Grindr Hires Fitness App Founders
Contributed by: kellyseal on Monday, April 15 2024 @ 06:35 pm
Last modified on Monday, April 15 2024 @ 06:57 pm
Grindr has hired the two founders of Athena, a fitness community app, to join its team.
According to Axios, the gay dating app company hired Athena co-founder and CEO AJ Wolf as a senior manager of product finance, while co-founder and technology chief Max Roche is joining as a senior iOS engineer.
Axios[*1] noted that Grindr did not acquire any of Athena’s assets.
There is not much detail about the hirings, but Grindr has been looking into areas outside of dating to build community on its platform. One area Grindr CEO George Arison has focused on is travel. The company recently released a feature called Teleport to allow users to set their location to a place they plan to travel so they can connect with others before they arrive. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport.
It seems with the addition of fitness app founders, the company also hopes to move into the health and wellness space and build community there, outside of just dating. However, no announcements have been made as to any additional fitness or health goals for the app, outside of building engagement.
"[Athena's] engagement with users was really good," says Arison. "What Grindr has to do in the future is maintain the really great engagement that we have."
Arison also noted in a previous interview that the Grindr community enjoys traveling to events like Aspen Gay Ski Week and New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro, so they wanted to focus more features around connecting people for these kinds of events. Match Group’s BLK dating app just launched Spring Mode to help college students connect while traveling during spring break.
Grindr and other dating apps have struggled lately to grow their user base and revenue. Many young daters are turning to other social platforms, including networking app LinkedIn, to find dates. Some are even turning off apps altogether and joining events like speed dating to meet people.
As a result, dating app companies have put certain coveted features behind paywalls, including messaging matches, which is causing further dissatisfaction with dating app users, especially younger daters who don’t want to pay to meet people.
Bumble, like Grindr, has looked outside of dating apps and focused attention on other networking and community-building opportunities, including launching its standalone app Bumble for Friends. Many young people are looking for connections of all types – friendship, career, and dates – and want some flexibility in how they can use a platform.
Grindr is making some interesting moves with these hirings and its focus on AI-driven features.