It is a truth universally acknowledged that the current dating scene is difficult, no matter what city you live in. Everyone has a story and everyone has a grievance. Consider Myles Slayton, who completed a banking internship in New York City and saw how he and his friends struggled to find significant others in the city’s challenging dating environment.
He observed that people are on their phones more than ever and questioned why dating apps are so terrible. He concluded the problem might not be with dating apps themselves, but with how the products function today. Many popular dating apps were built with millennials in mind, but his generation, Gen Z, operates in a completely different fashion. He described it as a throwback to how dating used to be, where people meet through mutual friends and within their social circles.
Slayton teamed up with friends Willy Conzelman and Carter Munk and just a few months ago launched Cerca, a dating app that matches people with others already in their social circles. The company announced a one point six million dollar seed round this summer and is already generating interest. The app has around sixty thousand users, mainly in New York and scattered across various universities. The company is part of Startup Battlefield and will show off its technology at TechCrunch Disrupt later this month in San Francisco.
Slayton, the company’s CEO, explained there is a reason Gen Z has retreated to the old ways of dating, citing the internet and the COVID pandemic. He said that people simply do not trust strangers and are also deeply afraid of rejection. Cerca’s product tries to address these issues. Users create a standard dating profile and sync their contacts. From there, only friends or friends of friends already on the app are shown as potential matches, which eliminates the fear of strangers. All likes are anonymous, removing the fear of rejection. Users get four swipes a day, a feature designed to combat swiping fatigue and place more emphasis on thoughtfully choosing a match.
Slayton stated there is no world where you should be seeing one hundred profiles in a minute. He believes you should really be taking a second to think about each profile because these are real people. The profiles first reveal friends in common, then background information, and finally photos, emphasizing that it is not all just about looks. A user gets a notification that someone has liked their profile, but they will not know who. The Cerca algorithm will then boost the profile of the person who made the like into the feed of the person they are interested in, who can then decide whether to like them back. Each evening, matches are revealed, and nobody knows who made the first move.
Having friends in common makes it easier to vet for safety, as people can simply text their mutual friends to learn more about who they are going on a date with. Users can also select which and how many contacts they want to share with Cerca, and can block certain people from seeing their profiles. You can also filter out words like dentist or doctor. There is no screenshotting or screen recording, as safety is paramount to the company.
Aside from the online world, the company has also created merchandise and is hosting events. Slayton said he and his co-founders decided to apply to Startup Battlefield after knowing a founder who had participated in the event. He believes it is a great opportunity to have the United States and the world see who they are and to represent dating in a positive light.