Online dating emerged in 1995, changing the way that people meet each other forever. Since the early days of chat rooms and aliases, online platforms for matching with potential romantic partners have gone through many evolutions and upgrades.
From dial-up to dating apps, online dating technologies have also modified their services to hone in on specific demographics, empower women, and accommodate different lifestyles.
While we have seen a lot of improvements to online dating since the dot-com era, none of these apps have ever been able to guarantee that a first date won’t be a waste of your time. Until now.
Enter Swoovy, the Austin-based dating app that matches romantic prospects through volunteer opportunities. While founder Brooke Waupsh can’t guarantee that everyone will find their soulmate on Swoovy, she can promise that every first date will create a positive impact in your community and help both parties feel good about how they spent their time.
Photo courtesy of Brooke Waupsh
Like most dating apps, Swoovy users build a profile outlining their interests and information. However, each user can also select volunteer events they are interested in and connect through shared interests. Potential love connections are therefore matched based on all of the usual criteria used to swipe, but also according to similar volunteering interests. This cuts through superficiality quicker and helps users locate someone who shares their core beliefs.
The first date is then organized through Swoovy’s platform to take place at a local nonprofit that both people are mutually interested in. The romance is left to fate, but the connection with the nonprofit is established, and even if there is no second date, everyone can still leave feeling accomplished and positive.
Waupsh is not a love guru, nor did she start out as a super-volunteer- her background is actually in marketing and brand strategy. The native Austinite began her career working at a global ad agency and then took a position at an early-stage fintech company, helping smaller banks compete against mega banks. She grew a team supporting the national roll out of her brand from two people into a team of over 200 people, and then the company soared to 400 people, serving millions of consumers and boosting community financial institutions back on to the radar.
As proud as she was of her work and her team, Waupsh missed the energy and entrepreneurial atmosphere of the early-stage start-up environment. She had always been interested in psychology, and her experiences in marketing only deepened her passion for discovering what motivates people’s actions. So when she noticed trends in her single friends’ grievances against the modern dating world, Waupsh’s curiosity was piqued.
Most of the issues that people had with dating were around the difficulty of finding a way to break the ice and discover a meaningful connection with the other person. Repetitive first dates at Happy Hours lent to the same surface-level conversations, and it was exhausting for Waupsh’s single friends to invest a lot of time in someone only to discover that they had a fundamentally different worldview.
Waupsh’s research into the psychology of dating revealed that relationship experts recommend volunteering as an activity for new couples to learn about each other and discover if they have similar values early on in their romance. A quick foray into the world of nonprofits taught Waupsh that 90% of people want to volunteer, but only 1 in 4 people with the interest ever make it happen. Armed with these facts, Waupsh’s entrepreneurial brain kicked in.
“I saw an opportunity to bring these two seemingly unrelated worlds together and offer daters the ability to meet somebody through shared interests in a fashion that would break the ice, be useful for their time, and help nonprofits tap into a mainstream audience,” Waupsh explains.
In addition to resolving many pain points for daters, Swoovy also helps nonprofits. “The top three reasons why people say they want to volunteer but don’t are because of the time that it takes to find an organization and the time it takes to figure out how you sign up. And the third piece is that they want someone to go with,” Waupsh explains. Swoovy removes each of those barriers, expanding nonprofits’ access to willing and eager volunteers.
With this unlikely marriage (pun intended) between volunteering and romance, Waupsh got to work. She launched Swoovy in 2018 in a grassroots fashion with support from the CFO and CEO of her previous company. Waupsh literally pounded pavement and handed out fliers to people in the community and local nonprofits. Both parties loved the idea, and as Swoovy grew by word-of-mouth and grassroots marketing, Waupsh grew confident that she had a product worth developing.
She took her proven concept to the angel and venture capital world, which started as a rude awakening and became a valuable learning experience. Waupsh touched every corner of the investment space, from pitch events to angel groups to networking conferences, and still found it extremely hard to secure funding. Part of this experience opened her eyes to the unique challenges that women face when they are seeking venture capital.
While women-led companies yield an average of 40% higher returns on equity, female founders still only receive 2.3% of funding in the VC world. Only 3% of venture capitalists are female themselves, and these staggering statistics have remained relatively static – or worsened – in the last few years.
Waupsh explained that she experienced different questions from VC firms than her male counterparts. While she fielded questions that challenged her product from an assumption that it would fail, male founders were asked questions typical of a growth mindset. And some of the discrimination was even more overt than that.
“I was part of an event with investors where there was an investment gentleman who had said that their firm was now investing more in women because they are “cheaper.” And I turned away from that investment opportunity. There’s money that you don’t want to take,” Waupsh recounts.
Swoovy was at the top of their downloads and in the midst of this fundraising when COVID-19 hit the United States. With lockdowns and health safety measures telling people to avoid meeting up in person, the dating app market took a huge hit. All of the investors who had expressed interest in Swoovy prior to the pandemic pulled out, citing the unsteady market and uncertain timeline for the lockdowns.
Waupsh could have turned her back on Swoovy and shuttered their doors, but instead, she took a beat and took a step back. Community-minded just like her product, Waupsh turned to the local nonprofits and partners and asked them for their insight. All of the organizations that relied heavily on volunteer’s contributions and donations from fundraising events were terrified, concerned that community engagement would drop off for good as a result of the pandemic.
“It was scary, but it was also a great opportunity to just reevaluate our mission and what we were trying to do, and how we could evolve,” Waupsh explains. She noticed that more and more companies reverting to a work-from-home model were struggling with employee engagement, and her problem-solving, entrepreneurial instincts kicked in again.
“Swoovy’s mission has always been to weave volunteering into the way people live, work and play, and work is a big part of our lives,” she says. Volunteering created a great opportunity for singles to connect – why couldn’t it do the same for employees?
Swoovy’s team started doing research and development around a corporate platform and discovered that in addition to struggling with employee engagement, modern corporations are also emphasizing their corporate impact to attract and retain top talent. They also discovered that employers were looking for ways to honor their workers’ individuality while enabling them to get involved in the community. Swoovy’s corporate platform would still solve all of the logistical issues that traditionally keep people from volunteering, but would be able to offer employees an opportunity to connect with each other over a shared personal cause, and tie corporate impact initiatives to their employees’ individual interests.
While Waupsh still spent time providing Swoovy’s singles with remote volunteering opportunities and remote technology such as video chatting, she also worked hard during the lockdowns to develop this corporate connection platform. They now have a platform that supports employee volunteer programs nationwide.
Being able to pause, touch base with her community, and pivot accordingly meant that the pandemic – while challenging – ultimately helped Swoovy to evolve and grow. Waupsh explains that she could sense from the early days of the lockdowns that the community would need her product more than ever after the storm passed and people were able to go out together again. This instinct has proven true, and in the wake of the pandemic people have a higher desire to get involved in helping their community than before.
In addition to connecting singles and employees, Swoovy has further expanded its offerings to include a platform for individuals, groups, and existing couples. They will also be releasing a platform for platonic friends to volunteer together soon. “Now people want to get back together and engage with people, but they also want to help rebuild the community,” Waupsh says. Swoovy – whose slogan is “Let’s get together for good” – is helping people in all walks of life do just that.
In keeping with her charitable spirit, Waupsh loves to mentor other entrepreneurs. Waupsh encourages entrepreneurs just starting out that one step at a time creates the journey: “Keep the long vision and the north star and the sight of where you want to go, but break it into bite-sized pieces. Where do I need to go next week? Next month? The end of the quarter? There’s so much that comes with building a company so really look at where those milestones are, and the baby steps to get there.”
For other female entrepreneurs who may encounter the specific roadblock of seeking venture capital along their journey, Waupsh suggests that preparation is essential. “Be confident and be ready to confidently answer [negative] questions and lead investors back to the positive points of how you will grow the business and how you will be more operationally efficient.” She also encourages female entrepreneurs to seek investment opportunities that align with their product’s thesis and to just, “keep going, and don’t let people shut you down.”
You can download Swoovy on the Apple App Store or Google Play! You never know what connection you’ll make. Waupsh’s personal favorite Swoovy success story is about two singles who matched and went on their first date to the Central Texas Food Bank. “It was not a romantic match, but they realized that they had created a friendship, and they were really good friends. They started hanging out every week after that and volunteering together.” Whether it’s a romantic match, a fellow employee-turned-friend, or someone you already know, let Swoovy help you “get together for good.”
Written by Catherine Casem
