Two Carleton students who think they’ve found the sweet spot in the market for online dating brought their site to Dragons’ Den Feb. 8 in hopes of a big payout.
Third-year computer science student Kareem Lewis and fourth-year economics student Dusan Surla said the website Bantter was created out of frustration with today’s dating sites.
“People lie on their profiles, you don’t really get to see who you’re talking to, and it takes days to message someone,” Surla said.
Bantter will use video chat and have users log in through Facebook.
The site will use publicly-available data to match people in the same area who fit each other’s profile, according to the pair.
Lewis said “Facebook integrity” will make sure all users are real, unlike what’s on dating sites now. Hopefully that means no altered photos, or photos that aren’t of the person you’re talking to.
The pair said the Dragons’ Den judges loved their pitch.
If the site is up and running when the judges check back, Lewis said they will likely be invited to the next round, where their business model will be scrutinized and prepped for a TV pitch.
The site is scheduled to drop Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day.
This is no coincidence, the pair said. They wanted to optimize how many people would use the site, and found that Valentine’s Day is high time for finding a relationship.
According to United States Facebook data from 2010-11, there were almost 50 per cent more new relationships than break-ups on the day of love. There were 22 per cent more on the day after.
“It obviously makes the most sense to debut a site when the most people would use it,” Lewis said.
The pair said the site will land square in the middle of today’s two online dating models.
The “hot-or-not model” pairs users by matching those who like each other’s photos, Lewis said. For example, Tinder.
He said this model is “gimmicky.” Surla said these models are too random.
The other model wants to know everything about a user before pairing them up.
“The website says they have the perfect algorithm to match you with someone,” Surla said, but because you’re not talking with that person exclusively, it’s hard to believe it’s perfect.
“The person you’re talking to is most likely talking to 20 different profiles as well,” he said.
They said Bantter will let you match easily but give you a real way to communicate with that person, through video.
Online dating is something Lewis said the pair is comfortable with, and is a tool people are using more and more often.
“People aren’t trying to meet necessarily in person, because we’re focused on our school, focused on our work,” he said.
Lewis said though he isn’t claiming Bantter is the perfect love site, he thinks they’ve found a solution to dating sites that aren’t realistic enough.
“We hope people get back to real interaction, actually talking to people,” he said.
