GZV #25: A New Dating App; $150k left in their seed round! + Snapchat Recommendations.
Startups. Trends. Markets. All from a Gen Z view.
Two more days. New Year, New opportunities, and hopefully some live concerts.
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Some of my ideas I publish in twitter before I write them here.
Enjoy!
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Let me introduce you to S’more…
Problem:
“…Most dating apps focus on image first, forcing people to instantly judge others based on little more than a selfie. The result: swiping past great connections, causing years of frustration, while being more single than ever before”
Solution:
“Get to know a person before deciding if you like them and even before you see them. The more you interact and chat with a person (hear their voice, listen to their favorite music), the more their photos unblur and other visual content unlocks. We even have blurred video chatting, and free daily horoscopes.”
The Dating app sector:
From GZV #18:
“When Tinder and Bumble were released I believe this was the “first wave of innovation”. No one had ever seen dating apps on phones before like these two, but now they are kind of old. Soon, I think we will see the “second wave of innovation”. This new wave will be an drastic improvement on the existing products, which by no means are the best. These new applications will remove the stigma from “meeting on a dating app”, they will improve the post match experience, and they will overall make the experience more comfortable for users.”
Gen Z Take:
The blur feature is one of the best new features of dating apps I have ever seen. This will allow for a real connection to be made, something most dating apps lack.
100% verified profiles is also a huge step up, this allows for people to be able to trust who they are talking to.
As Gen Z starts to look for real relationships, regular dating apps aren’t serving that purpose. S’more provides Something More than hookups (see where the name came from?)
Some Stats:
115k users -> 45.5 MAU’s.
55.1% retention rate.
Growing 30-50% per month.
Generating revenue.
Stage?
Seed.
💸💸💸 Fundraising? 💸💸💸
Yes. They currently have $150k left in their $2m round. Check out their deck here.
If interested, contact the founder here: adam@smoredate.com
Dear, Evan Spiegel…
Back in May 2020, Snapchat was $17/share and around $27 billion market cap. At the same time, Facebook was a little over $200/share and had a market cap of $700 billion. My friends and I open Snapchat at least 25x a day, while we barely ever interact with facebook. So for Snapchat to be worth a little under 4% of what Facebook is worth made little to no sense to me.
My thesis was simple; Snapchat had yet to figure out the best way to monetize their platform. The main way Gen Z sees ads is in between stories, and it’s like a race to try to click through them as fast as possible, no one pays attention to them.
With that, here are a few ideas for Snapchats path to better monetization…
Geo-tag Consulting
Back when I ran a startup, one advertising method we used the Geo-tag filters. The key was, we made it usable. Kids don’t want to send a snapchat with Tide detergent as the filter. During Halloween at my school, we decided to make a geo-tag called, “Halloweekend at Elon”, and in the corner we said “By: CampU” (our app). The results? We saw this filter EVERYWHERE for the next two days and it spread massive awareness for a brand. Think about it if only 5 people post with that filter, and 250 people on average see it, that’s 1,250 impressions.
So for Snapchat, the key is to make sure the Geotags companies are making are actually relatable, and portable by users. A team of 20 could get this job done and dramatically increase the revenue flowing toward geotags.
Company Snapchats
Snapchat is used for communication by pictures. Mainly whenever users receive a “snap” it is from a friend. Occasionally though we will get a Snapchat from “Team Snapchat”. This Snap is usually a feature that they are adding to the app, and this is the main way they tell you.
My question is: why can’t companies do this? Why can’t companies release new products and Snapchat them to your home page?
In a sense this would almost be like the startup Community (the one where you can text creators) You could sign up for companies snapchats and get them directly into your channel.
This could open up a few new revenue streams, everything from companies signing up for this feature, to an E-commerce feature within snapchat when a company snapchats you a new product.
The second idea, was actually straight from a twitter thread I sent out about two weeks ago. Follow me @tdozzi to see these ideas before they are published.
Feel free to email or text with any questions or comments about the newsletter, Gen Z, or startups.
thomas@genzvoice.com