Editor's note: In our 2024 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders building groundbreaking products and companies in the Bay Area. Soon is one of 17 we profiled this year — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
Online dating has been popular for nearly three decades and the experience continues to evolve beyond the flirty instant messaging of the 1990s. Pioneering brands in the space — such as Match, Tinder and Hinge — all serve to connect people through algorithms, but users still have to spend a lot of time sifting through matches.
Cora Kyler and Alena Titova wanted to create a better experience that included an option for lower-pressure group dates, so they started a new dating app called Soon to get people meeting offline as quickly as possible, beginning in their homebase of San Francisco.
About Soon
- Founded: 2020
- Founders: CEO Cora Kyler, Alena Titova
- Headquarters: San Francisco
- Employees: 3
- Total funding: $1 million
What happens when you sign up for Soon?
Cora Kyler: It still feels very experimental to us right now. You match as you would on a different platform, but everything changes around that post-match experience. Some people create a “glimpse” which is an eight- to 30-second video reply to a prompt, like an asynchronous FaceTime. Then the first message is an invitation to meet. We have a list of our favorite bars and cafes. In San Francisco, a ton of them are in the Mission. They’ve been curated and fully vetted to be really solid first- date spots.
Alena Titova: We just want you to go out and meet someone and go in there intentionally, but be open to that experience leading to any kind of fruitful connection. And making it feel lower stakes. Normally, if you're chatting with someone back and forth or reading their messages in your own voice, you're gearing up to meet them, you're excited, you're like, 'I think I know who this is' — and then you meet them. There might be a sense of disappointment because they don't match who you think they're going to be, even if they're great. We're like, just get out there sooner. See how it goes and have a more casual approach to dating in terms of mindset.
What is the Soon dating experience like?
Kyler: No matter what, when you get on Soon, you’re gonna go out on a date. We create this experience where you can swipe and match as you would on another platform, then the first message is an invitation to meet. Or you can say, I don’t want to swipe, I’m actually really tired of that experience. And you know that every single week you have an opportunity to go out with a group of at least 10 people.
And it's not just techies on Soon?
Titova: We've attracted a number of creatives. It's pretty mixed, which is really great.
Kyler: We're asking you to be more bold and courageous. So the kind of people that we've attracted are those more creative. They're early adopters, they're smart, they're energetic, but they're not your standard issue S.F. tech person in Patagonia vests. But they're open to tech.
About how much time do people actually spend in the app?
Kyler: On Tinder and Hinge, people tend to binge on the experience. Swiping every day, multiple times a day, We give you handpicked people every day. People are coming back daily for a short period of time, as opposed to spending two weeks swiping nonstop.
Is Soon resonating with people of all different genders and identities?
Kyler: We're finding men are more window shoppers. They don't talk about their dating lives as much, so they don't actually get a lot more feedback about how to approach online dating in a thoughtful, intentional way. Women are like, 'Yes, check, I'm in.' But men are really into it also. In fact, they're more of our word of mouth spreaders because they're getting dates more frequently than on other platforms.
Let's say you identify as a woman but you're also interested in seeing women and non-binary people. Awesome. We make sure there's at least 500 people for you to swipe on or go on a group date. We really made sure that we knocked it out of the park with artsy people in their 20s and 30s however they identify. Right now, we're not for the user who is just looking for a hookup. And we don't crush it yet, we're hoping to, in the 45 and above age range.
Are you both also users of the platform?
Kyler: I actually met somebody through Soon. At first I was like, oh, maybe they just want to hear about the company. They did not want to hear about the company (laughs). Alena's been in a relationship.
Titova: I'm here for the people, I'm here to make it happen.
