Paris-based happn announced yet another fundraising round, this time €12.5 Million from a slew of investors including IdInvest, DN Capital, Alven Capital & Fabrice Grinda. The dating app, which has brought the ‘missed connections’ idea to a tinder-lick interface, has already see 6 Million users register across the 25 cities they are currently active in.
happn’s city-by-city roll-out strategy has been very successful, at least at onboarding new users. I’ve heard from VCs who have looked at the deal that user retention leaves a bit to be desired; however, I’m sur founder Didier Rappaport has plans to pick that up.
France is no stranger to building dating apps. One of France’s most iconic Business Angels, Marc Simoncini, made his reputation off of selling Meetic to Match.com owners IAC (who also owns Tinder). Other well-known sites like AdopteUnMec (“Adopt a guy”) & Gleeden (France’s Ashley Madison) are regularly present in Metro advertisements (the former announced in one ad that it had surpassed 10 Million registered users earlier this year).
Tinder, however, has been struggling to get its premium offers off the ground. A botched launch of its first premium offered received criticism by essentially making less desirable males pay more to reach women, while subsequent premium features seem to only encourage bad behavior on the platform (forcing someone to notice you, rewinding on a swipe, etc.) – happn boasted early on its micropayment-style freemium offer, which allowed users to pay €.10 to make sure they got noticed by other users. No details have been communicated as to how many users have taken advantage of the service, though it seems to have gotten VCs excited enough to double-down on happn.