Two streams from the High Intent newsroom on one page. Long-form editorials from operators with skin in the game, and original reporting on where capital, product, and policy are moving in dating. No sponsors, no embargoes, no spin.
The UK's new subscription regime starts January 1. Europe and the FTC are moving the same way. The rules target a real problem in dating. A lot of honest operators are going to pay for it anyway.
Every scammer an app fails to remove is a tax on everyone else.
A $1.3 billion take-private is the headline. The more useful signal is who wrote the check, and what that background says about where dating's next revenue line comes from.
The incumbent is consolidating and the largest free competitor does not need dating to make money. Independent operators are getting squeezed from both ends at once, and most have not priced it in.
Price discovery is happening in dating. Capital is moving. The founders who will actually get paid are the ones who cleaned up the business before anyone started calling.
A new wave of products is replacing the swipe with AI. Most of them are solving the wrong problem. Here is why I believe they will hit the same wall.
Every dating product now claims to be intentional. Most have only changed the language. Here is what I believe actually separates the real ones from the rest.
Tinder and Bumble are scaling IRL events because the swipe is losing power. They are not rebuilding the product around context. They are using events as a retention tool. Founders who miss that distinction will copy the wrong thing.
Tinder is paying to get its own users off the app, and on its Q2 call Bumble teased a swipe-free future. That is not a product update. It is a confession, and it tells every founder where the next opening is.
Reuters reported that Bumble has hired Morgan Stanley to explore a sale. The read for operators is not that the category is dying. It is that a price discovery event is about to open the M&A window for everyone else.
Every few weeks, someone asks me to help them raise money for their dating app. After twenty-five years on both sides of the table, here is the honest version of that conversation, and why it is more hopeful than the headlines.
Original reporting from the High Intent newsroom begins with launch. The first feature will land here. Subscribe to get it first.
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