In Conversation with Vary Yong, WhoWorksAroundYou

Founder of WhoWorksAroundYou, Vary Yong always had a goal to start his own business. Now, he runs two. Vary’s entrepreneurial streak was already apparent early in life when he tried selling his own newspaper in primary school and also started an e-commerce store some years back. Today, WhoWorksAroundYou is almost two years old. We chat with Vary to find out more about his service.

Why did you go into the dating industry?

It all started out when we tried to address the problem of our busy working friends and colleagues who had no time to get to know new friends and expand their social circle. Thus, most of them are still single due to lack of opportunities to find suitable dates. We want members of our website to be able to find singles working near their work location and be able to meet up for a casual date during lunch or after work easily.

What’s unique about your service?

We focus on location-based matching. On top of matching the members’ submitted personal profile and their criteria for their dating partner, the system suggests singles who are working near them. Having an additional common topic on their work location also spices up their conversation such as sharing their favourite lunch hunts, coffee joint around the area etc.

We are also into research and development on our mobile location-based matching system in which members are able to find nearby singles on the move with their web-enabled mobile devices. As the adaption rate of web-enabled mobile devices increases and the cost of owning theses devices and using mobile internet connection decreases, we believe this will be a hit among busy singles that are always on the move.

How do you negotiate between dating offline and online?

Dating online can be done anywhere anytime as long as you have internet connection and a device with web browsing capability. You can take the opportunity of online chat and messaging to get to know more the other party before deciding to meet up for a date offline. You are able to exchange conversations with multiple singles that you are interested in concurrently and pick the most desired one for a real date. You can’t do that easily offline as it takes up a lot of time off your busy schedule.

Eventually, members have to meet up for a date offline in order to bring their relationship to another level. The online portal serves as a platform for people to get to know other singles.

Has the recession had any impact on your business?

The enquiry rate for our offline professional dating service “Affinity” is still quite healthy, although customers are taking a longer time to commit to signing up for our packages. Our membership for the online portal is still free at this moment so our new signup rate has been steadily climbing. The membership rate for the online portal that we are going to introduce soon will be priced attractively considering current market situation.

Any last words?