An Inside Look at Realtalk’s Founder

Realtalk’s founder and UChicago alum, Vaibhav Verma, is working on Realtalk, the least superficial dating app ever. On Realtalk, users create 30 second videos answering fun, playful questions — and those videos encompass their profile. Vaibhav has worked on a startup before: Simmer, which was funded by Y Combinator. We sat down with our CEO and asked him some questions to give insight into why he founded Realtalk, and what he’s trying to accomplish with it.

What first gave you the idea for Realtalk, and what problem are you trying to solve with this application?

I downloaded Hinge for the first time in March because of quarantine, and it was insane to me that the best dating apps were all text and images. We live in the world of video-based content, and there has been progression in the form of content, going from text to images to now video.

In the social media space, for example, we first had Facebook, which was optimized for text. Then came Instagram, which was optimized for images. Instagram made Facebook outdated. And now, we live in the world of Tik Tok, which is optimized for videos, and Tik Tok is making Instagram outdated.

I think the same thing will happen in the dating app space. We first had Match.com, which was optimized for text. Then came Tinder and Hinge, which were optimized for images and made Match.com outdated. And I very much believe that, soon, there will be a video based dating app that makes Tinder and Hinge outdated too.

Do you feel your experience with a past startup has helped you prepare for Realtalk, and how so?

The biggest learning from my first startup Simmer is that it’s essential to solve a problem that is both very frequent and very intense for your users. The problem we were trying to solve with Simmer — helping people decide what to eat — was a frequent problem but not a very intense one. If you don’t solve a problem that is both frequent and intense, it’s very difficult to build a business of tremendous value.

What kind of brand image are you trying to build long-term with Realtalk?

We’re trying to build a brand image of authenticity and real connections. Because existing dating apps are predominantly built upon images, the apps are superficial by nature. By allowing users to record videos and really present their personality, we can become the least superficial dating app on the market.

What do you feel success would be for Realtalk?

Success would be starting a new wave of dating app companies that are all based on video rather than images.

What’s next for Realtalk?

Product and growth. We’re just a month old, and we’d like to iterate fast and grow fast. We produce new releases every few days, and our internal metric is a 7% week-over-week growth rate.

Realtalk is a dating app for college students to get to know one another. Users leave 30 second videos, answering fun, playful questions — and those videos encompass their dating profile. No BS, just Realtalk. Download it today

Originally published at https://realtalkapp.co.