Desperate SF Resident Offers $10,000 Dating Referral Bonus
INNER RICHMOND, SAN FRANCISCO — After many fruitless attempts to find a romantic match, local resident Rohan Patel is now offering a referral bonus for the person who introduces him to the love of his life.
Mr. Patel posted the announcement on Instagram yesterday morning with a picture of him posing shirtless and carrying a cute dog. He stated that he would offer $1,000 to the person who introduces him to his future SO, defined as “a person that [he] date[s] exclusively for a retention period of at least three months.” He also offered a higher $10,000 bonus to whomever introduces him to his future spouse or person he has a child with, “whichever comes first.”
Mr. Patel decided to offer the referral bonus after a series of unsatisfying experiences with dating in San Francisco. He initially began with Tinder and other dating apps but soon grew frustrated with the poor user experience on such platforms. While there are many candidates available through the apps, the pool of higher quality candidates was much lower — according to Mr. Patel, “the odds are good but the goods are odd.” Furthermore, very few people in that pool would match with him on Tinder and only some of the people he matched with would text back and arrange a date. In the end, of a huge pool of candidates, only a very small percentage would result in dates.
“The funnel metrics were not favorable,” he concluded. “It’s just hard out there.”
Mr. Patel soon realized that dating was quite similar to his day job as a job recruiter. Getting married was like hiring someone, dating was like interviewing, and using Tinder was like cold emailing candidates, with a correspondingly low success rate. “In recruiting, we see that referrals not only produce better candidates, we also hire more of them. So why not do the same with dating?”
According to Mr. Patel’s conditions, each referral for a prospective match must come with details such as a headshot, their LinkedIn profile, a short blurb of how the referrer knows the candidate, and why the referrer believes they would be a good match.
Only a day after his Instagram announcement, many of Mr. Patel’s friends have already reached out with introductions to their single acquaintances, while some of his bachelor friends have announced higher referral bonuses for themselves as counterbids.
As for Mr. Patel, the referral program is his last option. “I tried apps, I tried clubs, I tried working out, and I tried climbing gyms. If this doesn’t work, then the nuclear option is to move to New York.”
