Interview: The Student Founder of Dating App Simily
Global Dating Insights had the pleasure of speaking with Owen Thomson, Co-Founder of Simily, about the new dating app’s origins and next steps. Thomson has been developing Simily whilst completing his university degree.
Thomson spoke with Senior Reporter Sean Nolan below:
Sean: Can you tell us about Simily? What makes it unique?
Owen: On Simily, public profiles are a thing of the past. Traditional dating apps, where you have a public bio, or need to write prompts and quotes, can make it harder to be your authentic self. Maybe you exaggerate about how much you work out, or you keep your more niche interests private. It’s a lot easier and sometimes safer to be honest and authentic in your own space, so we’ve found a way to help people using dating apps put themselves out there without having to put themselves out there.
Sean: What are the origins of Simily? I understand members of the team are currently studying at university?
Owen: My co-founder Jacob and I are both studying at Durham University – I’m studying Computer Science, he’s doing Philosophy and Politics, so we’ve got a pretty wide scope of knowledge and expertise. We met in first year walking down the street and got into an argument over whether a banana was a dessert, and we’ve been friends ever since.
A few months ago, I was playing around with an algorithm to match mentors and mentees, and realised this would probably work well for a dating app. I knew Jacob had loads of opinions about the ethics and functionality of dating apps, so asked him to join, and we started working on it over calls from our bedrooms back home.
Sean: Do you have any plans in place for marketing & user acquisition? What strategies are you exploring?
Owen: We’ve got a few ideas and plans in the works – there’s a lot of different ways to go ahead with this sort of thing. Our next big step is rolling out a version of Simily to students in our city, through the student newspaper Palatinate’s blind-dating service, ‘PalatiDates’. It’s the most well-known section of the paper, and just proves that there is an appetite for a way to match that is less superficial.
Sean: As a young person and university student, where do you feel that online dating can improve? What are some big challenges you identify in the dating industry today?
Owen: I think the current apps out there are great for fun and casual relationships but don’t help people find real connections. There are issues around swiping fatigue, personal privacy and a culture of superficiality that create a perception that dating apps aren’t the place to find a real relationship.
As I’m wrapping up my final year, I’ve found that a lot of people are trying to find something more serious. Apps like Tinder aren’t built for that, because their profile-centric design is detrimental to people’s mental health and makes matching a competition among users. But I don’t think that’s a very unique opinion, just search “Dating apps young people” and head to ‘news’ and it’s rare for you to see anything positive.
Sean: What are the next steps for Simily? Do you have any targets you’re excited to reach?
Owen: We have a lot of opportunities coming up soon that we’re excited about! We have an initial release in the coming weeks through the newspaper’s blind dating service to further stress-test our solution.
We also have pitches coming up, including next week (Monday 27th) that you can see here, and we’re also meeting with potential incubators and accelerators in the North East of the UK that we’re excited to hear back from.
