The Odds of Online Dating – Valentines Special
Peter Barkow – For Free Updates on Startups, VC & FinTech Sign Up >> HERE
Dear readers,
we would like to wish those of you, who live in a relationship a happy Valentines Day.
For readers, who do not enjoy the riches of a happy relationship and consider online dating as a remedy, we would like to offer some background information.
Key to online dating (in analyst language the KPI or Key Performance Indicator) is the success rate. In other words, how many couples (mutually) fall in love .
This seems to be a very well kept secret for most platforms, with one exception: One platform advertises its hit rate saying “Each 11 minutes a/one single falls in love on our platform (our translation into English)”.
This Is Sufficient Data and We Draw the Following Conclusions:
- German grammar makes the statement quite tricky, but let’s say, it is not the same single, who pathologically falls in love each 11 minutes…
Therefore, we assume: One new love bird each 11 minutes, which equates to 47,782 new lovers per year and a best case of 23.891 new partnerships - Unfortunately, the platform is talking about ONE single that falls in love each 11 minutes and not about new partnerships formed. There can obviously be a time gap between one single falling in love and his emotional target reciprocating. Even worse so: Love might not be reciprocated at all… The latter would obviously reduce the success rate of the platform. Assuming 25% of love is not reciprocated (and this is a blunt guess only) our number of love birds gets reduced to 35,836. Even worse: We now have 11,945 broken hearts on the platform…
- Cynics might argue, that the platform might foster partnerships without reciprocal love, but we do not want to believe this and do not pursue this analytical avenue…
- Assuming 750,000 monthly users on the platform and an average usage time of 4 months on the platform we arrive at total annual users of 2.25m.
Results: The Odds of Online Dating
- With the above the success rate is 4.8% per annum or 1.6% per 4 month stint (assuming 25% broken hearts as per above)
- Cost per love equates to €18,794,– (assuming a monthly fee of €75)
- Users will have to wait 21 years to find their loved ones (…so on average in 2039)
For real love, we would argue, this is money very well spent and you should really start online dating today in order to find love in 2039.
Again, we wish everybody a happy Valentines Day and please don’t take the above too literally
PS
Alternative Surveys seem to indicate that the one lover per 11 minute ratio is an understatement, so maybe the odds are better than the commercial suggests. We would like to praise the commercial for refreining from overpromising…
