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Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

Huh? You were the CTO of a dating app, you start a line with “more fundamental…” What was the ratio of active women to active men? That seems to be most important.

Like dating apps are something like 5-95 active women to active men. If my dating app were 50-50, dude, I could make my app like the WeChat shake to match, and it will perform better than profiles or swiping or whatever big philosophical ideas you have.

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On our app we were about 60% women to 40% men. Nonbinary made up a small enough % to round to zero. DAU/MAU were roughly the same, though you might see seasonal swings toward one or another.

I have a hard time with this. For one, a dating site where there is 3 women for every 2 men is such an anomaly in itself, and then when word gets out that "hey, it's a dating site that isn't a total sausage fest" (to be blunt), then I can't see that ratio doing anything but skewing rapidly in the direction of every other dating site.

For the reason you describe we consciously chose to never talk publicly about gender ratios. Having predominately female users (or even close to 50/50 actives) tends to attract people for the wrong reasons.

> tends to attract people for the wrong reasons.

Like men wanting to meet women through an app?

By "wrong reasons" i am referring to the intentions of those new users.

Say your users are predominantly seeking long-term relationships, and your branding supports that. Then a bunch of men, fueled by gender-ratio marketing, flood your app seeking hookups. You will see short-term a bump in engagement and payments. A/B testing will suggest everything is great. But long-term your product loses value as your users lose faith in your ability to deliver on what they signed up for. The (in this case women) leave and the product becomes another graveyard.

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