BAE, a dating app for black singles, has been acquired by if(we) for an undisclosed amount. San Francisco-based if(we) also owns Tagged, an online dating service that has had over 300 million users in the past 12 years. BAE got its start when it launched first at Howard University back in April 2015.
"What they [at if(we)] were missing was having the right people to think about solving black dating from a marketing perspective and innovating new ideas for products as well," Brian Gerrard, co-founder and CEO of Bae, told DC Inno.
"So we took our skill set for understanding the market and matched it with their skill set of understanding the technical needs of the business, so it was just a natural match."
For most, BAE might not be a recognizable name as a D.C. tech company. And that's because it's not. Founders Brian and Justin Gerrard and Jordan Kunzika were all New York-based before moving the company headquarters to San Francisco following the acquisition. Maybe the closest connection is that Brian Gerrard, the company's CEO, is a University of Virginia alumnus.
Yet BAE still calls Washington, D.C. home for one simple reason—it got its first group of users from launch parties at Howard University.
"Howard University is really known as the mecca, and by that they mean the mecca of black culture, ideas, business," Brian Gerrard told DC Inno. "So, we knew there would be no better city, no better school to launch this business."
Before it was acquired last week, BAE, which also stands for "Before Anyone Else," had hundreds of thousands of users. It saw 17,000 downloads in their first month alone, mostly as a result of the group's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) tour. Internationally, it ranked as a top 50 lifestyle app in iTunes in 20 African and Carribean countries, despite doing no marketing there. For now, BAE's users have been folded into Tagged.
When they launched at Howard, Brian Gerrard met Savant Moore, who would later become the school's campus representative. Moore, who's now launching his own money management startup in Boston, credits BAE's founders with inspiring him to become an entrepreneur.
That's where the team met Savant Moore, who worked with BAE from the early stages as a Howard campus representative. Now, he's launching his own money management startup in Boston. An alarming amount of people have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined, Moore said. His startup, FRWD, will fix that.
"There's only 1 percent of African Americans in tech, and Brian and Justin Gerrard showed me that there's a possibility," Moore said. "It inspired me to start my own startup. They not only got acquired, but they are also going to help others see the possibility that tech is an opportunity for us."
BAE is just one of the many dating apps that originated or have expanded into D.C. The League, an app for elite young professionals, arrived in D.C. immediately following the Election in what they called an "emergency launch." Spin The Bottle, a video chat focused app, arrived on the scene in early December. And the founder of Maple Match, aimed at connecting people looking for love in Canada, got his start in tech while he was living in D.C.
For BAE, going through the acquisition taught Brian Gerrard to shift his mentality. He used to say "It could be worse," and now he says "It could be better."
Standing still doesn't count, and that's what I learned the most through this process.
"It was really just a mentality change. I had a corporate job before this — nice people; I would say I liked it. But I always had the mentality that it could be worse," Gerrard said. "I really tried to make a paradigm shift that it could be better. Things can be improved. Standing still doesn't count, and that's what I learned the most through this process."
On the horizon for Brian Gerrard is a new relationship advice Instagram account called Black Love Daily and a few other startup projects he's developing. He and his brother Justin (his co-founder in BAE) already have a new app they've launched, a "life-streaming" app called WeChill, under the if(we) umbrella of products.
And he hopes to become a more proactive angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs.
"Ninety-plus percent of the people I talk to reach out to me through email, Facebook, Instagram saying 'I have this idea to do this app, to do this business.' Ninety percent are still at that idea phase," Brian Gerrard said. "You just have to be willing to put yourself out there and there's nothing as beneficial in life as failing in public."
Image used via CCO Public Domain — credit Unsplash
