The dating app Known is relatively new to the landscape dominated by competitors like Hinge and Tinder, and it’s making waves online not for its interface but rather for a “hot list” of attractive singles.
The app was launched this spring in San Francisco by a pair of former Stanford University students with the intention of offering a more curated list of dating recommendations. Users are onboarded with a voice survey that takes around 15 minutes to complete, with questions about people’s past romantic experiences and what their daily life looks like. Then, the app serves users roughly one recommendation per week. Should the pair match, Known sets a venue and makes a reservation, taking a $15 fee for the effort. Users can only chat with their match in the two hours leading up to the date. The app recently expanded its territory to include San Diego.
Co-founder Celeste Amadon said that the monetization strategy is a contrast to their competitors in that it encourages actual in-person dates, as opposed to apps whose advertisements and payment plans are based around users spending more time on the platforms.
“San Francisco’s Hot List” by Known was envisioned by Amadon as a way to push back on what she describes as San Francisco’s reputation for being a city full of unattractive people where it’s hard to date.
“There’s been so much discourse about San Francisco dating in a negative light that, in some ways, I just felt like it needed some defending,” Amadon told SFGATE. “I’m the first to go to bat for the fact that there are eligible people to date in this city.”
After posting a call for submissions on X on Monday, she received over 15,000 responses, culling a list from both submissions and her personal network.
The current list stands at 19 people, although Amadon said another batch of 10 will be added soon. Ten of them are identified as founders, 13 work in the AI field and just two are in fields other than tech (an assistant buyer at Gap and an investment associate at GoodFinch). When asked about the tech-heavy influence on the list, Amadon cited the demographics currently on X as the reasoning behind the heavy skew toward the industry.
Although mostly everyone on the list would likely be considered conventionally physically attractive, Amadon said the company’s definition of hot isn’t purely physical. “Hot is a way of being. It’s hot to be funny. It’s hot to be smart. It’s hot to be ambitious. It’s hot to be kind. And yes, it’s hot to be hot,” she wrote in a statement.
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This article originally published at Dating app shares ‘San Francisco’s Hot List,’ and surprise, it’s full of founders.