9Count Gets Additional Funding Thanks to Success of Summer Dating App

Dating app conglomerate 9Count announced that it has raised another $6 million in VC funding on top of its earlier Series A funding of $21.5 million, bringing total funds raised so far to $27.5 million.

According to Tech Crunch, investors have taken notice of the company’s dating app Summer, a rebranding of former dating app Spark, which has gained traction in a saturated market namely for its appeal to younger daters.

Summer hit number one in the App Store in two markets immediately after its launch and now has more than 500,000 downloads, over a million registered users, and more than 300,000 monthly active users (just a few months later). 9Count CEO Alex Hofman told Tech Crunch that it’s “the fastest-growing dating app to hit the market since Bumble arrived in 2014.”

Summer looks different from traditional dating apps because instead of seeing one profile at a time, users see a grid of many profiles at once to compare and contrast, which more closely mimics real life when you walk into a restaurant or party.   

Hofman plans to use the new funding for marketing efforts for Summer when it expands to Android devices in September, including some in-person events in Los Angeles.

But more importantly, investors like 9Count’s business model: Hofman isn’t interested in developing one dating app and seeing where it goes, but instead, he’s developing and testing several different types of apps and seeing what users gravitate towards, modeled after Musical.ly’s business model where he got his start, (which later became TikTok). The company is also cross-promoting apps within its portfolio according to Tech Crunch, which includes social networking app Wink, social arcade app Juju, motivational app Everland, and Popstream, which connects content creators with their fans.

“The learnings we have by rolling out new products are just tremendous,” Hofmann told Tech Crunch. “We can either make them into a standalone product or feed them into existing products.”

Wink is still its most popular product to date, with over 2 million monthly active users (many of which are 13-18 years old, so there aren’t plans to make it into a dating platform according to Tech Crunch).

9Count’s total users number over 10 million, although Tech Crunch pointed out this number is higher – closer to 16 million downloads across all products (including 15 million for Wink).

 “We see this trend towards…niche desires and niche preferences. We realized that very few products can serve a larger audience and bring them joy and happiness,” Hofmann told Tech Crunch.

The company’s additional funding comes from GGV Capital Redpoint, Signia, Greycroft, Progression, Crosscut Grishin Robotics, I2BF, and Waverley Capital, among others.