Starting a Dating Company While in University
While my friends were getting ready for graduation and trying to find full time jobs I decided to start a dating company, while overloading a full-time dual degree in computer science and business. Hectic would be an understatement.
Michael is a computer Science and Business student at the Ivey Business School. He is currently taking a year off school to start, Lucid a dating company targeted at university students.
What is Lucid
Lucid is a dating app for your friends, network and people at your school. It is basically everyone you would know or at least see around you. It could include your crush, people who you wonder if they like you and people you probably have feelings for but haven’t expressed it.
We grew pretty fast in the first months using a couple facebook posts, gaining 400+ users in the first week. Check us out, here’s our link: lucid.fyi
Original Article Link: https://atila.ca/blog/mding5692/starting-a-dating-company-while-in-university
What It’s Like Running a Dating Company During School
It is pretty hectic, I overloaded my courses to gain time and thus juggling the app development was pretty hard. I pretty much only studied for my exams and got 80%+ on them by not sleeping for couple days before the exam. On the other hand, I have never struggled with courses so it was easier to manage for me.
As well, there is a lot more than just developing the app you have to handle, there is marketing the app, maintaining and also trying to come up with ways to improve or gain more users which all take up time and effort.
A Few Things I Learnt
Few points:
- Your first version isn’t good and will change a lot
- It’s harder than just making something people want because there’s more steps
- Take time to schedule interviews with people who are using your app actively and follow their insights if you run out of ideas
- Don’t try to add a lot of features in because you won’t be able to and people don’t care unless a lot of other people are using the same features
- For marketing, strive for conversion (getting people to download) instead of awareness because when you’re a young company, you have to first show your product in use so they get the immediate value otherwise money is wasted because awareness is usually excuse for just a load of people who won’t download or care.
- Find or get to know people who are “influential” in your community or online, always useful no matter what
- If an app feature needs a lot of explaining and instructions, the chances of it actually getting used is very little.
Other Random Questions
What are the most fun and rewarding parts of Running Lucid?
- Seeing people get excited about using the app and then telling their friends on social media, there has also been a lot of learning but I wouldn’t call that fun.
What are some hard parts of running Lucid?
- Developing some stuff but that really has just consumed time. The hardest parts is still figuring out what people want from the app and marketing it.
Any advice for aspiring student entrepreneurs?
- Don’t do it unless you really want to, its a roller coaster ride.
