Vana Koutsomitis Overfunds On Seedrs Campaign For DatePlay Raising £150,000 In Three Days
After just three days, Apprentice finalist Vana Koutsomitis has overfunded on her crowdfunding target for gamified dating app DatePlay, raising over £150,000.
The entrepreneur and her team were looking for £120,000 when they launched the Seedrs campaign on Tuesday 19th July.
And as of today, the campaign for the mobile dating product is overfunding, hitting 125% of its target with contributions from 110 investors.
The majority of the funding is made up of seven large investments between £10,000 and £30,000.
Earlier this week, Vana Koutsomitis told GDI she wanted to let anyone invest in the business, each share costing £10, in order to “democratise the investment process and let everyone get involved via crowdfunding.”
Speaking about the campaign, Koutsomitis said: “I am absolutely thrilled that we reached our goal in less than three days! I’m so grateful to everyone who has supported me thus far, including Claude Littner and Romesh Raganathan.
“Reaching £150,000 on Seedrs further cements that people do support not only me but also the concept behind DatePlay. We’ve had so much encouragement and messages of support — which has been awesome. I hope that this will also inspire other women to follow their dreams to raise funds for their tech startups.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMdosHkymTE
The founder said the team will continue to overfund to £300,000, and is encouraging more people to get involved to help “prove Lord Sugar wrong!”
When we spoke to the DatePlay founder before the launch of the Seedrs campaign, she gave more details about the dating app and how it will work.
The app uses interactive games to help analyse users’ personalities, matching them together based on their compatibility and set preferences.
After users download the app and log in via Facebook, they go straight into a Buzzfeed-style quiz game designed to analyse their personality, before being shown a feed of compatible potential matches.
Speaking about the product, Koutsomitis said: “I think that providing a fun and engaging user experience is the most important aspect of a dating app’s success, and we’re really focusing on that and making sure our product is high quality and that users actually enjoy the experience of using DatePlay. That’s where we think we have the edge.”
The DatePlay team said the Seedrs campaign will stay live for another three weeks.
DatePlay is expected to be launched this autumn on iOS, and the company said it already has 20,000 people signed up to its waiting list.
Read our interview with Koutsomitis here, and find out more about the app on its Seedrs campaign.