Dating apps are huge business. The market was worth over $5 billion last year. This February, for example, Tinder alone generated in-app purchase revenues of more than $58 million worldwide, followed by Bumble with $29 million.

But are they good for you? Their potential for a negative impact on your mental health, leading to addiction, anxiety, depression, and poor self esteem has been well researched and documented. Dissatisfaction with dating apps abounds, and the number of dating app users who report emotional fatigue and burnout from using them is increasing. And the lawsuits are coming. A recent class action lawsuit in the US against the biggest player Match Group claims it has a “predatory” business model and deliberately employs “psychologically manipulative features to ensure they remain on the app perpetually as paying subscribers.”

What if you’re neurodiverse - like about 20% of the population? Jamie Johnston, who is dyslexic and has ADHD, was on furlough during the pandemic and decided there had to be a better way of doing dating apps. Says Jamie: “These apps are super addictive; they foster low self esteem, competitiveness, all those kinds of things. Why are they so competitive? Why do they make you feel like you have to be perfect…”

He finds the rise of in-app purchases (IAP) and the way they encourage impulse purchases in dating apps both interesting and disturbing, especially for neurodiverse people. “I thought that could be very dangerous in the hands of impulse spenders and neurodiverse people like myself, whose fingers work faster than their brains. It’s not regulated in the same way that gambling is. You can spend hundreds, even thousands of pounds with no safeguarding from the app at all,” he says. It’s a concern that comes from personal experience: “As someone with ADHD locked in a house during the pandemic, looking at dating apps was something I’d do to kill time. I'd run out of money, add another £5 and spend too much just matching with these people I was never going to meet.”

He enlisted the help of his sister, who is a behavioural scientist. They decided to do some research and put out a survey. “We were absolutely inundated with responses. It was unpaid, there were no incentives, we had no website, no social media,” he says. They had responses from about 1,600 neurodiverse people within the first two days, and then collected responses from a further 3,500 people, both neurodiverse and neurotypical.

They found that 61% of people who consider themselves neurodiverse or have mental health issues don’t believe that dating apps represent them accurately and almost half of dating app users say the products leave them “frustrated”. Furthermore, 94% of neurodivergent respondents said they felt misunderstood by digital matchmaking.

They could plainly see there was an opportunity to create a different kind of dating app, one that allows you to be whoever you want to be, neurodiverse or not, and Mattr.social was born. Jamie sums up his vision for the product: “We as a tech company will do right by you, we won't make this addictive, we're going to limit your choice, we're going to make this a more human and normal environment for you to be in. But we want you to change your behaviour in how you interact with this product by being more open and honest. We're not going to trigger you, we're not going to overwhelm you, we're not going to addict you. But we don't want you to mask, we want you to be yourself.”

The company was incorporated a couple of years ago. The MVP launched in summer 2023, and the product itself launched in September 2023. There’s now a team of eight people at Mattr Social, of whom four are full-time.

Users sign up to Mattr Social through a personality and interests quiz. Then there are other questions that are free text fields, says Mihir Malde, Mattr Social’s CPO. These allow you to talk about things you’re really proud of, what you’re uncomfortable with, what you feel you need to improve, and so on. “Getting all those things out in the open early on helps us to create matches really well,” Mihir says. He says other dating apps essentially rank all users on a popularity basis. “On some of these apps the algorithm is designed to get you to spend more on the app and the majority of users are never shown to other users on the app. You can fill your profile, but still not get genuine matches. And you're wondering why you're not able to match with people, sometimes it’s just that your profile is not being shown to them.”

Mattr Social's neurodivergent features include replying via video and voice-activated text reading

Unlike typical dating apps Mattr Social doesn’t manipulate its algorithm based on vanity scores so that everyone has the same exposure to their peers. The team have developed other features that aim to make the experience of using Mattr Social more empowering than typical dating apps. For example:

Time-out toggle: A time-out toggle, lets people know you’re having a break without missing out on potential connections.

Neurodivergent features: Features include replying via video for those who struggle with typing, voice-activated text reading

No-swipe behaviour: Mattr Social uses personality-led questions so you’re presented with a curated selection of only seven potential matches a day. These are presented in a scroll-down list and you must contact them to show your interest. Matches can be saved and these saves expire after seven days.

Mental health check-in: There’s a check-in each time you use the app, registered by an expressive emoji. The development team is working on tracking these moods so they can safely reach out when people are reporting feeling low over a period of time and offer support.  

Honesty box: Mattr's Honesty Box feature lets users share their thoughts and feelings upfront, whether that’s a home truth about themselves or a red flag they want to avoid in matches. It helps make sure users are building connections based on authenticity and compatibility, rather than potentially discovering these “non-negotiables'' further down the line

Face verification: A face verification tool is mandatory for all users.

No swiping: Mattr Social offers a scroll-down list of potential matches

Mihir currently does at least three or four user interviews each week, with all users coming from a feedback prompt within the app. He sends them a personalised email asking to book in some time with them, but doesn’t offer any incentives. He finds that “Gen Z wants to be involved in the product being built, they want to make sure the product is for them”. He says that aside from enabling him to build the right features faster, it’s made him recognise that users’ natural language in parts of the app like the Honesty Box is really important. “We're going to use AI to really extract what is written in those fields, and understand the concept and the context behind the why of what users are writing,” he says. “It will give us a deeper insight into why a person speaks the way they do, why they might write the way they do. And using that we can give them better matches, and we can tailor also the experience within the app. The data we extract using these techniques not only feeds the algorithm better but also personalises the overall experience.”

Jamie says that most dating apps require their users to behave differently from Matt Social: “They take a picture of someone and say, ‘do you find this person attractive? yes/no, swipe, next one’. Whereas we want to give people a chance to get their personality across. You can’t just like someone - we’ll give you up to seven people [at the moment it’s five, but it will go up to seven] and you have to open the profile and you have to message. You can’t just swipe. We’re slowing the whole thing down.”

Other dating apps also monetise their most attractive users. Hinge for example has Roses, who you have to pay to speak to. As Jamie says, the algorithm works out who the best people are for you but then gates your access to them.

At the moment there’s no charge for the app, so how do they plan to make money? Again the team at Mattr Social is adopting a different approach from the usual monetisation plans of subscriptions with in-app purchasing. As Jamie points out, if something gives you more value than it costs, you will pay for it. But dating apps are a double-sided marketplace, so if you're not getting any matches, and the app can't can't force someone to match with you, then you’re not getting any value.

Mattr Social’s approach comes from Jamie’s background in influencer marketing.They thought about how they could create value for users when they can't control the matches. They’re working with brands so that users can create a profile and then get your hair done, get makeup, and go to the gym - before they're even ready to date. Says Jamie: “In the future, we'll give you a subscription. You'll get some more functionality here or there, but what you will do is get access to all these discounts and brands. A premium account will save you money because we’ll always be giving the user value. Even if they're not getting dates, they can pick up a two-for-one coffee, take a friend to the cinema, all within the dating ecosystem. it's all about providing value even when we can’t provide the matches. We hope that the algorithm will give you the best people to connect with, but it's a double-sided marketplace.”

If Jamie is sure he’s hit on something, then it seems others in the dating app universe agree with him. A former CFO at Bumble is an advisor and investor, a former head of product at Badoo is an advisor, as is a former head of marketing at Feeld. Finding funding has been a bumpy ride - something Jamie has covered in this blog post, The missing million. How our funding never turned up, and why it was a good thing - but the business is now coming to the end of its first round of funding, he says.

At the time of writing there were 2,000 active users in London, and 4,400 downloads. “It’s a good start,” says Jamie. “We want to get to 5,000 active users, and that means about 15,000 downloads. London is massive.” He thinks that when they get to about 18,000 downloads - and have therefore proved things like scalability and product-market fit - it will be time to open up in other cities. About 1,500 people who don’t live in London have already come onto the app and left where they live on a waiting list.

Of course there are plenty of challenges. At the moment, they’re trying to scale up and migrate the database to a system that can handle more users, but still give users the best experience possible. And capital is always needed. “I’ve got some great ideas of where we can take this business,” says Jamie. “We’ve been very good at being crafty grafters and getting stuff done by using our ingenuity for marketing. But in an ideal world, we would have more money to be able to market.”

Dating Apps Have a Filter Bubble Problem

‘It’s quite soul-destroying’: how we fell out of love with dating apps

The problems with dating apps and how they could be fixed—two relationship ethicists explain