This Shark Tank startup hopes to shape the future of dating

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This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with The Jay Kim Show where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with top entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original show transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

Dawoon Kang is the co-founder, CEO, and head of marketing of the popular dating app Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB). She runs the company with her two sisters, Soo and Arum.

CMB appeared on the American business reality TV show Shark Tank in 2015. The sisters and their app made the headlines when they said no to Mark Cuban who asked them if they’d take a US$30 million offer, although Cuban has since clarified it was a hypothetical question.

In my recent podcast episode, Dawoon and I had a good time talking about the app, dating, and her background. Here’s our conversation.

How does CMB differ from other dating apps like Tinder?

When we started CMB in New York City, we noticed that there was no shortage of dating services. The space is very hot, but there was no service that women could feel excited about using.

When we looked into the space a little more, we found that the industry has always had difficulty recruiting and retaining female users. The gender ratio of online dating participants is typically 65 percent men to 35 percent women. But if you consider that men are twice as active as women, the ratio could be as lopsided as 85 percent men to 15 percent women. You can only imagine in that scenario what the experience is like for both men and women.

So, we decided to create a brand and product experience that really speaks to women. What matters most to women when it comes to dating is quality. And to our surprise, we just couldn’t find millennial dating apps that put a lot of emphasis on quality and safety. That’s why we started CMB, where we do everything with a woman’s experience in mind.

How does it work?

Every day at noon, users receive a handful of curated matches, which we call bagels. Bagels are curated by our smart algorithm which takes into consideration many different things like your background, education, job, demographics, interests, and friends. We try to prioritize introducing you to somebody you don’t know but have a few common friends with.

Since we’ve observed different behaviors of men and women, at least for straight women, we try to show them guys who already gave a “like.” In this way, women don’t have to waste time on guys who might not have “liked” them.

Whenever they feel like talking to somebody, they can actually connect with them and start talking right away. We do this because we observed that quality and curation are important to women. We want to find a way to save time for ladies and give them more control on their dating experience.

If you’re a guy, you receive up to 21 quality bagels that we curate for you. If there are any women you find interesting, just hit “like.” If you’re not interested, hit “pass.”

What is the revenue model?

We have a freemium model, where it’s free to download the app and sign up. But if you want more matches or bagels or if there are other premium services you want to unlock, you can purchase coffee beans, the app’s virtual currency. That’s our business model.

Is the app available globally?

We haven’t launched officially yet everywhere in the world. But you can download and sign up for CMB anywhere. We’ve actually launched in Hong Kong and Singapore as far as Asia is concerned.

What are you and your team’s goal for CMB?

What were you doing before starting CMB?

How is it working with your sisters?

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?