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Coffee Meets Bagel’s Dawoon Kang Talks To Forbes About Challenges Of Being Female Entrepreneur

Coffee Meets Bagel

For a recent interview, Forbes sat down with Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder Dawoon Kang to discuss the mobile dating platform and her experiences as a female founder in the dating industry.

Kang explains that her and her sisters’ drive to create a female-focused dating app stemmed from their father’s entrepreneurial experience, who built a successful metal recycling business in Korea.

Speaking about their goal of transforming the dating space, Kang details some of the challenges the founders have faced along the way in the male-dominated tech world.

The Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder explains: “When we looked into the (online dating) industry more, we learned that it has always had difficulty recruiting and retaining women.

“The industry has been coined a”sausage-fest” because of the 65% men/35% women gender ratio (of users).

“Things even get more lopsided when you consider the activity level of men and women, where men are typically 2x more active than women on a dating app.

“This creates a suboptimal experience for everyone – men are frustrated because they don’t hear back and women are 2frustrated because they are overwhelmed.

“We decided to create a brand and service women can get behind so that we could provide a more balanced, optimal service for everyone.”

Kang goes on to talk about the company’s appearance on Shark Tank, offering some advice to other startups looking to raise investment, emphasising the importance of being “smart and selective” with who they pitch to.

To see the full interview please click here.

Emma Woodley

Emma is a reporter at Global Dating Insights. Originally from Surrey, she has studied Communication and Media at Bournemouth University and The University of Central Florida. She enjoys socialising with friends, exploring new places and can often be found with her nose in a book.

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