Dattch, A Pinterest-Inspired Relationships App For Gay Women, Closes $160K To Fuel Its UK Beta

London-based startup Dattch try a dating software with a difference. We don’t imply the point that it’s exclusively for lesbians, bisexual and/or bi-curious females — though that definitely will make it stay ahead of the ranking of right internet dating apps. Exactly what truly set they aside was the largely female employees who attempted to building a dating app designed for homosexual female.

Dattch is currently certainly one of 17 startups from inside the Wayra London incubator cohort, and it has just closed a ?100,000/$160,000 angel/small seed round, with three angel dealers — including Yannick Pons and Andy Phillips. That expense bolsters the ˆ40,000 used by Wayra as part of its incubator program, where Dattch will stay until January.

Are an internet dating application specifically designed for gay women might not sounds as well impressive — however in reality the gay female dating world is spectacularly defectively offered, states president and President Robyn Exton. “Every unmarried online dating merchandise that’s come made for homosexual ladies is horrific,” she says to TechCrunch. “The greatest complications [with bbw dating apps competitors’ merchandise] is they don’t have factor of how these women are different.”

Some other programs seemingly concentrating on lesbians and bisexual women generally reskin a gay men offering and slap a femme-friendly label on it (Bender to Brenda, as an instance. Or GaydarGirls). “There’s no factor of how a female consumer might differ,” she contends.

Exton explains that sluggish reskins of homosexual men networks bring led to lesbian relationship programs that inquire incongruous issues like ‘how much human body hair are you experiencing?’ — because they’re simply reusing equivalent gay men templates. Not really customized for a female projected audience after that.

Add to that, another major issue is artificial users — created by (right) men who’re acting become feminine so that they can pitch for a threesome with the ‘boyfriend.’ Or angling to ‘convert’ lesbians. Helping to make the entire internet dating video game a tedious minefield for gay ladies who have to spend time finding out who’s fake and who’s for real before they are able to begin contemplating whom they fancy.

“It does not happen super frequently, although fact that it can take place means you don’t believe the communications which come through,” she contributes. “It’s just a truly poor experience in general.”

Exton, who has got prior knowledge of the web based dating space, such as strengthening a (straight) online dating product, determined there had to be a better way to offer a residential area of consumers who definitely bring a cravings to fulfill each other, but probably don’t have a similar appetites as homosexual people (especially in relation to body hair). And truly don’t desire to spend your time weeding out straight guys. So Dattch was born.

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“The actual trigger for me personally undertaking Dattch was getting together with a number of my personal girl mates, and a buddy got broken up with her girl therefore had been like ‘come on, you’re only planning need join a site’ and she was reticent to get it done because they are and were all utterly shit,” states Exton.

The business possibility she watched for Dattch were to make the specific reverse way of cynical reskins, and build something that reflects what gay female really need from an online dating application. “Nobody ended up being contemplating a female consumer, as well as just how do females act? What kind of triggers will they be seeking?” she informs TechCrunch.

So what is homosexual women looking for? First of all, a whole load of photos. “The secret behaviours that we spotted which we’re now centering on is the fact that they love to search all night. They are going to see each and every image, every image, and it’s not only everything resemble; women need to know the tiny aspects of you. However in an awkward text information — they wish to manage to soak up the information,” claims Exton.

Not merely images of possible dates, subsequently, but images of where you happen to live, everything put on, issues like, locations you want to get. “Women should be just as interested observe what your living room area seems like, and what your favorite drink is,” she claims. “What we’ve accomplished now’s to allow individuals to import these images that demonstrate who you really are, in the place of describing they. As A Result It gets all content for ladies to look through.”

“Women should see tonnes and tonnes of pages, then determine who they would like to speak with,” she brings.

Dattch was having their build inspiration from female-friendly picture curation site Pinterest. “Our profiles are these Pinterest-style boards that simply give you tumbling graphics… It’s the idea that women include creating these state of mind boards of on their own — you look at it and accept board some ideas, quite quickly, towards types of individual this person is actually.”