Business
Younger daters are tired of swiping. A host of new L.A. startups is vying for their attention
When Joseph Feminella matched with his would-be wife on Hinge in 2020, he was already growing tired of traditional dating apps. He told her he’d like to meet in person right away, and they met that night.
The pair were married three years later, and Feminella launched his dating app First Round’s on Me nationwide in August after a four-year incubation period. The app is designed to help people meet in real life and was inspired by his own experiences, Feminella said.
The El Segundo-based app skips the swiping and encourages users to schedule a time and place for a date. Any user can send a date invite to another user, and the chat opens only 24 hours before the planned meeting time.
Feminella’s venture is one of several in Los Angeles and beyond that are trying to challenge the traditional dating app format by introducing innovative ways to encourage in-person interactions. In an industry that relies on the steady demand for human connection, new players are emerging as younger daters are starting to use the major apps less.
Los Angeles has become a hotbed for dating app startups that hope to gain attention in a crowded market and take advantage of cracks beginning to form within the most popular apps.
Joseph Ferminella, founder of dating app First Round’s on Me, runs the El Segundo startup with his wife, Hannah, who he met on Hinge in 2020.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
A select handful of apps including Tinder, Bumble and Hinge dominate the online dating market but have recently been struggling to grow, experts say (Match Group owns both Los Angeles-based Tinder and New York-based Hinge; Bumble is headquartered in Austin, Texas).
One reason: Gen Z uses online dating less than the broader population by about 11%, according to Match Group survey data from financial services firm Oppenheimer Holdings.
“The online dating industry is still making money, but from a growth perspective, they’re facing challenges right now,” said Andrew Marok, an industry analyst at Raymond James. “The customer base is changing and there are differences in the ways Gen Z and millennials want to meet people.”
Bumble, which once distinguished itself from other dating apps by requiring the woman to send the first message, has seen its shares plummet 55% so far this year after missing revenue expectations. Its share price closed Thursday at $6.57, up 1.08%.
Tinder — the dating app giant launched in 2012 — recorded the highest number of paying users in 2022, which peaked at 10.8 million after years of rapid growth. The number of paying users on the app dropped by 5% in 2023, and declined 8% in the second quarter from a year ago.
Match Group, which owns Match.com, reported a 5% drop in operating income in the second quarter to $205 million.
Still, Chief Executive Gary Swidler said in an earnings call this year he believes the company is on track to reach $1 billion a year in annual revenue.
A move away from the ‘swipe model’
When online dating got its start in the mid-’90s, the platforms were largely profile-based and matched users with shared interests and values. It was common for users to take a personality quiz or fill out a questionnaire in order to meet matches.
The release of Los Angeles-based Tinder introduced a swipe model in which users can decide if they “like” or “dislike” a potential date based on photos and a short bio. Other apps such as Grindr, which is headquartered in West Hollywood and caters to gay men, use a location-based model where users can browse potential dates in their area.
“You’re continuing to see some product evolution in the marketplace, but over the last few years the swipe-based model has been the one that’s attracted the lion’s share of attention,” Marok said. “We’re seeing that that doesn’t resonate quite as well with younger users.”
Gen Z daters prefer a slower, more intentional approach to finding a partner, Marok said, one based more on substance and less on split-second decisions. Younger daters are also more likely to turn friends into partners, he said.
“When you look at the swipe-based apps, their objective is to get a large volume of strangers in front of the user, which is kind of antithetical to how Gen Z wants to meet people,” Marok said.
Newer dating apps are trying to offer users a break from swipe fatigue and an abundance of startups in L.A. are embracing more advanced matchmaking services and group events for singles.
Feminella’s First Round’s on Me hosts group social events, such as a recent pickleball gathering in West Hollywood that attracted around 100 singles. The privately held app has garnered about 175,000 users and, like its competitors, has a freemium model in which customers can elect to pay for certain features.
Feminella, 34, hopes his app can offer users a different experience than what they’ve already found on the most popular cohort of dating apps.
“I saw that dating apps were becoming non-intentional and validation driven,” Feminella said. “I think they’re missing the point.”
Several other apps hold in-person events in Los Angeles, including London-based Feeld, which has been available in California since its inception in 2014.
“We strongly believe that people unlock people, not apps, so it was important to create another dimension in real life for our members to connect,” said Feeld Chief Executive Ana Kirova.
Summer, a dating app launched in 2022 by Marina del Rey-based tech company 9count, also aims to prioritize in-person meetups and is creating a members-only social club. When a user matches with someone on the app, they only have 25 messages to arrange a date before the conversation locks.
Based in Venice, Lox Club hosts regular events for its members such as weekly Shabbat dinners. The company recently released two more community-based dating apps: Jade Club for East Asian daters and Amara Club for South Asians. Lox Club is also getting ready to introduce a matchmaking service powered by artificial intelligence and human matchmakers, which has attracted a wait list of 10,000 people, according to Head of Marketing Samantha Ratiner.
“The consensus is that people are over using all these apps and doing all this swiping,” Ratiner said. “It’s so overwhelming and it can be a waste of time.”
Other tech-enabled matchmaking services that stray away from traditional dating app formats already exist in Los Angeles, like the self-described “modern matchmaking” company Three Day Rule.
There’s seemingly a dating app for everyone and every niche. The League is a platform for students and alumni of elite colleges to find each other; Kippo is a dating app for video gamers; the Fruitz app allows users to search for others seeking the same kind of relationship.
“There’s definitely room for apps that are focused on specific interest groups or specific demographics,” Marok said. “In the app-based dating market, the barriers to entry are relatively low but the barriers to scale are pretty high.”
Despite the plethora of smaller apps, the vast majority of the market remains dominated by Grindr, Bumble and Match Group, the three publicly traded dating app companies, said Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Jason Helfstein.
Tinder serves approximately 50 million monthly average users, a scale that no other app in the category has reached, according to a Match Group spokesperson. A 2023 poll conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Tinder showed that 55% of singles between the ages of 18 and 25 in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada have been in a serious relationship with a partner they met on Tinder.
Match Group is building its own assortment of community-based dating apps, making the space even more crowded for startups. Between 2020 and 2023, Match Group’s apps for gay men, single parents, Christians and the Black and Latino communities saw direct revenue grow at an annual compound rate of more than 70%, the spokesperson said.
Feminella said his company First Round’s on Me sees subscription and revenue growth month over month and has had success with in-person events. He did not disclose financial details, but said he knows he can’t realistically compete with apps such as Tinder and Hinge.
Tinder user, logo on a cellphone.
(Match Group / Tinder)
“For me to even get to that point, they would probably just buy me out,” Feminella said.
After a certain amount of growth, smaller dating app companies are likely to fizzle out or be sold to one of the major players, Helfstein said.
“For the private companies that focus on a small niche, it eventually gets too expensive to grow,” he said. “There will never be another publicly traded dating company.”
Helfstein described the dating app industry as profitable but somewhat stagnant — Match Group had 37% profit margins last year and is on track for 36% this year.
But Tinder downloads fell for the third year in a row this year and Bumble shares dropped 30% in August after missing Wall Street estimates. Artificial intelligence and other new technology could completely transform the industry and offer revitalization, Helfstein said.
“Maybe in five years from now, online dating will be reborn through virtual reality,” he said. “Right now it’s a healthy business, but what the market likes is growth.”
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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