👉 Background: Tinder is the company that made online dating cool in the iPhone-age — back when the ol' swipe-left-swipe-right-gamified-dating was unheard of on sites like eHarmony and OKCupid. Eventually, Tinder grew to become the most popular dating app in the world with more than 75 million monthly active users.

‍👉 What happened: Now, Tinder has rolled out a new AI feature that will supposedly help improve the quality of matches. Instead of swiping, you can use your trusty AI matchmaker to find matches for you.

‍👉 What else: Over the past few years, Tinder has seen its active users continue to decline, because many single people have grown tired of the repetitive swiping and unsuccessful outcomes from online dating. But at the heart of Tinder’s challenge is its paradoxical business model.

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What's the key learning?

💡It’s tricky to build a business where your success means your customers’ failure. Tinder’s business model makes money by keeping people engaged, but its ultimate goal is to help them leave.

💡 People pay for premium features—like Tinder Gold or Platinum—to increase their chances of finding a match. But if they succeed? They no longer need the app, and they stop paying. So this creates a tricky balancing act for Tinder.

💡More recently, they haven’t been successful in striking this balance with monthly active users dropping month on month. In fact, monthly active users dropped by 10% in October last year, and 9% in November and December. So , Tinder is hoping its AI-powered matching could help this balance by making the dating process feel more achievable.