Ukrainian Wishdates, a dating service designed to connect people by interests, tops the 6-million-user mark, based on the latest statistics from AppDates. The company has done a nice job of retaining the users they’ve attracted, as well, reaching almost 660,000 active users on August 20th and topping 2,6 million monthly active users (MAUs) by the latest count. In order to find out more about this startup, I spoke with one of the co-founders, Constantine Kurevin, and he told be about their investors, plans, competition, and more.
Wishdates is a dating service which uses their own algorithm to connect people by interests. In this case, users can connect to the service through Facebook and have their profiles analyzed to improve the likelihood of successful matches with a compatible person. The company encourages users to form dating groups and then pull from geolocation APIs to suggest an appropriate venue for meetings. Once the groups are actually ready to meet, the service pulls from Yelp and Foursquare APIs to automatically set up the ideal date and location.
Perhaps most impressive about this startup is that the service has undergone such significant and rapid growth despite launching just under two years ago, in September 2011. Based out of Dnipropetrovsk, located in eastern Ukraine, the company was founded by Kurevin (the current COO), CEO Denis Buryakovskyy, and CTO Vasiliy Iakymchuk and has clearly experienced explosive growth in just over a year of operation. Now, Kurevin tells me, they have their sights set on further markets, with a planned expansion into western Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand next on their plate. When we previously covered the company, we noted that they obtained $470K (350K Euro) in seed funding from Ukrainian industrial group Lamex Group, but Kurevin says that they have partners which will help with their expansion.
Wishdates allows users to access the service through the web or through their iOS and Android apps. The apps are free to download, but the company generates revenue by offering an optional subscription package and through in-app purchases. For example, users of the iOS app can purchase credits in blocks ranging from $1,99 (1,5 Euro) for 100 to $15,99 (12 Euro) for 1,250. Through the apps, users are able to search for nearby like-minded people, view the top people in your location, and share your own interests with possible matches.
There are many dating sites out there, but Kurevin says that they consider their primary competition to be services like Badoo, meetOne, MeetMe, and others.
