New App HUE Targets Dating Gaps for People of Color

A new dating and social app named HUE is aiming to fill a gap in the market: helping people of color find romantic and platonic connections with others who share their cultural background. The app, which recently launched in early September, already counts around 3,000 users – primarily in New York – as it seeks to offer a more intentional space for underrepresented communities.

Founder Dayo Abeeb tells POCIT that the idea originated from conversations with friends who expressed desire to date within their own ethnic or cultural groups, but felt constrained by mainstream apps. He framed this as a design opportunity: “So I thought, why not … build something to help remedy this. So I built HUE.”

HUE offers users the ability to specify their own ethnicity and the ethnicity of the people they wish to meet. The app currently supports over 70 distinct ethnic groups, covering identities such as “Nigerian,” “Congolese,” or broader African identities, depending on preference. HUE is structured around two main modules: HUE Dating for romantic matches, and HUE Community for group chats and friendships.

Abeeb notes that new users have expressed relief and appreciation for having a space where they feel explicitly “seen”. Yet, growth has not been without challenges: early feedback called attention to omissions in the ethnicity taxonomy – some African countries were missing from the initial list, having to be added in an update further down the line. To date, HUE has not raised institutional funding, but Abeeb says a pre-seed round is being considered.

Abeeb points to this context when he critiques existing platforms: “I think, to be quite candid, I think the current apps really aren’t built for people of color … that’s just the current reality of dating apps.” His goal with HUE is to construct an environment where cultural identity is a foundational axis of matching rather than an afterthought.