the most used dating apps. So we're going to do is we're going to talk about dating apps for now, problems with dating apps. And then at the end, when we going through that, we can discuss your particular situation and the questions you ask more of a generic dating rather than what I want to do in our time here is get my most out of dating apps and use them in the most effective way.

So if you have to answer that question, we'll get back to that later. So if anyone else wants to talk, but before they do, if everyone could put some something in the chat, in the chat box about what your biggest frustrations are with dating apps and online dating.

There are some technical things, yes, that can companies do some tricks and they absolutely have some sort of shut out like automatic generated message to people to keep Zino on. And it's not real people. They're some sort of officier algorithm somewhere on their abs or. Yeah.

I mean, can they have fake profiles and can I make it look easy? You mean like they had can I have fake profiles and some scam people.

Sort of, yeah. Or maybe just to keep people on in their tracks. So when sometimes you log into some dating apps and you just immediately started chatting with someone and all you do is ask questions, but you don't really learn anything and you keep answering and you don't get what you ask, which is you don't get a reply at all these sort of things. So this is something made by a company or it is some kind or. Like, what we're doing is we're going to collect the list of problems and in a sense it's going to take us through exactly what the problems are, why and how you can overcome them.

So so, yes, that's basically. Later, about it's about fake profiles or about fake profiles, keep making it look easy. It is. And people engaging people kind of leading them to it.

So this is two ways of looking at it. So one, which is the actual app itself, which is easy because I wouldn't say that the apps themselves are the companies themselves. If we're talking about the likes of 10 to 20 flash all of these big companies, I wouldn't say that they're doing it. Maybe some of the smaller ones, there's what they call them, the affiliate apps. These are basically rescanned versions of of apps. And the whole purpose of these businesses is literally just to get get users in cheaply, make them pay some money, and then they don't care if they lose them because they're not actually trying to get them to match with anyone.

They're just trying to get some money from them. And these companies just constantly spending money on time performance out of paid advertising to bring you in. So that's certainly the type of company that potentially has those sorts of kind of tactics because they're not likely to retain users very well and they're just going to want to try and get you in their place of money. And then if they lose you, they don't take the money, actually. The problem with the bigger apps and things like Tinder that is that there are it's literally big business in in terms of there are entire companies that are in Eastern Europe where they create profiles and they they literally just trying to they're just a bunch of fraudsters.

And they they go to these industry events even though, like, it's well known within the industry that they're kind of creating it. So. It's a problem I wouldn't necessarily say it's always the company itself that's doing it in some instances, it's like so there are certainly some companies that will be creating profiles to make it seem like there's more people on there if they're just trying to get you to kind of pay for a subscription or something. But then on the flipside, there's also a lot of companies.

It goes again back to us. And the the how hard it is to create a profile, the easier it is for them to kind of the fraudsters and the kind of people who are just trying to, you know, to to create the profiles. I you see in Central Park, you can. AK. Unless there's anyone else who's got something to say. And. Yes, sure. Are then, John? Yeah, I just find people that tend to be addicted to using the dating app to talk to people even when they are dating or when they move to a relationship.

Like, when you feel bored, you want to find someone to talk, not seriously. All right. I don't like it. Especially I. I met my. Plus the X from our front door, and we were in a relationship for two years, but he was using Tinder is doing when we are worrying relationship. It's not just happened to me.

It's also happened to so many of my friends around me who, you know, feel bored and switch left and right, just just talk to people and not seriously enough or even when they're in a relationship. Some of them might flirt with other guys or girls. I just started because I find this happens. I think when you feel what you want to use social media getting attention. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I think we'll talk about that when we get into more and more depth and. But I do think that is is one of the things I think Sanjay will be able to talk about that later John.

Yeah, I've had mixed experience with. Various dating apps, largely Tinder and Bumble, over the years, I had a two year relationship, it was really good with, um, a Dutch academic and that was great, I must say. Um. I. Feel inhibited by the fact that on a stroke survivor. I made the very good strike survivor, you know, that's what I do as my job, but I'm a barista. I'm representing. Disabled people in claims on the equality rights and.

Think there's a lot to say about it and passionate about it, but I sometimes wonder whether. There's two things which. Conclude the algorithms really working for me. Firstly. It's such a small. Narrow band of people who are disabled and are coming on to website dating websites and to. Maybe if your. Kee. Material concern is how much money to people spend. You have to get them excited by your website and you want loads of people and loads of things that the small groups like, for example, disabled people.

You're never going to get a bomb because what's the point, because they're disabled and they you know, you have versity pretty poor and university university, you know. Frankly, who cares? I mean, that's a maybe a cynical view, but I'd be interested in what Sanchez? And so just to recap, so kind of concern is that the disabled community is definitely under represented and underserved, basically kind of the summary of what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

I think I think you're right. I don't know of any specific service. I'm sure there probably is. But I'd have to look into it whether there's a specific service for kind of people who are differently abled. And but, yeah, the problem with certainly the bigger ones is that they are designed to be as broad as possible. And so and to kind of put as much as much focus on the users doing the self selection as opposed to then kind of catering to each each different type of segment, I think.

And then on the flip side, there are countless kind of niche dating sites and in fact the majority of new dating sites and dating apps that come about on these apps because it's easier to try and build something that is the same as all the others. But after a specific target market, as opposed to trying to create something genuinely different in terms of the app itself. And so I guess the hope is that that you could be served in that way, because then it's kind of literally capturing those people and and providing that.

But then on the flip side, you the I think the better longer term solution is to just have the major sites and major apps kind of serve them better. So unfortunately, there's not really much I can say in terms of like how we get to that point. But it's a definitely a really good. Thing to raise and hopefully we can kind of move to something. It's certainly something I be thinking about. So this is quite a few I'm going through and trying to make sure everything from the chat, but what I thought would be interesting was if we were to break out into breakout groups and consider.

So still a lot of these. Of these problems, from my view, originate from this, there's a conflict of interest where if you're a user on an app, you want to use the app without buying and you want to get the best match. And whereas the app has to make some money. And so there's always going to be that pressure to push people towards towards paying. So. One way of understanding the problems is if we were to think of what would be the perfect map, what would be the perfect that you would like to use, one that's also going to be sustainable for the company to continue making it.

And so what would be the things that you'd be willing to pay for? What would be the features that you'd want to eliminate? So the discussion is to create a wish list of the perfect app. Yes, everyone, everyone, I just wanted to raise some points, I think, with what you said is definitely regarding paying for the jobs.

For example, I wouldn't mind paying, but I would want some sort of support or guarantee that this app would be able to match me to someone. So I think what that offends me from buying many times is that I feel that maybe it's not worth it or it is not going to work, you know. So also, if the apps or the websites have some sort of how can I say like reliability or some sort of can can give some guarantee that, OK, we are doing this and the potential to work is quite high, then I think paying will not be that bad.

But then again, I've never paid for my website or for an app, so I don't really know.

Yeah. I mean, I would say I'm glad you spoke up because I was looking at not matching to some clarity, but I think I get that in a sense of that you would have pay and then you have met anyone.

Yes. I mean, I think it's one interesting point is what Sanjay said as well about we need to be able to realize what we what we are looking for. So, for example, obviously on Tinder, we will probably not be able to find the citizen relationship. I think this is a problem that I have. Maybe I'm not looking at the right websites and apps, but I think, again, because because as I mentioned as well, there are some websites that they just I think was Sanjay or you.

I forgot that. Just want to make some money then, you know, it keeps people a little bit like, should I, should I pay, should I not? So maybe a website that can give some sort of not a guarantee because nothing is guaranteed. Right. That some sort of like