Startup Idea —The Moviepass for Dates
Leave your wallet at home
The format of this article is going to a little bit different from before. In this new series, I am going to review potential startup ideas (either from online, friends or myself) and evaluable the feasibility of such an idea.
Date Night Subscription
The Problem:
Let’s say you live in NYC. You also have a long term significant other.
Perhaps at first, you two went to go see all the touristy stuff- boat cruise on the Hudson, a Broadway show or two. Nowadays however, your “date nights” (if they exist) have turned into board games with friends or just staying home watching Netflix.
You know there is more fun things to do out there. You just need some tips… and maybe some motavation.
The idea:
A subscription service that provides members with an all expenses paid for date night once a month. The customer would define a particular date in advance and receive a instruction booklet or package that includes what the date would entail.
Some potential ideas would be bowling, painting, or wine tasting. Perhaps there would be new places in the surrounding area that the couple have not explored yet.
The primary motivator here is that the date is already pre-paid for. Other than having to justify the cost to yourself, the price has already been paid ahead of time.
The Customers:
I see this service targeting (at least initially) big cities, where there are many potential options to explore. This service is likely also better targeted toward individuals in long term relationships.
The Market:
The potential market for this idea is huge. Approximately one tenth of the population in the U.S lives in one of the top 10 largest cities. Assuming 20% of the population in a age group (15–30) where dating is frequent, and 36% of that population in a long term relationship, results in a potential market of 2 million people living in one of the top 10 largest U.S cities.
The average amount americans spend on a date is around a hundred dollars. However in certain states like NY, that could reach a staggering $300 dollars per average date.
Given that this service could introduce some cheaper date options and get potential bulk discounts, let's go with around $100 per date. The question then becomes, how much are people willing to pay for this service.
If the service was priced at $120 with 1 million subscribers, gross profit could reach $240 million annually.
The Competitors:
There have been some websites that give ideas for generating your own prepaid date night kits. So far, however, I have no found a similar service that would create and provide this entire package.
The bottom line:
I think this idea would be promising with the right marketing strategy. Businesses would be on board since they’d will likely get more customers and publicity. Perhaps a couple that had a good date at a preselected restaurant would want to come back on their own time. Customers would also benefit from the simplicity of prepaid date packages. The difficult part is convincing your average young couple to pay a hefty ~100$/month subscription- even if that was how much they were originally paying for dates. Perhaps, instead of a subscription model, having these prepaid date packages each as an individual buy would be a better approach.
