Schmooze helps find love through memes

The Future. A new dating app called Schmooze wants to connect people by their sense of humor — specifically, through memes. By making Gen Z’s favorite form of communication into a love language, Schmooze may be well-positioned to win them over… and keep people engaged by making dating just half the point of staying on the platform.

Meme-cute
What if you find the love of your life through your love of memes? That’s the pitch behind a new app called Schmooze.

• The app, which launched a beta last year, has grown from 200 Stanford students to 11,000 U.S. users.
  • Most of those users are part of Gen Z.
• Everyday, hundreds of users share up to 500-800 memes a day.
• So far, Schmooze has raised $270,000 in seed funding from Ulu Ventures.

Schmooze uses both A.I. algorithms and a team of “meme officers” to “power its recommendation engine.” The two work in tandem to break down memes into their components and determine what kind of humor they represent (examples include:  “fun” or “dark”). It is the first meme-based social platform of its kind.

A joke is a thousand words
Founder Vidya Madhavan was initially reluctant to build a dating app, not wanting to occupy the “spot 13 on the Apple Store list for dating.” But what changed her mind was a mission to become the top dating destination for Gen Z.

Madhavan, a Millennial, noted that, “for this generation, Tinder is considered a hookup product. Bumble and Hinge are more serious […] It’s very surprising because our MVP wasn’t an MVP [to Gen Z].

Interestingly, the best way into Gen Z’s heart is by making the dating aspect of the dating app secondary, potentially to relieve the pressure of… you know… finding a date. Madhavan believes that “people come for the dates and stay for the memes. […] You’re either vibing and smiling with your match. Or you’re waiting and vibing with the memes.”