As FLT announced in December, we’ll be covering the 2013 accelerator program, which aims to help early-stage companies become enduring internet companies. Here, we introduce Amir Nissen and Vita Smid, and their startup, 7pmanywhere.
Well, we’re already two weeks into 2013, and with any new year comes new adventures, especially for the eight companies moving into ATP in Redfern, Sydney, to take part in the Startmate accelerator program.
It’d be an understatement to say it’s going to be a big year for the co-founders of 7pmanywhere, Amir Nissen and Vita Smid, who’ve relocated from Melbourne to Sydney for the program. In the past few weeks, they’ve found new places to live, and settled into their desk space hidden within the historic sandstone building at ATP, also home to the Ignition Labs incubator, and startups such as ScriptRock, a 2012 Startmate alumni. Nissen has even joined a nearby gym — a new city, a new routine.
When I visit the offices on a humid Sydney Thursday afternoon, they are holding the fort: it’s still very quiet. Most of the companies will move into the temporary offices on Monday. In fact, it’s good timing — the cleaner has arrived at the same time, and is doing a floor to ceiling once-over before the offices fill up with the cohort of wide-eyed, ambitious Aussie startup entrepreneurs.
7pmanywhere co-founders Amir Nissen and Vita Smid (Image: Zach Kitschke)
As Nissen and Smid explain, 7pmanywhere is a new take on dating for a demographic not currently well-served. Dating sites work best when they target particular niches — gay & lesbian, the over 40’s, and those serious about finding someone. They say these groups are more likely to use dating sites, because it’s usually harder to find someone. For example, a recently single 40 year-old will find it harder to meet someone if all their friends are married and their social groups are established. However, young people are not well served. There’s also a certain cultural stigma, despite plenty of people now giving online dating a go.
“It uses similar technology to Facebook actually,” says Smid. “The site prompts you to chat straight away.”
7pmanywhere is currently being trialled in Melbourne, where it has around 700 registered users. It works by matching three guys to one girl, following a short screening process. Once three guys have expressed an interest in girl, she is given the opportunity to ask three different questions to each of them. The time allowed for the questions and answers is limited. Each round, one guy is eliminated until there is a final match. The pair are then given an opportunity to chat, and potentially meet up for a date.
“My field is data analytics and algorithms but I don’t believe it works for online dating. That approach simplifies it too much,” says Smid.
Nissen elaborates, saying the point of online dating should be to introduce you to new people: “People don’t date online. You really can’t tell if you’re going to get along until you meet for coffee.”
Czech-born Smid is half-way through a financial mathematics degree at Charles University in Prague. He met Nissen while on exchange, through the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Accelerator Program, which Nissen helped establish while studying a Bachelor of Commerce/Arts in Philosophy. It was the first university accelerator program in Australia, and has had some early successes. Both of the companies in the first round of the Optus Innov8 fund, 121cast and Venuemob, came from its cohort (see Optus media release).
However, for Nissen, it was quite different being on the other side of the table watching companies pitch, compared to pitching to Startmate mentors in a full-day session in late November. For the pair, it was a matter of practicing the pitch countless times over the past year. They had flown to LA in September to pitch for the Start Engine incubator. As Smid wrote on his blog at the time: “With an ambitious project like this we naturally tried to apply for a couple of American startup accelerators and hoped.” While they weren’t accepted, they learnt from the experience. Nissen shared his key lessons with StartupSmart: don’t assume anything, don’t hold back and keep hustling.
The pair decided to take a different approach to online dating after some disappointing experiences of their own. Both have tried sites such as RSVP or eHarmony in the past, but found the long screening process frustrating, not to mention the fact that it’s almost impossible to get the attention of a potential suitor over the cacophony of messages they may receive.
“The problem is two-fold — girls in their 20s and early 30s often receive hundreds of messages in the first few hours on one of these sites,” says Nissen. “Whereas, a guy might get one or two responses, but there’s no feedback loop to say why, so we’re trying to solve that.”
At this stage the pair are considering a subscription model. The service would be free but to access extras — which might include extra time to chat or better feedback on your conversational ability — you’d pay a monthly fee. Most potential competitors charge around $10 a month for this service.
The 7pmanywhere founders predict reaching a critical mass will be one of the big challenges with their idea. Although they thought they might achieve some viral growth in the beginning, they soon realised people weren’t as likely to shout on social media about signing up to a dating site, as they were about sharing other things. Some of the bigger players like RSVP, eHarmony and Oasis Active, have spent considerable time negotiating distribution agreements — RSVP is now a Fairfax property, while Oasis is part-owned by the Ten Network. It’s still a strange social taboo — okay to do, but odd to talk about. Nissen says working out distribution will be important.
“Our initial idea was we’d go viral, but people don’t traditionally broadcast that they’re using dating sites,” he says, half-joking. “It’s not something we understood until we did user testing.”
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