Celeste argues today's dating apps "have been designed and tweaked and redesigned and redeployed to keep you single" — they are "perversely incentivized to try and keep people on the apps for longer" and to "keep people hopeful enough but also unsatisfied" so users upgrade to paying. Known flips that business model.
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Celeste, co-founder and CEO of Known, says she and her co-founder Asher reached this conclusion after doing a lot of research on the current market. The incentive problem is structural: apps want to lengthen your attention curve and keep you "hopeful enough but also unsatisfied" so that you are "more likely to upgrade to being paying users."
Her economic point: "only 5% of people on dating apps pay," so the apps "can't make enough money" unless they keep people engaged but unsatisfied. Known is "not a niche product" and "a completely different business model" — the bet is that with new technology it is "finally possible to create real outcomes for users," and that people will pay for those outcomes.