Meet Feels, a new French startup that needs to alter how dating apps work. According to the corporate, scrolling by way of photographs and studying descriptions are usually a boring expertise. Feels need to enhance profiles so that navigating the app feels more like watching TikTok movies or shopping tales.
“For the past 10 years, there’s been little innovation in the industry,” co-founder and CEO Daniel Cheaib informed me. “The reason why many people uninstall dating apps is that it’s boring. Profiles all look the same and we feel like we’re browsing a catalog.”
In that case, Cheaib is interested by Tinder, but additionally different dating apps that really feel like Tinder however aren’t precisely Tinder, reminiscent of Bumble, Happn, and so forth.
Feels’ founding group has spent two years iterating on the app to search out out what works and what doesn’t. Now that retention metrics are the place they’re presupposed to be, the corporate is now able to launch more broadly.
Image Credits: Feels
If you need to present attention-grabbing content material to your customers in a dating app, you must rethink profiles. Arguably, this has been essentially the most troublesome a part of the event part. When you put in the app, it takes round 15 minutes to create your profile.
At first, solely 30% of new customers completed the onboarding course of. Now, round 75% of new customers attain the top of the signup circulation.
So what makes a profile on Feels completely different? In some ways, a profile seems to be more like a story, or TikTok posts. Users can document movies, add textual content and stickers, share photographs, reply questions and more.
“When you’re done with the onboarding process, you have consistent profiles with people sharing content about them,” Cheaib mentioned.
Like different dating apps, there are numerous choices on the subject of gender id — you’re not restricted to lady or man. You can then say that you need to see all profiles or simply some profiles primarily based on varied standards.
After that, you’ll be able to look at different profiles. Once once more, Feels tries to alter the essential interplay of dating apps. Most dating apps require you to swipe left or proper, or give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. When you concentrate on it, it’s a binary alternative that requires a ton of micro choices.
Sometimes, you don’t have any robust emotions about somebody. Or perhaps you simply need to go to the subsequent profile. And the actual fact that you must triage profiles like this results in a lot negativity, whether or not it’s aware or unconscious — you retain rejecting individuals, in spite of everything.
When you’re taking a look at a profile on Feels, it fills up your total display screen. Videos begin enjoying, you’ll be able to see what the individual likes and who they’re in entrance of a digicam. You can react on some content material or you’ll be able to merely transfer on by swiping up. There’s no coronary heart or like button.
When the startup thought they lastly had been going someplace, they raised a $1.three million funding spherical (€1.1 million) from a lengthy listing of enterprise angels, reminiscent of any individual in Atomico’s enterprise angel program, Blaise Matuidi, Eric Besson, René Ricol, Ricardo Pereira , Yohan Benalouane, Nampalys Mendy, Jean Romain Lhomme, Julien Radic and Jean Michel Chami.
Now, Feels plans to draw new customers with natural TikTok posts, some TV advertisements and more. The firm needs to achieve a million customers by the top of the yr with a huge give attention to France for now. There are 100,000 customers proper now.
When it involves monetization, Feels began providing a premium subscription to unlock more options. The firm is nonetheless iterating on that half.
Feels is simply getting began in a crowded and aggressive trade. Unlike different firms, Feels has invested closely in its personal product earlier than engaged on consumer acquisition and paid installs. It’s an bold technique however it has a lot of potential because it may result in a really completely different dating app.
