[langitbiru]

I'm building a dating app, SwanLove (https://swan.love). It's still in MVP mode and centralized mode.

I'm thinking of pivoting into this kind of business model: B2B. So I make my dating app something like GitLab or WordPress. You can install it and host it yourself. You pay me every month if your users exceeds 100.

Say, you are a priest or a gym owner. You have a community. You want your people in the community (church, gym) to have a chance to find a romantic partner inside the community. Anyone who wants to register in your dating app needs to be a member of your community first (church, gym). This way, I don't even hold the data (avoiding becoming a honeypot for hackers). I just want the money (in an ethical way).

What do you think? Is this ethical business model for a dating startup?

For the centralized dating app, maybe the subscription package can help them foster their relationship. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it.

Or you can create a bounty in the dating app for someone who can introduce a wonderful person to you. Then if you get married, the dating startup gets a cut from the bounty. The problem is how you verify whether people get married or not. Can we do something like bootcamps offering ISA that can access their students' tax records?

[nonameiguess]

This sounds perfectly ethical to me but it's not clear what value it provides. People who are part of the same church or gym already have the opportunity to get to know each other by being in the same physical community in the first place and don't need a website where they can interact with the same people but online. If they do want that, they're likely to just set up a Facebook group. While the obvious disadvantage there is now Facebook owns their data, but it's also free and most people are going to choose free.

Ironically, online venue for a real-world network limited to verified members of that network was what Facebook itself originally was, until they realized opening up to everyone was the difference between a novelty for college students and a multi-trillion dollar world eater.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Dating apps and websites depend on proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding in order to lead. As such, they are very prone to becoming monopolies, and a market leader wouldn't be likely to use someone else's SaaS app. I'm just not sure there is the demand for 1000 semi-large dating apps unless tech isolationism somehow becomes the norm, and it that happens then it would include SaaS isolationism.

[Aethelwulf]

There are already white-label dating-site providers out there. Most of the "specialised" sites (e.g. uniform-wearers, "professionals") are running on them.