New Dating App Launch Asking For $1 Donations To Change Dating With Friend-Assisted Matchmaking
The app is looking for $50,000 to help with its mission of changing online dating by providing greater accountability and verification to dating profiles.
The platform hopes to do this with its “Launch Crew” feature, which allows each user to invite two or more friends – either single or already partnered – onto the app to verify their profile and help them match with the people best suited to them.
Launch explains: “We’ve talked to a lot of singles this year. We’ve heard about their pains, dreams, and horror stories.
“Once we realised how deep the negative feelings against dating apps went, we decided to come up with a strong enough set of guarantees to give hope to even the most jaded “I’m done with dating” type.
“We promise all users: protection from creeps liars, cheaters, bots, and exhibitionists; at least one great date within 30 days at no cost.”
The app initially asks users to sign up with their Facebook account, a common first level of verification.
It then asks singles to invite two or more friends (their “Launch Crew”) to verify their profile further, describe them and increase their trust score.
These friends can then check over and suggest matches for their friend.
Singles can then review the profiles of these proposed matches, however to start with, the person’s profile picture is blurred out.
If they like the profile, they can answer a few icebreaker questions to reveal their match’s photo and unlock the in-app chat function.
From here, the singles have 48 hours to organise a 45 minute meet-up.
The app will then give each user a follow-up survey, asking them to “Yes” or “No Thanks” their match (if they choose “Yes” they are connected as friends) or to report anything they feel they need to.
And the startup, from Walnut Creek, California, is now looking to secure $50,000 in funding to help build an iOS and Android version of the product.
To do this, Launch is asking for $1 donations from potential users, to both build up its user base, test its demo product and help raise funding.
As the company explains: “For dating apps to work, they need a lot of users. That’s part of why we’re here. If we can get 50k people excited enough to give us $1, we’re confident we’ll have enough people onboard to make a great product.”
Launch is also offering a pre-sale of its premium services – $25 investment gets you a year of premium features, whereas $100 gets you a lifetime premium membership and one year premium for five friends (both options are subject to limited early bird discounts of $10 and $50).
To find out more about Launch and to contribute to their campaign please click here.
