An outgoing and sociable guy, Louis Yoon says he spends more time outside the house than the average person. Still, he wasn\u2019t able to find a date in 2023.\u00a0 \u201cI feel like when you have difficulty finding someone to date, the first piece of advice people give you is, \u2018You should go out more.\u2019 There\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n
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An outgoing and sociable guy, Louis Yoon says he spends more time outside the house than the average person. Still, he wasn\u2019t able to find a date in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like when you have difficulty finding someone to date, the first piece of advice people give you is, \u2018You should go out more.\u2019 There\u2019s no way I can go out more than I already am,\u201d he told OBJ.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So he did what any young person would do: he tried his luck on dating apps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But after spending some time swiping and liking on Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, he found he was nowhere nearer to meeting someone who wanted to form a meaningful relationship and he was left disappointed by the experience, which he described as disrespectful and transactional.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think as a dating app user, you go through these different phases. You start off with the hope that you\u2019re going to find the love of your life. Then you have the doubt that this may not be working. Then you enter a state of despair and then hate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And so Yoon started to research how others viewed dating apps. He saw that many felt the same way he did.<\/p>\n
He vividly remembers meeting with his friend Edward Kan at Pub Italia on Preston Street on Jan. 11, 2024. It was the first time they spoke about creating The Penguin App.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Named for the Arctic animal known to mate long-term, Yoon said he doesn\u2019t view The Penguin App as a traditional dating app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an app built for single people, but we\u2019re trying to make it more community-based. It\u2019s an app that everyone can use, (one) that focuses on safety. It\u2019s a product, but we\u2019re also hoping it sort of creates a cultural revolution in terms of how people should act. Dating apps have been built to bring out the worst in people, causing behaviours like ghosting or just being more superficial or transactional,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With The Penguin App, there are two streams: \u201clooking for love\u201d and \u201cmatchmaker.\u201d For those looking for love, Yoon said it\u2019s business as usual, with users creating a profile detailing their interests and what they\u2019re looking for in a partner. Users match with one person at a time, allowing them the time to form a genuine connection, Yoon said. While a user is chatting on the app, the platform will prompt questions to keep the conversation flowing. It\u2019s only after the matched users have chatted for a bit that they see each other\u2019s photos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, chemistry is built face-to-face, so that we try to push people in that direction,\u201d he said of the app encouraging matches to schedule a first date.<\/p>\n
For those looking to be a matchmaker, Yoon said he and Kan were trying to make dating more community-oriented. He added that dating should be like going to a networking event, with someone to introduce you to others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sort of like a social app, where you\u2019re adding people you know to set them up on dates. This is inspired from my own heritage. My background is Korean and Korea has one of the most successful dating cultures \u2026 One of the reasons for that is because they have a culture of giving back. If I\u2019m looking for a relationship, my friends and family will introduce me to someone,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the heart of the app\u2019s ethos are its community guidelines encouraging users to interact with honesty, treat each other with respect and avoid ghosting.<\/p>\n
After their initial meeting to discuss The Penguin App, Kan and Yoon went through a year of trial and error, as neither had any experience in business, coding, marketing or any of the other skills needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yoon said that the bulk of 2024 was spent learning and gathering resources from Invest Ottawa\u2019s Flex program. Then, the pair spent most of last year building the product, going through multiple iterations before finding something they were prepared to launch publicly.<\/p>\n
Things started to get off the ground this past April, when Yoon and Kan visited Ottawa\u2019s university campuses looking for feedback. The app is now in its early stages, Yoon said, with about 150 users. Still, it\u2019s struggling with a \u201ccold start problem,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t work until we have a lot of people (on the app). But a lot of people won\u2019t join unless there are already lots of people on the app. We\u2019ve been doing some guerilla marketing, where we\u2019ve been approaching strangers to try out the app and give us feedback,\u201d he said, adding that they\u2019re also reaching out to local businesses and content creators to expand their marketing reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A bootstrapped \u201cpre-revenue\u201d venture, Yoon said The Penguin App will explore pre-seed funding this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with dating apps is that they have a retention problem. The more they succeed at what they do, the more they lose their user base \u2026 But because we\u2019re creating an app that\u2019s not just meant for single people, this presents an opportunity for us to think about long-term monetization strategies,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plus, Yoon said they\u2019re exploring other revenue streams such as merchandising and paid events to prevent ghosting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have this cute mascot of a penguin (with which) we think we can go down the merchandising route to make plushies. But what\u2019s really important to us is that, once you get funding, there\u2019s a certain quota that needs to be met and the way you make profits could go against your original mission. So we\u2019re trying to find ways to contribute to the experience while (making money).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the ideas that we\u2019re playing around with is (having people) put down a dollar or two when they schedule a first date. We\u2019re making money, but it\u2019s also a safety feature. In event planning, it\u2019s commonly known that if you charge a ticket price, people are more likely to attend,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yoon said that his research has shown that traditional swipe-style dating apps are falling out of favour with users and investors, causing major players such as Bumble and Hinge to shake up their products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In late March, Hinge announced it was investing $1 million toward social groups in London, New York and Los Angeles in a bid to attract generation Z singles looking for in-person connections. And in May, Bumble announced it was phasing out its swiping feature and replacing it with AI-driven matchmaking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of these big apps realize that they\u2019re in real danger,\u201d Yoon said. \u201cThere are a few startups in the U.S. that are trying out some new ideas to fix these problems and there\u2019s been a lot of investor interest. I think people know that the trends are shifting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada hasn\u2019t seen a homegrown dating platform since Plenty of Fish entered the market in 2003, Yoon added, leading him to believe that now is the perfect time to launch The Penguin App.<\/p>\n
Being from Ottawa, Yoon said the capital has the advantage of being a big city, but feeling like a small town.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy for something to become a part of the culture here. Another thing is that we have a very big young professional community here, working in government \u2026 I think it\u2019s that demographic that struggles the most with finding a partner,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With 150 users on the app today, Yoon said he aims to have 1,000 by the end of the summer, with the hope that a larger user base will allow him to secure additional funding and hire a bigger team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the goal is to dethrone Tinder, Hinge and Bumble as Ottawa\u2019s most-used dating app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe long-term goal is to create a platform that would be able to help build a healthier dating culture. It\u2019s an ambitious goal but we have a lot of plans on how we can promote not just treating people better before the first date but after as well, helping them act in more respectful ways. It\u2019s not just an app where people meet. It\u2019s an app that helps people treat each other better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An outgoing and sociable guy, Louis Yoon says he spends more time outside the house than the average…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,63,203,105],"class_list":["post-755377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}