The Crunchbase “Female Founder Series,” is a few stories, Q&As, and thought-leadership pieces from glass-ceiling-smashers whom overcame the chances, raised financing, and generally are now leading effective businesses.
Dani Fankhauser, co-founder of XO, is making use of enjoyable and games to produce a much better relationship software experience.
An adopter that is early of dating, Dani isn’t any stranger towards the battles and exhaustion that originated in old-fashioned apps. In an occasion where connection is more valuable—and difficult—than ever, she lay out along with her co-founders to produce a new and new take for online dating sites. The end result is XO—the dating that is first with icebreaker games. The back-and-forth that is unique of makes it much simpler for users to start out conversations and build better connections.
We asked Dani about her change from journalist to business owner, the brand new challenges she has faced from branding to fundraising, additionally the classes she’s got discovered as you go along.
Q: inform us the tale behind your company’s founding: What led you to definitely begin ecommerce?
A: straight Back this year, I happened to be the very first of my buddies to try online dating sites, and proudly, she met her husband after I convinced a friend to join OkCupid. I became additionally one of many very first reporters to talk about Tinder. My co-founders had built several viral mobile games and once I came across them during the early 2019, I became myself fatigued by internet dating, and so I knew it had been time for one thing fresh and brand new. We designed XO to incorporate games into dating making it an event that’s perhaps perhaps not draining and demoralizing, but enjoyable.
Q: What issue does your business re solve, or make an effort to? exactly asian wife pics what are several of the most impacts that are meaningful business has already established up to now?
A: Our mission is always to assist individuals build and strengthen connections that are genuine. The word “connection” gets a rep that is bad times because social sites do literally link us, but make you feel disconnected. Games have unique back-and-forth, and aren’t too severe, and that’s why they’re employed for team-building, as an example. Games powerfully change the tone of an relationship.
I became surprised to listen to very early individual feedback that 100% of people’s interactions on XO was in fact good and that users had been saying every thing they came across really was thoughtful and respectful. Needless to say it was our intention in offering a various relationship than other dating apps. We additionally believe we’re attracting the kind of individuals who don’t make use of other apps due to the give attention to look, therefore users are fulfilling differing people on XO than they might on Tinder.
Q: In exactly what methods do you consider differently regarding your industry than the others do? With what methods are you currently disrupting your industry?
A: As soon as we first began pitching, we’d hear, “Wow, exactly exactly just how has no body thought for this yet?” Dating and games—it’s those types of great some ideas you’d think some body will have done already. My experience originates from building online communities around content that resonates, and my co-founders have built a lot of games however they aren’t your standard competitive, graphics-driven games. With a unique take on what a game is and what dating should be, and that’s why XO has so quickly hooked an eager fanbase so we came to it.
Q: What ended up being one unanticipated hurdle or challenge you encountered when starting?
A: Choosing title for the app is one thing that seems enjoyable it is really very hard. The ability to communicate what it is you do in very little space matters—it’s how we break through the noise to investors and journalists before we even get to launch as a consumer app. We desired a thing that screamed “dating and games” in as few letters as you are able to, so we nailed it with XO. We really possessed a various title we utilized for about 10 months before stumbling on XO. There are plenty variables—trademark access (the logic around what you could get is astonishing), social/domain access, word associations individuals make (we went several studies), astonishing alternate definitions you’ll find on UrbanDictionary. One title I liked in early stages was Wink, many individuals connected it with an adult guy winking at a woman that is young therefore we decided the creepiness element ended up beingn’t well well worth it, despite the fact that lots of people liked the title.
