Dating App From Ex-Tinder Executive Lets Strangers Play Matchmaker

A former Tinder executive launched a new dating app that invites the community to vote on strangers’ compatibility, putting a twist on courtship at a time when singles have grown exhausted with swiping.Rivet, which opens to US users on Thursday, relies on a pool of volunteer “matchers” who rate whether two given people might be compatible. The idea is to prioritize quality connections over quantity, giving daters just a few pre-vetted options at a time, founder and Chief Executive Officer Taru Kapoor said in an interview. That may include some prospects who fall outside the user’s typical preferences.

“It surfaces a lot of people that you may otherwise swipe past, especially because when you’re swiping through like 200 people on Bumble or Hinge, and people get faster and faster, more and more transactional and judgmental,” said Kapoor, who spent eight years at Tinder and was a general manager for several markets.

Dating-app companies have been making major changes to their products in a bid to lure back singles who reported burnout. Bumble Inc. and Match Group Inc.’s Tinder both host in-person meetups to get people off the app and keep users engaged. Bumble has also added an artificial intelligence-powered matchmaking tool as an alternative to swiping, and it now gives men a chance to make the first move, not just women.

New York-based Rivet, which raised $10.5 million in seed funding and has been testing in select markets, is available on iOS and Android. Though it’s free to join, some features are paywalled, including the ability to message someone without having matched first.

The platform is built on the premise that aggregating wisdom from the community can help cancel out individual biases for better results. Users fill out their profiles with information about what they’re looking for, and the algorithm suggests potential pairings. Matchers then review both profiles and cast their vote, resulting in a composite compatibility score. High-scoring pairs are matched and can choose to start chatting.

“It’s very easy for most of us to look at a friend who may be dating the wrong person and ask, ‘Why?’” Kapoor said. “Most humans are actually pretty good at reading other people.” People also tend to be “more objective and rational,” she added, when they’re outsiders looking in on someone else’s life.

Rivet is not the first dating platform to outsource matchmaking to a community of volunteers. Last year, reality star Bethenny Frankel launched the Core, where daters receive curated matches from their peers. It’s unclear if either of these alternative dating platforms has a chance of pulling in large numbers of users.

Kapoor’s app is attempting to stand out with an AI-powered visualization feature that blends photo pairs together, helping users gauge vibe and height compatibility side by side.

Read More: No Ghosting, No Games: Bethenny Frankel Aims to Reinvent Online Dating

“Humans introducing humans is the oldest technology,” Kapoor said. “A lot of people are turning to matchmaking — human curation — more than before, but it’s very expensive. If you can afford a $20,000 matchmaker, great. But if you can't, how about I give you several different matches for free?”

Rivet tries in different ways to gamify the experience to persuade people to return. Matchers can earn “karma currency” when successful matches are made, which can be redeemed for profile perks, direct introductions, cash rewards or gift cards. (The ability to reach out to someone without having matched costs 3,000 in karma points or $9.99 for one message.) The app also includes features such as weekly top-matcher leaderboards, live events, and promotions that cover half the cost of a first date.

“People can log onto the app and there are live social match events happening live, with a host and a pair on the screen,” she said. “A lot of people join in and then the audience asks questions. We are bringing this energy of sort of making the crowd your wingmen.”