Dating in 2020 can be challenging. Many people now turn to online dating apps to help them find a partner, only to discover that they are missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: personality. It’s one of the most important ingredients of attraction, yet most dating apps are based on looks. This is why my sister and I launched So Syncd, the first dating app to match compatible personality types. Our goal is to make dating more meaningful, fun and successful.
Founders’ story
The idea for So Syncd was sparked by a break-up with a long-term partner a few years ago. I started using personality types to better understand why things didn’t work out between us. The break-up coincided with me leaving my job at an investment bank and I decided to take a year out to travel and delve deeper into personality type compatibility. I was completely blown away by my findings. It was evident that certain personality type pairings were much more likely to have fulfilling, healthy relationships.
After my year of traveling, I was having drinks in London with my sister, Lou, and she was telling me about all the disappointing dates that her friends and colleagues were going on with people they’d met on dating apps. I told Lou about what I’d learned about compatibility during my year of traveling. She was skeptical at first but then we applied the matching concept to couples we both knew and her own successful relationship.
She immediately saw the power of matching couples based on personality types. The next day we started building So Syncd, our dating app that matches compatible personality types.
I’ll briefly explain how it works. You sign up like a normal dating app but there is one key difference: you add your personality type. If you know your type already, you can put it in right away. If not, you can take our free five-minute personality test, which consists of 40 questions. We’ll then let you know your personality type and we’ll let you know insights about your strengths, weaknesses and what you are like in relationships.
You then have the option of either searching for specific personality types yourself or we can choose compatible matches for you. Either way, you get a compatibility percentage for each potential match which is the chance that you will find a deep connection with that person.
We pair couples who have just enough similarities to understand each other and just enough differences to create a spark. Without shared ground of some kind, it can be challenging to find that special connection that’s essential for any fulfilling relationship. Feeling understood is a core human need. At the same time, having differences helps to create the chemistry that’s crucial for attraction and turns a platonic relationship into so much more. If each person has complementary strengths and weaknesses, it makes for a stronger team who have each other’s backs.
In addition to connecting people that ‘click’, we created So Syncd to encourage the acceptance and understanding of all personality types, both when it comes to dating and in other areas of life. Whether it’s understanding your partner or appreciating the perspective of someone you’ve just met, taking the time to learn about people’s differences can be hugely beneficial.
Challenges
There have been a number of challenges that we’ve faced throughout our journey. We self-funded the company for quite a while working full-time jobs. My sister and I don’t have coding backgrounds and we didn’t have the resources to pay for a full-time developer. Launching a dating app without dedicated technical expertise was certainly a challenge. We managed to work it out but there were a number of stressful moments.
In March 2021, we raised our first funding round of $1m which was a challenge. Raising investment takes up huge amounts of time and you have your day job to stay on top of it too. We had the added challenge of being two female founders and the stats around funding for female founders is shocking. Only 2% of venture capital funding goes to all-female-led startups.
Opportunities
It’s an exciting time to be setting up a personality-based dating app. The online dating market is growing rapidly and, in addition, interest in personality types is sky-rocketing. We have highly engaged social media followings partly for this reason.
We have a unique audience. Given that the entire concept is based around personality, it attracts a more thoughtful type of person and people who sign up to the app are looking for meaningful connections rather than short-term flings.
We have a unique and special opportunity to help people find meaningful connections. Hearing so many stories of couples who have found love through our app is incredible. We are a new app but over 1,500 couples have found relationships through So Syncd already. We have a much higher success rate than the industry average due to our unique matching algorithm that takes into account personality.
We had one couple get married less than a year after we launched, Indy and Ben. They are both kind people and they reached out to us shortly after they met on our app. Ben was living in the UK at the time and Indy was living in France. It was challenging for them at first because they connected during lockdown and couldn’t meet in person for a few months. We interviewed them for our podcast on the first weekend that they met in person in Paris. Towards the end of last year, Ben moved to France to be with Indy and they got married shortly after. Finding out that Ben had proposed was the most exciting moment of our journey so far.
Something else that sets us apart is that we have had many couples move countries or states to be together. If that isn’t an indication of the incredible connections that people are finding on So Syncd, I don’t know what is. In fact, we have been invited to a wedding next year of a So Syncd couple where one of them is moving to the other side of the world to be with her partner that she met on our app.
Advice to others about business
A lot of our success is down to building a community, both within our app and through our social media channels. The three main steps that we’ve taken to build a community are:
- We genuinely care about our users. We empathize with our community and we interact with them every day on a personal level. I think the fact that we care about our users comes across and makes a difference.
- We connect with our users authentically. We talk with them in a personal way rather than in an overly formal tone. My sister and I add personal touches when we chat with our users.
- We support and stay in contact with our success stories. This isn’t difficult because we are genuinely interested in how their relationships progress.
There are a lot of points I wish I had known before setting up So Syncd. Fortunately, we have incredible mentors/advisors so there are a number of mistakes that we have avoided through hearing advice from people in our network. Here are my five tips for building a successful business:
- Your founding team is everything. Being a solo founder works for some people but I think that having a co-founder or a couple of co-founders is a better option for most. You will likely face a number of challenges and it makes it easier if there’s someone alongside you to weather the storm. My sister and I are incredibly close and it’s amazing to be able to share this experience with each other.
- Find advisors and mentors. I can’t put into words how helpful our advisors and mentors have been. We sometimes save weeks, if not months, of work as the result of a half hour conversation with one of our advisors. Learning from other people’s experiences is extremely helpful.
- Nurture your community. Your users are incredibly important. Without them, your company is nothing. Don’t just view your users as a number. Respect them as people, listen to them, empathize and build a connection. As discussed above, there are a number of actions you can take to encourage a healthy, happy community.
- Build a support network. As I’ve mentioned, there will be all sorts of challenges along the way and having support from different people, be it friends, family, colleagues or other people in similar positions. I recently met a group of female founders (I’d met very few up until then) and we do monthly female founder coffee mornings. It has been helpful to understand the specific challenges that they face and how they solve them.
- Don’t take things personally. You won’t be able to please everyone. Your product or service won’t be perfect for every customer. You should listen to your users, of course, but you have to balance this with the understanding that you just can’t make everyone happy. Also, if you raise investment, you will most likely have to deal with a lot of rejection. Don’t take it personally. Keep going and believe in yourself!
Setting up So Syncd has been the most rewarding experience of my life. I have learned so much and met so many incredible people. We have an incredible team and we are growing quickly. And most importantly, we have helped over 1,500 couples find love already, all during the pandemic.
GP
The work of a family doctor includes a wide range of clinical diversity, which requires extensive knowledge and erudition from a specialist. However, I believe that the most important thing for a family doctor is to be human because the cooperation and understanding between the doctor and the patient are crucial in ensuring successful health care. On my days off, I love being in nature. Since childhood, I have been passionate about playing chess and tennis. Whenever I have time off, I enjoy traveling around the world.
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