If you watched the BBC One show ‘The Apprentice’ last year, you would have watched runner-up Vana Koutsomitis showcase her dating app idea - DatePlay - to Lord Sugar in the final. Six months down the line, Vana is now in the last funding stages ahead of the app launch later this year. She has chosen to pursue crowdfunding, so she is inviting anyone and everyone to get a piece of the pie. People can invest as little as £10 to get a stake in her company here www.seedrs.com/dateplay.
After the final aired, Vana was advised by a few people that DatePlay would be too difficult to execute. However, she was too passionate about the concept of DatePlay to give up on her dream. Vana has also had many viewers get in contact urging her to launch the app as well as strong public support - this has only further confirmed her gut feeling that DatePlay is a unique and great idea.
Undeterred by coming in second place on the show, Vana joined forced with co-founder Joris Magenti to set about building the business, securing seed financing to fund startup costs as well as investing their own savings. Over the past six months, Vana and Joris have secured office space at Wayra startup accelerator, recruited a team of experts to design and build the app, and continued her efforts to recruit new users for DatePlay.
DatePlay is a unique dating product. Using interactive games, the app analyses users' personalities, collects behavioral insights and suggests matches that users are more likely to be compatible with.
Vana has chosen to go public with the last stage of her fundraising, by using the crowdfunding platform Seedrs - to inspire other female founders to dream big. Even though she was runner-up on The Apprentice, Vana wants to send a message to women that they should not give up on their dreams. Vana is excited to make DatePlay the next big thing in online dating and wants to encourage more women to get into tech.
Vana has been overwhelmed with the support from the fans and they have inspired her to follow her dream of developing DatePlay. It is thanks to the support of the fans and the 20,000 people who have already pre-registered for DatePlay, that Vana has been able to pursue the idea and been able to secure the initial investment. Now, Vana has made the decision to give her fans the opportunity to invest and have their own part in the DatePlay success story! Members of the public are able to invest in DatePlay shares through Seedrs, one of the UK’s leading crowdfunding platforms. Each share in DatePlay will cost just £10 and will enable investors to share in the financial gains as the business grows. The crowdfunding campaign goes live from the 19th July.
DatePlay will then launch in the autumn. It is the first app to combine two of today’s biggest mobile trends: dating and gaming. The app uses easy and fun to play games in order to learn more about the user and increase the quality of matches. It’s a completely new concept that has the potential to redefine the online dating market!
Vana is a truly inspirational entrepreneur and we are really interested to see how her latest venture takes off. If you are interested in investing in DatePlay visit www.seedrs.com/DatePlay.
