Technology

I recommend you take a look at Breeze. It is a dating app in the Netherlands (and expanding).

When you match, you get a date planner (after paying for the date). No chatting allowed. A real date or nothing. That is the premise. You pay per date, and you get your money back if the date is cancelled or they don't show up. So the app earns money from sending people on real dates. People that don't show up or cancel dates are penalized by the algorithn and they loose badges on their profile. This is good for Breeze, who wants people to go on dates, and good for the users, who want to go on dates.

Chatting is allowed a couple of hours before the date, but this is not intended for conversations, only for practical purposes.

As a result, profiles also matter much more. For both sides. You litterally need to sell yourself, because if someone swippes on you, they may need to pay 10 euro for the date if you also swipe on them.

You also get only a handful of profiles each day. Which makes sense, because you can limit the number of concurrent matches/dates, hence the app is better off distributing the matches, rather than piling them onto the 10% hotest accounts.

This also means you can't spend more than 15 to 30 minutes a day going over 5 tot 10 profiles.

Meanwhile, the app can provide free accounts, where people only need to pay for actual dates, hence the entry barier is lower than Tinder, where men won't get seen without paying. Meaning it is easy to get a userbase going.

I suspect the hard part is the logistics of setting up the dates. A spot in a bar or coffee place needs to be organized for each date. If that is no option, the users are asked to choose a meeting spot (talking to eachother via an intermediate person.