Dating apps are bad. We want to make one that’s better.

Apps like Tinder feature nothing but endless swiping on profiles that don’t have bios and may even barely have photos.

No one wants to put in the effort to write a forced message on Hinge responding to a bad response to a worse prompt.

No matter what you’re using, dating apps ask you to come to snap judgments about people you barely know, based on extremely limited information.

Personals works differently. Every user writes a personal ad for themselves describing who they are and what they’re looking for. You then swipe on the ads you see. You only see photos of people you match with.

Why delay showing photos? It’s simple. Dating app profiles don’t actually help you determine if you’d hit it off with someone. There are people you’re attracted to in real life that you might not swipe right on when using an app. We want to foreground the actual person. It’s not quite meeting someone in real life, but we think it’s as close as an app is going to get.