As Allison Cousins spoke about the startup Approach Dating, the background of the Zoom call wasn’t that of a typical technology entrepreneur.
There wasn’t a swanky office or whiteboard behind her. The backdrop instead included shelves of jump ropes, cones and sports balls. It reflected the unusual path to entrepreneurship for Cousins and Approach Dating co-founder Riley Foster.
The pair didn’t meet through an accelerator program or entrepreneur networking event. They met in 2018 as teachers at charter school St. Louis College Prep, where Cousins taught physical education and Foster was a math instructor. Today, they’re leading Approach Dating, a startup that wants to make online dating easier and more efficient for singles.
Approach Dating has created a dating app designed to lessen the digital requirements of online dating, seeking to enable quicker in-person meetups for those who connect through the app. Instead of its users swiping left or right on profiles, Approach Dating’s app displays a radar map showing nearby users and allows for sending an invitation — a so-called “nudge” — to meet in person with those who interest them. Cousins said the meetups are meant to allow for a “fast gauge of chemistry and interest” between the two singles.
The nudge allows the user to set up a meeting at one of Approach Dating’s partner businesses. The company has teamed up with 65-plus businesses in St. Louis with locations where its users can meet. The roster includes an array of bars, restaurants and coffee shops, among others. Approach Dating also has used partner businesses to host singles events.
Since launching its dating app in July 2021, Approach Dating says it has had more than 1,800 downloads. The startup said it has largely taken a "grassroots" approach to signing up users of its app through events. It's also done some online marketing, Foster said.
Approach Dating’s origins stem from its founders’ own frustrations using dating apps. They said they’d spend hours finding matches and talking to them online, only to figure out within minutes of an in-person date that there wasn’t a romantic connection.
“Even if you had a really great connection digitally, that doesn’t always transpire into an in-person connection,” Cousins said.
Cousins and Foster first discussed the idea of their startup in April 2020, only to launch Approach Dating a month later.
“It was a very quick commitment to doing this,” said Foster, chief operating officer of Approach Dating. “If there’s something we want to do, we don’t really sit with it. We just do it.”
Approach Dating is currently seeking to raise $1.25 million in funding, capital it says will be used to develop premium and “live” versions of its dating platform. Approach Live would allow users of the app to meet up at events like sports games and concerts, giving users a way to “meaningfully connect over shared interests in a safe and low stakes environment," according to the company. It plans to pilot its live version with a focus on sports events, then expand into other activities like concerts and festivals. As part of the effort to launch its live version, Cousins said Approach Dating is currently pursuing partnerships with sports facilities and concert venues.
Since launching Approach Dating, Cousins and Foster have both altered their teaching roles. Cousins left the profession at the end of 2021-22 school year to focus full time on the startup. Foster says she’s shifted to a new role within education that allows her to give more attention to the business.
Those changes came as Approach Dating is looking beyond just enhancing its technology. Its founders also want to bring their dating app to other cities. They envision expanding to Kansas City in 2023 and Chicago, Tampa Bay and Denver in 2024. Foster said those markets have a high concentration of its app’s target demographic — people aged 25 to 50 in the professional sector — and each has a number of professional sports teams, which is key to the startup’s proposed live version.
With its launch, Approach Dating has entered a crowded field of dating apps, which includes high-profile apps such as Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, among others. However, Cousins and Foster say that isn’t a deterrent, given that many people use multiple dating apps. For example, in a study published by online dating publication Healthy Framework, 75% of respondents said they use two or more dating apps.
Approach Dating’s founders said they didn’t build their app with the expectation that it will be used exclusively by all of its users, but they believe they can stand out in the online dating industry as a company built for those who are dating intentionally and want to form connections quickly.
“We have a specific target market, whereas a lot of those other apps are very broad,” Foster said.
