The Founder Disrupting The Dating Industry With Gen-Z In Mind

It was a TikTok video that gave Kimberly Kaplan the lightbulb moment she needed to inspire her to create a video-first dating app. Snack looks to merge the popularity and format of TikTok with the dating world. As one of the earliest employees at PlentyOfFish, Kaplan was instrumental in the successful Match Group acquisition for $575 million in 2015. She’s hoping to change the industry yet again with the launch of Snack.

The video that led to Kaplan’s idea was the meme where someone points to various bits of information about themselves, in the format of “What’s your name? What’s your sign?” Kaplan realized that this was how Gen-Z wanted to connect with each other, and that this style of video was a great mechanism to evaluate whether or not to date someone.

While Tinder and Bumble focus so much on the profile and the post-match user experience, Snack focuses on an in-feed video experience that feels more casual. Kaplan wants to build an easy way for people to flirt, have fun, and actually see inside a dating prospect’s real life. She also wants to take the hard parts of dating and make them easier. 

I spoke to Kaplan about building and growing her company, dating in a pandemic and the future of the industry as single people emerge after what many are calling a lost year. 

Amy Shoenthal: How did you come up with the idea for Snack?

Kim Kaplan: I was scrolling through TikTok one day and saw a video of a woman pointing to her name, age, location and zodiac sign. I realized she was trying to use TikTok to date, but the platform wasn’t built for it. There’s no location or way to know who is single. The song had over 130,000 videos created that were all dating related and #single had over 13 billion views at the time. I knew there was a massive opportunity.

Gen-Z makes up a majority of the TikTok audience, so they’re used to communicating via these 30 second videos. There was also an opportunity to rethink the way that online dating has been done for the last 10 years or so.

Shoenthal: Where does the name Snack come from?

Kaplan: While I know the framework for what works around dating, I’m aware that I don’t know all the nuances Gen-Z might be looking for. So I asked for feedback throughout the process. We did that through focus groups and a Discord channel. It was actually a couple of Gen-Zers who came up with the name. 

They also came up with the logo. We did a design competition through TikTok. We called it a logo challenge and gave out prizes up to $10k. We thought it’d be more fun to crowdsource it instead of hiring an agency. We’re still working with that designer, she’s one of the founders of the Gen Z Mafia. She advises me on overall Gen-Z trends, too. For example, she taught me not to make company zip up hoodies because no one wants those, so we just did regular hoodies. There are small generational differences that make a big difference. 

Soon we’re actually going to have a Gen-Z Syndicate where a bunch of Gen-Zers can actually invest in the app, so they’ll be part owners. 

Shoenthal: What obstacles did you face as you were building it? How did you overcome them?

Kaplan: Dating is a really tough industry to break into. There are a lot of companies that have launched with varying levels of success. The last successful ones were Tinder and Bumble, but that was already eight years ago. 

As soon as I started to talk to investors about the idea, they immediately saw the opportunity. I approached investors and fundraised all virtually. It was over Zoom.

You know what? I loved it. The way I approach fundraising is to ask, when else do you get to talk to such amazing, smart people with such diverse backgrounds and have them think about your product and you for 30 minutes or an hour at a time? I think it’s an amazing opportunity to take in the feedback, hear what they’re saying and adjust. Even those who didn’t invest would introduce me to others who they thought I should connect with. Those introductions were unbelievable, they were to people that I’ve revered for years. 

Since I’ve been raising during Covid, it meant I didn’t have to fly out to San Francisco. I didn’t have to run from Sand Hill Road to Menlo Park in one day. I joke that I brought the VCs into my den. It was way less intimidating than the experience when you’re walking into their boardroom, where they hold the power and you’re in their domain. 

The advice you get during the fundraising process is that you’ve got to walk into that room full of investors and own it, because that’s what all the guys do. I had to psych myself up for that and “put my cocky pants on” since that was the bar that everyone’s being judged against. Part of that is because I’m Canadian and part of it is because I’m female. 

I’ve talked to a lot of companies about the tips and tricks of fundraising during Covid, and one thing I’ve said is that I never went through my pitch deck. The reason I did that is because you only have so much screen space real estate. You don’t want people staring at your pitch deck, you want them having a conversation with you. If they’re staring at your pitch deck, you’re not building a relationship.  

Shoenthal: Talk me through the Snack user experience. How does the app work and how is it different from others?

Kaplan: You sign up like a typical dating app but it’s not the standard, upload five profile pictures, write your profile and you’re done. What we’re doing is mimicking the social experience, having people constantly updating with new videos, making it like a newsfeed. Instead of you moving over to a messaging screen with the pressure of trying to figure what to say to each other, you can just scroll through videos of your matches in your feed. You’re updating your profile and filling your feed like Instagram and TikTok. It’s more of a slow, casual flirtation. 

Shoenthal: The TikTok trend you reference in your story happened pretty recently, what was the timeline from concept to launch?

Kaplan: I was about to start fundraising in March of last year and then Covid hit. Markets tanked, VCs were trying to think about their companies. No one was fundraising, so I paused. 

Then when I saw the growth of TikTok, it made me double down on the idea. So in August I started putting everything back together, and after about three weeks of pitching, I had multiple term sheets. 

I didn’t want to hire anyone until the money was actually in the bank. I didn’t want people to leave their stable full time roles to come to a startup until the money was available. It was mid-November when the team came on full time, and we launched in February. We went from idea to completion in about a year.

Shoenthal: Who were some of your first hires?

Kaplan: We spent a lot of time and energy making sure that we had a diverse team. Our engineering team is 50% men, 50% women. We have total gender balance. I don’t know any company that can say that, especially about an engineering team.

When we hired two of our early engineers, the gentleman we hired asked for equity and the woman didn’t. When they hit their three month review around the same time, I had a conversation with her to say, you didn’t ask for equity but you should have, so I’m going to give you the same amount. Now that you know this, I want to make sure this is something that you will ask for up front in all of your future roles.

Shoenthal: Talk to me about what was happening in the dating industry through the pandemic. 

Kaplan: Dating essentially moved online. The average time spent on dating apps significantly increased in the pandemic. Dating apps became more prolific as people used more of their time and energy there. You even see it with Clubhouse. The time you used to spend out with friends you now spend on apps.

A bunch of the dating apps sped up video features, but I still haven’t seen a video first approach. They’re still just focusing on the post-match experience. If video is becoming the norm now, that should also be the norm for a dating app experience.

I think Tinder is going to become boring when you’re just swiping through pictures and you can compare that to video. People are on TikTok because they think Instagram is boring now. 

Shoenthal: What is the future of dating now that things are reopening and people are vaccinated?

Kaplan: I think you’ll see a disparity. There are people who have become a bit more awkward after a year on their own. You’ll get extroverts who want to go out and see everyone. The dating apps will be the vector that they use to go meet people. You’re still having fewer serendipitous moments, we’re still not really out partying, and even when we are, we’re in smaller groups with masks on.  

We need to shift dating apps to make them more fun, because dating is hard. That’s my goal with Snack. How do we take the hard parts of dating and make them slightly easier?

Shoenthal: What advice would you give to others starting their own business or embarking on a new venture?

Kaplan: I never thought I’d start a dating company after leaving PlentyofFish, but great ideas disrupt the best laid plans. If you have a really great idea, don’t be afraid to go for it. Women founders especially sit around too long before really getting started on their company. Don’t wait.