Unsatisfied with traditional online dating sites, Derek Morris and Alex Zylman decided to take matters into their own hands by creating a start-up called JavawithMe, which will instantly connect Northwestern students for coffee dates.
The two McCormick seniors came up with the idea for JavawithMe when they heard their friend complaining about the dating site OKCupid.
“Online dating takes a long time,” Morris says. “You have to set up a website, go through a whole bunch of profiles, contact the person, and hope they respond. This would reduce the wait.”
JavawithMe aims to make online dating easier for college students by streamlining the process and reducing the amount of time spent on each date. The startup is still in the research stage, and Morris and Zylman plan to interview beta testers to adjust it to fit users’ needs.
Although the features are not yet set, the two plan to set up a mobile app where users can switch their status as available and instantly be matched with someone who is also listed as available. The daters will then be directed to the nearest coffee shop to meet.
“If you’re on your lunch break between classes or work, you just open up the app and find someone who is also available,” Morris says. “Then you can go on a 10 minute coffee date together.”
A week after opening signups for beta testers, they have received about 40 responses. By using Facebook ads targeted to the single Northwestern population, they discovered that this number represents 2.5 percent of Northwestern students whose relationship status is “single” on Facebook.
Zylman says the ideal market for this kind of project is a college campus, because of the large population of individuals who are in a similar age group and have shared interests.
“When you start looking at older markets, a lot of times they’re thinking about marriage, not about just meeting someone and having a good time and then going on another date if you like them,” Zylman says. “So that’s more ideal for our situation, where we’re basically pairing you with someone without as much input from you, and you’re just going to meet them in person and see what happens.”
The startup is still in development stages and is expected to launch spring quarter. Zylman and Morris hope JavawithMe shows enough growth to be chosen for a startup accelerator this summer, an organization that supervises entrepreneurs and can provide guidance and resources for people trying to build a startup.
Registration is open for beta testers until the end of February.