Michael Bruch was tired of how social interactions played out online. Either they were hostile and detached or they were transactional, he says. They lacked empathy.
So Bruch, who has a background in building social networks online, naturally turned to dating apps as a solution.
"Looking at dating apps, most people use them but, generally, the feelings towards them are lukewarm," Bruch told DC Inno. "People aren't super thrilled about them."
Bruch, who is based in Washington, D.C., launched Sweet Pea in late March and the goal is to create a safe space for everyone. It doesn't have one defining feature—like Bumble, where women message first, or Hinge, which is aimed at making connections between friends of friends. Sweet Pea instead boasts features such as integrated icebreaker questions, options for more than 20 gender identities, video stories (think Snapchat stories and Instagram stories), and robust safety features. Users can also filter out messages that have been deemed inappropriate from their feed.
Sweet Pea also donates 10 percent of its profits to different nonprofits and organizations that support those who have experienced domestic abuse and sexual assault. "Consumers and people, in general, are expecting businesses to be more socially conscious. Sweet Pea can be a vehicle for me to raise money for these causes," Bruch said. "It fits well with our theme of wanting to help people form healthy relationships online. [Relationship abuse] is a lot more common than people think."
The app launched nationwide last month, and it's only available on iOS platforms. Bruch said, in all, it took 8-10 months for the platform to launch after he put the idea in motion. Right now, he has a core team of four people and a rotating crew of 4-5 contractors.
One thing Bruch notes is how weird it might seem to be launching and focusing on building a dating app when others in the tech industry have their eyes set on virtual reality and drone technology.
But Bruch isn't alone in launching a dating app in the District in the past few months. The League, the app for elite young professionals, launched following the 2016 election. Spin The Bottle, a local app that supports video chats with random matches, came on the scene in early December.
"When you're building a product like a dating app in the tech world, it can be kind of weird to talk about," Bruch said. "People are like 'Oh yeah, we're building this sweet new drone, or we're building this artificial intelligence algorithm.' That's sort of all the rage these days, but for me, I'm kind of moving in the opposite direction."
"The products that I'm interested in building and exploring are just exceedingly practical. I'm interested in building products that a random kid in the Midwest who isn't interested in tech can pick up and see and say 'Hey, that's pretty cool.'"
Bruch couldn't say much about what he has in store for the app moving forward. He knows the team will focus on the Los Angeles market a bit more because a lot of his team members are out there, but other than that, he was pretty low key.
"There's a lot of stuff in the pipeline," Bruch said. "I don't really understand why there needs to be that many different platforms [for online dating], and I think that the features can be rolled into one."
Images courtesy of Sweet Pea
