Transcript of The Dating App Rewriting the Rules of Love | Ep 309 with Sergio Giles Founder of Date Draft

So, Sergio, you and I have had some great conversations running up to this discussion we're going to have. And I'm super fascinated with, one, everyone I know who's in the dating scene complaints about how terrible it is, how terrible the apps are, just the experience is bad. And then you have on the other side, I feel like because of a lot of dating apps, there's many choices that people never want to settle down. It almost seems like it's not really creating a good environment for the dating scene. You, though, having a sports background, are bringing that with Date Draft. What made you say, I'm going to take this background, and I'm going to move into the dating app scene?

Thanks for having me on, Daniel. First and foremost, when it comes to the dating scene, I've been on a few dating apps myself. What I realized and stuff is the users, they don't really get a chance to interact with each other, nonetheless, until they match, and then you got to chat and then see how that goes. What I did is I developed a day draft, and I approach it from like, I'm being in the sports, especially NFL. I was just looking at when you're dating somebody or when you go to date somebody or you're searching for somebody, it's like you're drafting them. I just use that concept and use that concept throughout the whole app. It's like you If you drop somebody, they can end up in certain rounds. Certain rounds could actually correlate with the different value, high value person, whatever it gets to be. I actually came up with an algorithm so that when the members sign up, depending on what they choose for their interests, education, and so on, they end up in different rounds. I figured that that would be one of the best ways to match people because they have that similarity of interest and education and stuff and things of It's not that matter.

Yeah, with the day draft, basically, it opens up the door for a little bit more fun because we have something that's called a Trade Room.

Yeah, so tell me about this Trade Room. It's very interesting mixing this sports draft system into the dating world? I almost think, why did somebody else not think about this before? But yeah, tell me about that.

Well, pretty fortunate to actually come up with the idea. But once again, in relation to Of course, even after a team dropped a player or whatever it gets to be, they end up trading them because that person doesn't actually fit the bill or what they're looking for. It's the same concept with dating. We created this trade room Basically, how the trade room works is if somebody ghosts you, let's say you match with somebody, you start chatting, everything going good for a good few weeks, whatever it gets to be, and all of a sudden this person ghosts you. Well, if this person ghosts you, you could actually place in the Trade Room. How that works is if I'm on the app and you're on the app and we're pretty much in the same area, and I'm looking to meet somebody and I'm tired of swiping, I'm tired of exploring, and I just want to see what else is out there. I can actually go in the Trade Room and I can select you to trade. If you accept to trade with me, I get to see everybody that you match with, especially ones that you want to trade.

I'm fascinated by this. What was the aha moment for you where you're like, Okay, this is really going to work? Did you test this out? Did you test it out yourself? Did you get 30 people? What was your beginning marketing strategy that really helped you create this aha moment that this is something that needs to be added?

Well, I mean, just conversating with people, especially when I was on some of the other dating apps and stuff before I created Date Draft, just talking to people and realizing that some of the issues that they were going through. It's pretty much like a one-shot time for everybody after you match with somebody, and then you have to start the process all over again. But with the Trade Room, it's like a matchmaker in a sense. For the people that you could select or that you could pick in the Trade Room, they've already matched with somebody else. Number one, you know they're a real person, so you don't have to worry about that because somebody else already matched with them and had a conversation with them. But it's just another to be able to interact with each other on a dating app besides just matching and chatting.

I know a lot of people want to create an app, and I've heard that zero to 100 or zero to a thousand users is one of the hardest moments in the sphere of marketing for apps. It's really getting that beginning validation. What was the strategy for you that worked in the beginning?

You're talking about populating the app with our marketing strategy? Well, I mean, basically how I looked at it was like, we just pretty much had to exploit some of our features that made us different from the other apps. The different rounds that members actually get into when they first sign up, that's one. Changing the whole psychology of it by saying instead of matching, you're drafting each other or scouting to actually search for somebody. But the whole idea of the Trade Room is just something I just came up with. It was like during the draft season, the NFL, it just popped me in my head. We're out here drafting people to date. That's basically what we're doing. We're scouting. It was like, eventually, that connection might work out, and it might not. But it's like, what do you do afterwards? A lot of people get burned out on the dating going through the same routine. That's why we came up with The Trade Room and stuff, where you could actually go in and become... It's like for the person that's actually trading with the person, it's like they're playing matchmaker.

When you think about just marketing the app overall, not just the Trade Room part, what was something that's worked for you to really get the word out, to gain more users and stuff, just for the app overall?

Well, I mean, one of the key points that we use for marketing, advertising and stuff is it's more of a new social experience. It's a little bit of social adding in there with the Trade Room, but it's just a little bit different concept with the whole ideal of giving your users more of a gaming-type ideal of dating instead of it just being plain old boring dating.

So is that how you would differentiate yourself between the swiping? Because I guess the swiping was maybe the first gamification, right? I guess that did gamify. And then you think that people are on to the next level of gamification because they're burnt out from that action, and now they're looking for something that is more interactive. Is that how you see apps in general moving forward? Is they need to be more gamified and more interactive?

Yes, I do. I do think that, especially when it comes to dating, it needs to be more of a game-like environment just to be able to add some fun. Some people, they look at dating as very frustrating or very taxing. Every time you meet somebody new, it's the same old where are you from? The whole array of different questions that go along with dating. But don't get me wrong, we got this right on our platform as well. I mean, it's a great concept. It's an easy way for them to actually see the different people or the different members on the app. But at the same time, it's like, what else can we do to make it a little bit more innovative, to entice people to want to date more? That's why I came up with the whole concept of The Trade Room. I mean, some of the publications that we've been featured in, some of the editors actually called it the fantasy football of dating. I had no idea where that came from, but, hell, sounds good. But, yeah, it's a very unique concept. We test it out, and it's actually pretty fun. It has a little bit more spark to dating because you can pretty much trade as much as you want.

But we suggest that you don't. But it's just a fact of the matter that it's just more interactive.

There you go. You're the fantasy football of dating. Take the tagline, whatever tagline you're given. It seems like that's something that makes you more memorable. What were the users saying or what have they been saying? What have you seen since you started this?

Well, we just recently launched, so we haven't gotten that much feedback, but some of the feedback that we have gotten, a lot of members, they are very excited about it, and they really love the Trade Room because it gives them that other option of just sitting there and swiping where they could actually interact with another member of the dating app and then see the type people that they're interested in and see if they could actually match with one of those other users that they match with.

As we know, we're so globally connected with all social media, Internet. How do you look at international expansion? I know you have people that are downloading in other countries, but how are you looking at this in the future?

Well, to be honest, we're just taking it as it comes. We're not trying to be too ambitious. We're just sitting back, seeing how everything flows with date, draft, and then we usually meet and see what steps that we can take to actually enhance the user's experience, not just here in the US, but also overseas.

When you think about what is it that you want this to be known for in the future, what is it that you hope in a few years from now, people look back and say, DateDraft is X. Because I think in the past, it was always, I met my wife on blank, or I met my partner on blank. That was the gage of the success of many of these apps. But I know a Generations have changed. I'm sure the culture of dating, the habits are changing, so maybe that's not always the measure of success. But how do you see the measure of success for DateDraft?

Well, we're just hoping in the future that we could start getting some feedback or some actual reviews saying that, Hey, I actually traded up for my wife. I met this one person, didn't work out, so I actually traded up, and that's how I met my wife, or that's how I met my husband. Basically, everybody that has an app that comes out, they want to be the pinnacle, whatever. I understand the giants out there, Tinder, Bumbo, Hinch, and plenty of fish, and a few others and stuff. I mean, yeah, if we could actually step on the front porch with those big dogs and compete with them, that's fine. I just would like for a date job to be known for actually changing the way that we date online by introducing the trade room.

If you change the way people date, what do you hope that that will accomplish? Do you feel that just whatever is out there right now, just people are not making the right connections? What is the biggest problem that you feel like you are solving here, or even just the problem you hope to change?

Well, we're just hoping the curve ghosting a little bit more and actually helping people create more of a real connection. That's one of the positive features about The Trade Room. It's like you get to play matchmaker with the other members and things of that nature. I mean, that's basically what we're looking to change and introduce that. We have other innovative features involving the Trade Room and stuff that we're going to be launching as the app continues to grow. Probably later on this year, we're going to be introducing one of the other features, which is actually going to be more of a live trade, like when you watch the NFL draft or whatever it may be. We're We got some pretty wild imaginations over here, and we're looking forward to implement on the app later on this year.

We were talking earlier about the Super Bowl and other games that people bet on. Maybe in the future, there might be this predictive market around betting on who's going to continue dating. That would be quite hilarious. Who do you think is going to continue to date on these apps? When you look at the challenges that we face as founders, what is something that A lesson that you've learned so far creating this?

Well, I'll tell you what's the ongoing learning process is understanding the members that are actually going to be signing up. Dating is a whole psychological thing anyway. By actually offering a service for them to do dating, whatever it case be, we have to have some psychological understanding exactly how they would respond or whatever. It's borderline because when I first came up with the Trade Room and talking to some of my developers, shout out to Mohamed Anz. Got to give him a shout out. He helped with the development of the Trade Room. We had this one concept that before you actually select somebody that you want to match with through the Trade Room, that the person actually leave a comment about this person. We're like, No, I don't want to do that. That's borderline. Definitely that could come back if somebody says something wrong or something derogatory about another person that they already match with. We just left that out of it. Just like regular matching, man, you got to figure it out by yourself on if this person is going to be a good match for you or not. So we're compatible with you.

The whole dating, the science, the psychology, It's very fascinating. That's why I enjoy watching shows like Love is Blind or Love Island, all these shows. They always say it's like a social experiment. I find it very fascinating to study human behavior and why people do what they do. But if people want to get in touch with you, they want to download the app, how can they do so?

Oh, yeah, they can download. It's available on Google Play and on Apple through the App Store. So it's available on both platforms. If they want to get in touch with anybody in my company or organization and stuff, they can definitely go to the website, datedraft. Com.

The fact that you could get that website is amazing. That's a really good URL, but Sergio Jau's Date Draft. I enjoyed the conversation today. I can't wait to hear what data, what information, what you find out in the next few years around how the changes are with dating it and how this app and what you're doing will completely, maybe it'll change the way society looks at things, just as, like you said, Bumble and Tinder have done as well. But thank you so much for joining us today.

All right, thank you, Danny. I appreciate your time, man. We could get some people to join the draft.