In today’s culture, dating has become a simple “swipe right, swipe left” game. Singles often make knee-jerk decisions based on someone’s profile picture. Now the dating app “Hatched,” created by and specifically for Atlantans, offers a new approach. Founders Mitchell Alterman and Sam Lukens created a dating platform that connects people through their shared interests rather than just their looks. The co-founders joined “City Lights” producer Summer Evans via Zoom to talk more about how it works.
Interview highlights:
How the thorny world of swiping sparked an idea for better dating:
“I was in college when online dating and dating apps became really popular… I succumbed to peer pressure and started using dating apps and started using the Tinders of the world, and I realized how crazy this new phenomenon was,” said Alterman. “The novelty effect was cool, but then they started to wear off a little bit and I started to witness some of the mental health issues that would arise from these platforms — if people were being rejected based off of their surface-level attributes or because of their looks. It just wasn’t a really uplifting platform. Right after Tinder came out about a year later, I really thought there had to be just a better way and a new way to meet someone online.”
“Technology is initially intended to fix a problem, but as technology matures it tends to then cause new problems,” said Lukens. “So new types of technology have to come out to fix the problems that the initial technology was trying to solve. So it’s really just an evolution of any type of business, specifically in the consumer space; users are feeling very taken advantage of. So that’s kind of the new problem to solve, and I think Mitchell’s idea innately solves that and now it’s about growing a business and seeing how many people we can assist.”
An interests-based dating experience that cultivates mutual curiosity:
“You’d create a bio… your sexuality, your age, your name, some other personal information about you that can help other matches get to know you. But then we do have a unique twist where we’re gonna ask you to pick an egg avatar from a library of around 50 avatar designs that go in front of your initial picture,” Alterman explained.
“The avatars are supposed to represent a hobby or an interest, so I might choose the basketball avatar or the golf avatar or the hiking avatar. And then you would choose a photo that actually goes behind your egg, and then after that… you’ll automatically be assigned six initial matches based off of your match preferences, and you would see your matches’ egg avatars and then some surface level bio information about that person.” said Alterman.
He continued, “If you’re actually interested in that individual… you would click the little hatched icon that’s nice and prevalent on their match card, and that’ll actually flip their match card around and that would present you with a multiple choice — what we call personality attitude, core value or lifestyle question… If your match also chooses the same answer, the bottom 25% of both yours and their egg avatars will hatch, and you’ll start to see the bottom 25% of one another’s photos… and so you answer another question and get to 50%, then 75% and then a hundred percent that creates a hatched match.”
User feedback showing more validating interactions and deeper connections:
“The most resounding feedback and positive feedback we’ve heard is that people have been going out with another individual that they traditionally would swipe left on, on a swipe-based dating app, and that was my entire intent of this,” said Alterman. “Traditional swipe-based dating app users are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer from depression and psychological distress just because it’s really, really hard for certain people to achieve matches… So I wanted a way where people can show themselves in a different light, and that’s kind of what we’re seeing… One girl mentioned to me last week that if she saw this person on a swipe-based dating app, she would probably swipe left immediately. But she went through the hatching process with this person… and she gave this person a chance and they went out and it was a really, really good, positive date.”
More on the new dating app for Atlanta and Georgia residents, Hatched, can be found at www.hatchyourmatch.com.
