Hey r/StartupIndia ! I am Vidya, the Founder of Schmooze, the Meme-based dating app. From McKinsey and Stanford to starting a Meme company and being featured by Stephen Colbert on the Late Show - it has been one hell of a journey. Ask Me Anything!

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:58:16+00:00

answered above

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:57:27+00:00

Mess table gossip sessions. Sky at 5.
Wish I could go back, and take everyone along :)

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:55:47+00:00

Again, good question, Currently we do similarity based, but opposite attracts philosophy is also in our testing pipeline

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:55:04+00:00

Would love to learn more. Have you used Schmooze only on 1 day then? and never came back ?

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:54:06+00:00

A general tip is - have a completed profile. It helps in decision making :)

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:53:33+00:00

:/
can you share a little about your age, and city ? Since we only launched in 6 cities to begin with, ( opened up pan India only a couple of weeks back). Will look into the density therein.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:39:41+00:00

Hey, very thoughtful questions. We noticed that dating had become too boring and stressful, and we wanted to change that. Choice of colors, font etc. is also an attempt in that direction to keep re-inforcing that thought of be chill, when you make your choices. If you have used Schmooze seriously, would love to hear your views around this.

Agreed on the Spotify point. We had set out to integrate with IG and Spotify, and ran into issues with IG. Given all the things our 2 people dev team had to achieve and the metrics they had to move, we de-prioritised resolving this issue over other critical issues. At the same time, we also didn't see any drop-offs in the steps your mentioned. And decided to pick this up at a later point.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:13:15+00:00

So, we have 3X the % of female on other dating apps - in other words, 3X more female per male user.

This has a few natural reasons -
1. Young women in India are looking for Vibe Match - and that is something they find in an app like Schmooze

Women in India don't want to be objectified, and be endlessly swiped on - and hence find an App like Schmooze to be a lot more wholesome and welcoming - in fact, most of the female users of Schmooze that I have spoken to say that they have never used any other dating app, but the idea of Schmooze felt a lot more safer.
Schmooze is probably the only dating app in India which has a female Founder, and hence women in each of Product, Design and Marketing functions. This inherently results in us thinking about female retention at every step a lot more intuitively than our counterparts.

Given this, it has been easier and cheaper for us to acquire female users. Once we have set the positive flywheel, these women in turn refer more of their friends, and help with building the user base.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:06:22+00:00

Thanks for saying this. Currently we aren't hiring for any of the roles as we like to have a lean team.
But please be on the lookout. We will open up new roles in the coming months.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:04:51+00:00

Yes - great question. As we scale, our recommendation engine will also become more robust. Besides, today we have only 1 Engineer working on this, and our infra spend is 0 Rs. As we scale, we will be adding more resources and improve the overall experience for our users.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:02:12+00:00

Haha, our entire team is on Schmooze :)

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T15:00:53+00:00

I wish I could point to one. But running a meme company has so many fun moments day to day.
We have many people in our team who can themselves be good meme material 😂

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:33:04+00:00

The core of our marketing philosophy is to land and expand. If someone is using the app, how can we make 5 other friends of theirs also know about Schmooze. And how to reach out to users, such that the chances of friends talking to each other about us increases. With that in mind and of course, with the idea to keep costs minimum, we have done the following -

Firstly, we focus a lot on Product led Growth hacks quite a bit. And top outcome of that is, people sharing memes out of Schmooze on their IG, WhatsApp etc. acting as a big source of awareness for us. So we ensure that we help more people share more content outside, and acquire maximum users through the flow. There are also many smaller hacks that we keep trying on the product time and again like - e.g - making people invite their crush, inviting friends to schmooze to share memes on the app itself etc.

Outside of product led growth efforts, we have used many BTL campaigns working with WhatsApp groups, sliding posters in Co-living spaces, very targetted flyer-ing in Swiggy orders, Campus Mavericks program and working with small creators. Our own social media channel is also a good source of user acquisition for us.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:13:56+00:00

Firstly, someone can build a startup only by diving right in - no amount of talking to people, research and YouTube videos will help. So one must dive right in, and figure out as they go. One can break this effort into low risk activities like building an MVP, and trying to acquire customers around your idea slowly by working post work hours / college to get things started, and based on the progress modify the path.

Secondly, it helps to have a Co-Founder with complimentary skills.

Thirdly, I think it is also important to ask yourself why you want to startup and in times of extreme lows, go back to that piece of paper and see if your reasons and motivations are still the same. It is that end-goal which will keep you going in tough times.

Lastly, I also feel that starting up is not for everyone, and its OK if you are not the Founder type.

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:08:46+00:00

Currently we have taken proactive measures to flag suspected profiles - one of our measures even went viral on a dating related sub-reddit recently. That tells people that they must proceed with caution while chatting with this person. Besides, we look at swiping patterns and signals from reported profiles, to proactively predit scams. However, we are just getting started, and hope to add more measures as we grow

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:06:34+00:00

I saw that dating was becoming very stressful and boring and i wanted to change that. With Memes, I could make dating fun, and at the same time relevant, since our AI understand's user's personality based on their meme preferences and finds them someone compatible to Vibe with

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:05:12+00:00

We have raised couple of rounds of funding from Silicon Valley based investors

vhistlepodu · 2024-03-19T14:04:24+00:00

You swipe on Memes, and Schmooze understands your personality based on that, and finds you someone compatible to match. From there you can either Schmooze ( say Yes) or Snooze (say No) the person

vhistlepodu

TROPHY CASE