22 OCT 2013
see thecurrentplus.com for more business • out & about • music • food • garden • business • health & wellness • life
Looking To Get Set Up? New dating app, by Walton High grad, uses social connections to build new relationships...and business. By Matthew Quinn Students at the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and other colleges this fall have a new option for finding a significant other or getting a useful internship—the SetMeUp Facebook app, invented by 2003 Walton High School graduate Jay Wadhwani. “I’ve been interested in relationship psychology for 10 years,” Wadhwani said. “I’ve studied it as a passion of mine.” He first became interested in the online dating business in 2007, as a result of a conversation with a then-girlfriend. In particular, he wanted to do something geared toward college students, since most online dating is targeted at older people. However, the college demographic stigmatized online dating and rejects the use of technology in dating, creating a challenge. Wadhwani based his method on Duke University professor Dan Ariely. Ariely had criticized online dating for focusing on common interests rather than building relationships through experiences. For example, going out to dinner with someone paints a more accurate picture of who they are than reading an online summary. “What we do is we actually create the first date experience for people based on places they feel confident in,” he said. Locations they’re interested in and common interests can be found based on participants’ social media “likes.” Participants can recommend each other using question sets like, “Are you street smart or book smart?” or rating one’s personality traits or, more quirkily, shower-singing skills. People can use the system to play matchmaker for their friends. When people connect, they will go to a “First Connect” screen that creates a first date for them. In 2010, Wadhwani got involved in the angel investment group TiE AngelsBoston. There he met Abhishek Jain, a graduate of Harvard Business School who has a lot of experience with startups, who became his business advisor. The duo devised a model based on how people met offline, connecting people with each other and not solely through a computer. By the end of 2011, they had PowerPoint slides and began drafting a
Jay Wadhwani with his new app in action. document specifying how the site would work. They hired more people and gathered funds from various investors. Development of the actual SetMeUp product began in November 2012. “At that point, we started focusing on our marketing initiatives,” Wadhwani said. SetMeUp underwent a test run at UGA in April 2013. The goal was to gather beta users and feedback to better the product. As a result, the entire interface was reworked, creating a smoother connection process between users. Francis Cruz joined SetMeUp in November 2012 as an investor and lead strategy manager. Cruz, who has worked as an ambassador for Dell and other companies, and Wadhwani examined different ways to market on campus and build brand loyalty. One method is SetMeUp’s internship program. Cruz works with professors and school administrators to ensure the program meets university standards and market it to students. 130 applied for the first internship class and 10 were chosen. The interns don’t get coffee—instead, they do research, spread awareness, and recruit new users. “Everyone’s primary responsibility is growing the brand,” Wadhwani said. The specific internships depend on the skills an intern brings to the table. There are financial interns, management and information studies interns, and even psychol- CONTINUED 30