Simkhai: Blendr failed because product architecture misunderstood women's needs
Joel Simkhai · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · Jul 17, 2023 · at 55:42
Grindr founder Joel Simkhai explains why Blendr, their dating app for straight and mixed audiences, failed to achieve Grindr's level of success.
0:00 / 0:30exact quote · 30.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Our failure was in the architecture of what we did. And so, you know, if there was a woman, she would get hundreds and hundreds of messages. We also allowed people to exchange photos, and so women would get unsolicited nudes. That, you know, that was a problem. We also would say, you know, how far you were on Blender and that made women uncomfortable. So, overall, the failure of Blender was the failure of understanding What were the needs of women?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Joel Simkhai
Simkhai: Grindr avoided VC to not answer to straight corporate investors
“And I felt that if I would take venture backing
I would essentially become a monkey to them, and that I would need to essentially work for them.
And a lot of them were, you know, straight men who I felt like didn't understand my business, and you know, I didn'…”
Simkhai: Users will pay for dating apps because matchmaking was always paid
“I remember people always telling me, you know, hey, Joel nobody pays for apps. Apps are all free. And no one's gonna ever pay for an app, and I said, I'm actually not an app. I'm a, essentially, a dating business, and people have been paying for dating for cen…”
Simkhai: Egyptian authorities actively use Grindr to track and arrest gay men
“It's not alleged. It happens.”
Simkhai: Grindr's customer acquisition cost was essentially zero
“Our marketing spend was essentially zero, so our cost to acquire new users was essentially zero. I mean, that's what allowed us to grow. You know, if I had to spend money acquiring users, we would not have been able to achieve what we achieved.”
Simkhai: Local network density is the core moat for location-based apps
“And, you know, for a location-based service, when you're meeting people, it's really, you know, all about, you want people nearby. And if someone's not nearby, that's not a great experience. And so we had the, you know, first mover's advantage. We had the netw…”
Simkhai: Startup valuations and headcount are vanity metrics
“And I think one of the ways that founders get caught up in validation is with Valuations.
Valuations, headcount.
And to me, those were vanity metrics.
Those were not metrics that were important.
The only metric that was really important to me was my daily acti…”