Coffee And Donuts Dating Site
- The first time, we met for coffee (although, ironically, neither of us drink coffee) and chatted for a few hours. He called me the next day to ask me out for Valentine’s Day. He told me that he felt like he had known me for 6 months, and I felt the same. – Nate & Kristin.
- A Social Network for coffee lovers. Install on any device (iOS or Android) with PWA. Just navigate to on your chrome browser and you'll get a prompt to bookmark it. PWA (Progressive Web App) is a new technology that enables you to have a mobile experience without having to navigate to the app stores, searching and downloading anything.
Coffee Meets Bagel Before Shark Tank
Coffee Meets Bagel is a free dating app, but you can always upgrade to Premium for special features. Plus, Premium members get up to 2x more dates. Premium features are subject to change, but here are a few things you could enjoy: ️ Full access to Likes You: See all your likes at once and match instantly. ️ Read Receipts: See whether your.
Sisters Soo, Arum and Dawoon Kang emigrated to America from Korea at an early age, to gain the benefits of a first-class education. Their father worked every available hour to ensure that his three daughters had the best opportunities. His endeavors eventually paid off, they graduated from Harvard, Stanford and The Parsons School of Design respectively, and they all began well-paid careers in their chosen fields.
Over lunch one day, the three sisters began discussing dating, and the common problems they had experienced dating online. They all knew the type of dating experience they would rather have, and none of the available sites or apps provided their ideal experience. They decided that with the skills they possessed between them, they could set up their own online dating service, to fill the niche in the market. They soon put their plan into operation, giving up their lucrative jobs, and launching the Coffee Meets Bagel Company.
They moved to San Francisco to help with the technical set-up of the business and began with a dating website. The initial business and number of users grew rapidly, and within a year they had developed and produced their own Coffee Meets Bagel App, however, as with all new start-ups cash-flow was a big hurdle to further rapid growth. Seeking further investment they applied to appear on Shark Tank, were accepted and appeared on the show in January 2015.
Coffee Meets Bagel on Shark Tank
The Kang sisters entered the Shark Tank hoping to gain a shark partner who would invest $500,000 in exchange for 5% equity in the company.
They ran through the concept of the Coffee Meets Bagel dating app. Arum described it as able to ‘Profoundly change the way people meet and fall in love’. The app took traditional online dating but merged it with elements of social media, so that users would see other users who shared mutual friends with them on Facebook, thereby increasing the chances of compatibility between them.
Robert Herjavec queried what the connection to bagels was, and Arum explained that even though online dating was an ever more common way to meet people, there was still a stigma attached to users. The company name was deliberately vague concerning the services offered, to create a kind of secret code between users.
Kevin inquired about the business model, and Dawoon explained that although the core services were free to users, additional premium services could be bought, as with all other virtual dating applications. Arum elaborated with a few more benefits of Coffee Meets Bagels. As users were sourced from Facebook, they were not required to fill in a lengthy and obtrusive questionnaire to join, instead, they could sign up via Facebook in less than a minute.
Kevin O’Leary asked how many users were currently signed up for the service, and Arum became evasive. She disclosed there were ‘Several hundred thousand’ users currently, but despite plenty of pressure from Mark Cuban and Kevin, she refused to disclose the exact number.
Robert Herjavec joined in with the probing, asking why the figure was such a secret. Arum began to speak but was quickly interrupted by Mark. The billionaire Texan had heard enough evasion from the sisters and abruptly dropped out.
Kevin was amazed at the secrecy and said so. Robert Herjavec was happy to move on for the moment, he inquired what sales and profits had been achieved for the business.
Arum confirmed that the previous year’s sales of $87,000 had been easily surpassed in the first five months of the current year, with sales so far of $270,000. Total sales for the end of the year were projected to top $1 million, and $10 million was projected for the following year.
Robert looked more interested but it didn’t last. Arum disclosed that the company was still making a loss, mainly due to initial salary costs for developers to create the App. Robert asked if the sisters were taking a salary, and Arum admitted that they all took a $100,000 salary from the business.
The sharks looked less than impressed at the $300,000 annual salary between the sisters, Arum attempted some damage control, explaining that they had already raised almost $3 million in external funding. Robert asked what profits would be achieved if the projected one million in sales were made. Arum admitted that the company would still lose a million dollars with a million in sales, explaining that future profits were likely to be spent on new customer acquisition.
Barbara Corcoran asked what profits the company would make if they achieved their projected sales of $10 million in two years time. Arum told her that the company would begin to break even at that point, and Barbara looked horrified.
Robert admired the ‘all or nothing’ conviction of the sisters and asserted that the strategy could work, but for him, it was just too risky, and with that, he was out.
Kevin was in agreement, the strategy was risky but potentially very profitable once the user base had grown substantially, but he believed that 5% equity was too small a stake for such a big risk, and Kevin dropped out too.
Lori Greiner had seemed uninterested since the subject of the salaries had come up. She confirmed now they were a huge problem for her, particularly when a business was still not making a profit. Arum attempted to justify the salaries, pointing out that $100,000 had been a big pay cut for all three sisters, but Lori wasn’t convinced. She also believed that the basis of the Coffee Meets Bagel app could be copied at any time. Lori asserted that the copying of original ideas happened ‘all the time’ on the internet, and for those reasons, she was out too.
Barbara told the Kang sisters that she loved the concept of the service, she believed it would be a big hit with women, and men would inevitably follow them onto the service. But only breaking even if $10 million in sales was achieved, was ‘spooky’ to her, she believed that such a make or break strategy was an ‘enormous risk’, and Barbara was the last shark to drop out.
Without a deal from the sharks, the unsuccessful entrepreneurs were about to depart the tank when Mark Cuban suddenly spoke up, and to the amazement of the entrepreneurial sisters, and his fellow sharks, he made the biggest offer the Shark Tank has ever seen. He asked the sisters if they would accept $30 million for the entire company. The sisters said nothing for a long moment, but eventually, Arum confirmed that they wouldn’t. They saw Coffee Meets Bagel as being potentially bigger than Match.com, which had an annual revenue in excess of $800 million.
Robert admired the fact that Arum had not even flinched at such a huge offer. Mark admired her convictions too but still thought the risk-reward ratio on a partnership deal was poor. Unable to gain the entire business for himself, Mark again dropped out, and the Kang sisters were left without a deal in the tank, for good this time.
Coffee Meets Bagel Now in 2018 – The After Shark Tank Update
Refusing Mark’s incredible offer may have been the wisest decision the Kang sisters ever made. It’s not unusual for a business to experience a surge in interest after an appearance on Shark Tank, but Mark Cuban’s thirty million dollar valuation of the Coffee Meets Bagels business proved to other investors that if he was prepared to sink such a huge sum into a business, there must be something worth investing in.
By March 2015, just two months after their segment was initially shown, the Coffee Meets Bagel company announced that it had attracted almost $8 million in Series A funding. New investors, led by already existing investor DCM Ventures, jumped at the chance to partner with the business that Cuban had tried to buy outright and everyone was suddenly talking about. DCM helped attract the interest of other venture capitalist businesses such as the Azure Capital Group.
The Kang sisters hope to use the additional funding to expand the area of operations for the company, as well as funding more training for support and technical staff, and if the rest of the online dating market is any indication of their future growth, they are wise to have invested for a much busier future. In 2014, after the Shark Tank appearance, the business easily exceeded its projected $1 million revenue figure. They plan to acquire an additional four million users by the end of 2016.
Online dating is one of the largest online-business growth areas of the last five years, the total market is estimated to be over $2 billion annually. An early investor in Coffee Meets Bagels, long before the Kang sisters made it into the Shark Tank, was Match Group Inc, the owner of some of the biggest online dating sites, such as OK Cupid and Match.Com. The Match group also owns the biggest dating app of them all, Tinder, and the numbers for that business are enough to impress anyone.
Tinder is used by at least 50 million people, 10 million of them every day. It has been downloaded over 100 million times and users ‘swipe’ to show approval or not of other users at least 1.5 billion times a day. Even though Tinder, like Coffee Meets Bagels is free, with such huge numbers of users there will always be a significant minority of those who wish to pay for some added premium services. The number of Tinder users who pay for additional benefits numbers over 1 million. In Late 2015 Match Group Inc. made its first public offering for Tinder at a tentative valuation of between $2.9 and $3.3 billion. That valuation proved to be a little optimistic for the group, with the final valuation being a more modest, yet still highly impressive $1.5 billion.
The profits in online dating are enormous, and the growth in the market shows no sign of diminishing anytime soon. As online activities take up more of all of our daily lives, it has become far more ‘normal’ and socially acceptable to search for love online, and that’s what it’s really all about for the Kang Sisters. In an interview with ABC in early 2016, Arum spoke about her dislike of the Tinder model and the ‘creepy’ experiences she has experienced personally with the rival app. She believes that Coffee Meets Bagels avoids that ‘creepiness’ because it has a user base with a higher ratio of women to men, mainly due to the fact that the app is centered around forming long-term relationships and real love, rather than a more casual arrangement.
Coffee Meets Bagel has recently added a video component to their dating app. Each day users will be able to answer the question-of-the-day and upload their answer as a video. This way users can view others mannerisms and get to know potential significant others a little bit easier!
Coffee Meets Bagel is on most social media platforms. Follow them on Twitter, @coffeeMbagel or on Instagram, @coffeemeetsbagel. They also update the business Facebook page on a regular basis.
Coffee And Donuts Dating Site Free
The Coffee Meets Bagels business is likely to continue spreading joy around the World, with over 250 marriages to its credit and at least 25,000 relationships started with matches on the app, the Kang sisters can be proud to be bringing people together, while also forging a road into one of the most competitive online marketplaces of all. Money and happiness, it really is a match made in heaven for them all.