2021 — 2023
When & Where
Pick a Time, Pick a Place, Land a Date!
When & Where was a dating app where users matched by proposing times and places.
What was the problem?
Dating apps do a poor job facilitating in-person meet ups due to the time/effort needed to match and message.
How does it work?
Instead of swiping or liking, users have the option to select a time (when) or a place (where) to ask someone out.
Users view When & Where member profiles.
Select the “When” button and propose a time.
Select the “Where” button and propose a place.
Once users agree on a time and a place, then they can message each other.
What were users saying?
100+ user interviews informed the user experience of When & Where. Here are a couple quotes from members we spoke to:
“I don’t have the energy to be genuine with 40 different people via conversation.”
“I hate the pen pal part of dating apps. It’s all meaningless small talk and I get bored quickly.”
“There’s no penalty to speaking to a large number of people and just making conversation. It’s like a game.”
“50% of people I matched with would respond. Of those, 30% would have a little back and forth. And of those, 10% I would actually meet up with.”
“Dating apps are a redundant and wasted effort. It’s a song and dance, contrived on both sides.”
Who was our competition?
Compared to our competitors, our goal with When & Where was to have a higher match-to-meet ratio AND to be a relationship-oriented.
We define the match-to-meet ratio as the proportion of people that meet in person out of the total number of matches.
Who was our target user?
Aged 26-40
Burnt out from other dating apps
Career Oriented
Make over $80,000 salary
Dating App User
Has experience using other dating apps
Relationship Desiring
Want a partner (no hookups!)
NYC
Large city with at least 2 million people
How did we launch?
In the Summer of 2022, we launched a beta version of When & Where available on both iOS and Android.
We acquired over 800 beta users utilizing a variety of marketing channels
Launch Party
TikTok and Instagram original content
Partnering with influencers in the dating space
Putting up flyers and passing out business cards
Aftermath & Conclusion
The marketing efforts for When & Where winded down upon entering my MBA program in the fall of 2022.
Through the whole experience of developing and launching When & Where, I honed various skills required to be an effective product manager. Here are the best lessons I learned:
In the initial stages, focus all of your energy on the problem space before jumping to potential solutions
Understand user pain points as intimately as possible
Have radical customer empathy
Segment down the target audience as much as possible
Have an ongoing feedback loop with customers at every step of the development process
Ruthlessly prioritize what features should be added/fixed, especially with limited time and money
Humble yourself - every setback is an opportunity to continuously learn and grow