New Immersive Dating Apps are Attracting VC Funding

Online dating might be heading towards a sea change as VC firms invested about $31 million in 43 rounds of funding towards new dating apps in 2021. 

According to website Crunchbase which studies technology trends, the majority of companies raised angel, pre-seed and seed rounds, which means venture capitalist firms were interested in early-stage developments. (There were only three who received Series-A funding.)

Crunchbase also noted that every ten years there seems to be a shift in consumer preferences when it comes to dating app technology, and it usually follows the larger social app trends. Ten years ago, Instagram was the hot new app and dating apps like Tinder gamified their platforms to put photos front and center, where users could just look and swipe. 

Now, younger people are gravitating to more immersive experiences like audio and video platforms (think TikTok and Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces), so dating apps are following suit. The dating app companies who received the seed money were largely audio or video-based.

Kim Kaplan was one of the dating app companies to receive funding for Snack, a TikTok-style app geared towards Gen Z daters. She spent the previous ten years at PlentyofFish, and could see users were ready for a change. She told Crunchbase: “You’re seeing this next wave coming up that’s saying, ‘What are the new mediums people want to see in dating?”

Even Match Group, which owns a bulk of popular dating apps including Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge, is gravitating towards more immersive experiences. It bought South Korean social networking company Hyperconnect to use its technology as a base for creating a new metaverse experience for users. Match Group has also launched an Explore section for Tinder where people can do virtual speed-dating, join games like Blind Date, or even watch interactive original series like Swipe Night.

Josh Ogundu, founder of audio-based dating app Heart to Heart also received VC funding in the last year to lots of buzz, but Hinge swooped in to release its own Audio Dates feature in late 2021 which created a TikTok fervor, with users posting their awkward conversations. Still, Ogundu thinks daters are getting tired of the “Instagramification” on dating apps, and people are gravitating to formats like audio for a new experience when meeting potential matches.

There was less focus on the consumer experience on social and dating platforms the past few years, according to Crunchbase, and more on increasing market share in various parts of the globe. But now thanks to the popularity of TikTok and Clubhouse, VC investors are betting that dating app consumers are ready for a change, too.