Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Blindmate: Blindmate is a dating app that solves the dating app problem. Dating apps fundamentally provide a wonderful opportunity to meet new people. But traditional apps are incredibly bad at what they're actually designed to do: bring people together. Through superficiality and competition, they often only lead to further loneliness.
Blindmate approaches this with an old—yet new—concept: Instead of searching for partners on your own, you let your friends set you up. Instead of swiping alone, you create each other's profiles and search for matches. This makes the profiles much more honest and entertaining. And matches are based on the character and opinions of friends, rather than just photos and the same old sayings. And because you don't have to spend ages swiping on your own, you can concentrate on getting to know each other. And it's more fun with friends anyway!
Blindmate: From hobby project to full-time job
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Blindmate: Not really. In the US, there are two apps that allow friends to participate to some extent, but they ultimately work on the same principle as all other dating apps. With the same problems. Blindmate is the first app where you really approach the partner search together.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Blindmate: We – Anna, Ben, Andi, and Laurenz – are four school friends. Blindmate was our hobby project for a few years alongside our jobs and studies. We wanted to build an app that truly brings people together and is fun to use together. After the launch in March 2021, we received so much positive feedback that three of us have now quit our jobs to further improve Blindmate.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Blindmate: The launch was completely budget-free. Blindmate was our hobby project, and we launched not only without a budget, but also without any marketing experience. Nevertheless, the launch went really well! The first 30,000 users came to Blindmate primarily through word of mouth. In the foreseeable future, however, we expect to have both a budget for marketing and new team members to support us with the necessary expertise.
“Many people simply want an alternative to lonely swiping”
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Blindmate: Currently we are a small Dating app and a team of four friends and fantastic supporters. In one year, we want to be well-known in Germany and have doubled our team size. In five years, we want to be one of the top 10 dating apps, bringing people together worldwide. Of course, there's still a long way to go, but considering the great feedback (4.8 stars in both stores) and the viral growth, the chances are pretty good. Many people simply want an alternative to the lonely swiping.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Blindmate: So far, unfortunately, very little. We went full-time pretty much at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (and we're all still traveling quite a bit). So, we work together primarily digitally. What we've definitely noticed is that the climate in Munich is very conducive to new ideas, and the people of Munich are really open to new ideas!
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Blindmate: Certainly more of a risk. Although none of us actually mind security, we've agreed to build another dating app. And we're good enough at statistics to know that it's not necessarily the safest job—but it's a really good one, and currently, an important one.
