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CMB Dawoon Kang Reddit AMA

Did You Miss Dawoon Kang’s Reddit ‘AMA’? Here’s 7 of the Best Q+A

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Coffee Meets Bagel’s very own Co-Founder and -CEO Dawoon Kang braved Reddit’s r/IamA January 22 to answer the questions on everyone’s mind: from tips for online dating, to where the name “Coffee Meets Bagel” came from. (And seriously, who’s the coffee? Who’s the bagel?!)

There are a lot of juicy questions and answers to sift through, so we’ve organized them and picked out the best. Here’s what happened after Dawoon Kang said, “Ask me anything!”

Tips for Online Dating

1. How Can I Increase My Match Rates on CMB?

Low match-rates are a big online dating frustration for many. However, CMB’s Dawoon has some helpful advice when it comes to making your profile more effective.

“When you answer profile questions, speak from your heart and talk honestly about what’s important about you and what you’re looking for in a date,” she said.

That’s because, Dawoon sums up, longer profiles are better than short ones. For more tips for online dating, skim Dawoon’s Reddit answer below.

Reddit: increase match rates

2. Is Dating Sunday Really the Busiest Day for Online Dating?

Dating Sunday isn’t just folklore! In fact, the co-founder says Dating Sunday “was so big for us that it actually broke a record — it was the biggest chat day in CMB history!” The next most-popular day for chatty Cathys? The following Sunday, January 13.

But if you forgot to log in during peak dates, don’t worry. All of January is a popular time for Coffee Meets Bagel, so you still have time to connect.

Reddit: dating sunday busiest day for online dating

3. What Are Some of the Best Online Dating Icebreakers?

In person, singles are forced to think quickly when it comes to breaking the ices. But, online? While more time to perfect a great opening line sounds pleasant, it can also be overwhelming. Should you tell a joke? Use a pick up line? Ask a question about something on their profile?

Dawoon responded with enthusiasm. “Jokes are GREAT,” She said. “Awesome to make someone laugh!” Secondarily, commenting on someone’s profile is also a great way to hit it off. Just be sure not to be generic.

Once, Dawoon said, she used one of her favorite quotes from one of her favorite books, “The Alchemist,” on her profile. “I loved it when someone tried to guess where it was from,” Dawoon said. “It was a great convo starter.”Reddit: online dating icebreakers

4. What’s Dawoon’s Online Dating Philosophy?

Something Dawoon has said in the past is that, “It’s not about getting as many Likes as possible — it’s about getting one right like.” And, Dawoon suggested, that’s why Coffee Meets Bagel is razor-focused on curating limited quality matches instead of an endless pool of singles.

Another Redditor, “usctrojan415” gives further insight: “You don’t date online…at the end of the day you need to be able to transition offline effectively.”

Reddit: Dawoon's online dating philosophy

Coffee Meets Bagel: How It Works and More

5. How Does ‘Discover’ Work?

To new community members, how Coffee Meets Bagel works might seem confusing. However, the platform is simple (even if our algorithm is complex)! Coffee Meets Bagel’s main draw is the “Suggested” section, where CMB’ers receive limited curated matches daily. The section is 100 percent free to use and to Like people.

But when CMB’ers want to search for extra Bagels using their own Advanced Filters (such as age, location, and education), they can choose to use the “Discover” section, too. In this section, it’s free to browse, but community members must use Beans or have a special subscription to Like people.

As “happyaboutlife100” puts it below, “[Discover] was meant as just an adjunctive part of CMB – i.e. the cherry on top.”

Reddit: how does discover work on Coffee Meets Bagel

6. What’s CMB Doing About Online Dating Bots?

Scammers and bots are the reality for many dating apps, and Coffee Meets Bagel is no exception. When Redditor “superken00” asked what CMB’s strategy was for dealing with these fake profiles, Dawoon responded candidly. Take a look!

Reddit: online dating bots

7. What Does the Name ‘Coffee Meets Bagel’ Mean?

Thank you, “dl2ew” for asking a question everyone is ready to get to the bottom of! What does the name “Coffee Meets Bagel” mean, and where did it come from? Is the premise that you’re supposed to meet up for coffee? Dawoon gives a three-fold answer — see what she says in the screen-cap.

Reddit: What does coffee meets bagel mean


OK — so we didn’t learn who the coffee and who the bagel is on Coffee Meets Bagel. But, perhaps the magic is in the mystery. To see more of Dawoon Kang’s “Best Of” from her Reddit AMA, follow CMB on Instagram or view the full r/IamA.

Become your best Bagel by downloading dating app Coffee Meets Bagel.

 

 

Profile Examples

5 Things I Did To Increase My Connection Rate On Coffee Meets Bagel (Guy’s Version)

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In the last few days, more than a few members have written me to ask if I could use my data analysis skills to help them connect more with their Bagels, rather than always talking about bigger dating trends.
Point taken. So this week, I would like to share a few things I’ve learned over time that have helped me personally improve my own chances of connecting with Bagels. And the surprising thing is – some of them are REALLY easy to do.

1. Have at least 3 photos – your chances of getting LIKED back will increase by 31%.

We analyzed the ideal number of photos and it turns out it’s a minimum of three. Profiles with at least three photos are 31% more likely to result in a LIKE than profiles with just one or two photos. And the key here is to have a DIVERSE set of three photos – a photo with a smile, a photo that shows your full body, a photo where you are playing with a dog, a photo of you outdoors, etc. Don’t use only face shots, all sunglasses shots, etc. Here are profile photos of one of Coffee Meets Bagel’s engineers, Barney – dressed up, being goofy, and traveling – you get the point.
Bonus tip – INSTAGRAM your photos!! They look so much nicer.
Online Dating Profile Example

2. Experiment with your first photo – a clear headshot with a friendly smile works wonders

I don’t have a specific statistic to prove this one but, not surprisingly, your first photo matters A LOT. It doesn’t matter if you have a clear face shot as your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th photo – if your first photo is blurry, from far away, you’re wearing sunglasses, etc. it may (sadly) be a lost cause. Experiment with your 1st photos! Try switching orders at a minimum.

3. Write at least a few words in your “Profile”

The top 10% most LIKED profiles were 35% longer than the bottom 90%.  Write at least a few words about who you are and what you’re looking for. Again, here is an example from Barney’s.
Online Dating Profile

4. Have your friends GIVE you Bagels

How Coffee Meets Bagel Works
Look familiar? With GIVE, your friends can GIVE you Bagels they think might be a good match for you and vice versa. When your friend GIVES you a Bagel, you are essentially getting another Bagel for free on that day! In addition – it turns out your friends are great matchmakers. When your friend GIVES you a Bagel, the average probability of you LIKING the Bagel is 77% vs. 44% on our algorithm-generated Bagels.

5. Get more of your friends to get their single friends on Coffee Meets Bagel

OK, I know this sounds totally self-serving. But facts are facts. It’s a fact that when matches share at least 1 mutual friend there is 47% more likely chance that that both parties will end up LIKING each other as opposed to when they don’t share any mutual friends. So it really is better for you if your friends and friend’s friends are also using Coffee Meets Bagel.
Happy Bageling everyone!

Fill out my online form.

About Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB): CMB is a dating app designed with women in mind. Founded by 3 sisters in 2012 in NYC, CMB aims to deliver a fun, safe, and quality dating experience that results in meaningful relationships.

App Store
Get it on Google Play

Profile Examples

5 Things I Did To Increase My Connection Rate On Coffee Meets Bagel (Ladies’ Version)

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In the last few days, more than a few members have written me to ask if I could use my data analysis skills to help them connect more with their Bagels, rather than always talking about bigger dating trends. Point taken.
So this week, I would like to share a few things I’ve learned over time that have helped me personally improve my own chances of connecting with Bagels. And the surprising thing is – some of them are REALLY easy to do.

1. Have at least 3 photos – your chances of getting LIKED back will increase by 31%.

We analyzed the ideal number of photos and it turns out it’s a minimum of three. Profiles with at least three photos are 31% more likely to result in a LIKE than profiles with just one or two photos. And the key here is to have a DIVERSE set of three photos – a photo with a smile, a photo that shows your full body, a photo where you are playing with a dog, a photo of you outdoors, etc. Don’t use only face shots, all sunglasses shots, etc. Here are mine – dressed up, at a music festival, and traveling – you get the point. Bonus tip – INSTAGRAM your photos!! They look so much nicer.

Online Dating Profile Photos Example

Dawoon’s Profile Photos

2. Experiment with your first photo – a clear headshot with a friendly smile works wonders

I don’t have a specific statistic to prove this one but, not surprisingly, your first photo matters A LOT. It doesn’t matter if you have a clear face shot as your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th photo – if your first photo is blurry, from far away, you’re wearing sunglasses, etc. it may (sadly) be a lost cause. Experiment with your 1st photos! I changed my 1st photo from the left one below to right one and for whatever reason it increased my connection rate significantly.

Online Dating Profile Photos Example

Before & After 1st Photo

3. Write at least a few words in your “Profile”

The top 10% most LIKED profiles were 35% longer than the bottom 90%.  Write at least a few words about who you are and what you’re looking for. I don’t think mine is that great but here is an example, in case it helps. Online Dating Profile

4. Have your girlfriends GIVE you Bagels

How Coffee Meets Bagel Works Look familiar? With GIVE, your friends can GIVE you Bagels they think might be a good match for you and vice versa. When your friend GIVES you a Bagel, you are essentially getting another Bagel for free that day! In addition – it turns out your friends are great matchmakers. When your friend GIVE you a Bagel, the probability of you liking the Bagel is a whopping 61%!

5. Get more of your friends to get their single friends on Coffee Meets Bagel!

OK, I know this sounds totally self-serving. But facts are facts. It’s a fact that when matches share at least 1 mutual friend there is 47% more likely chance that that both parties will end up LIKING each other as opposed to when they don’t share any mutual friends. So it really is better for you if your friends and friend’s friends are also using Coffee Meets Bagel.

Happy Bageling everyone!

Fill out my online form.

About Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB): CMB  is a free dating service that helps members make meaningful connections. It’s designed for busy singles who want to find something real with little or no effort.

App Store
Get it on Google Play

Coffee Meets Bagel - Shark Tank

Win 30 Million Coffee Beans In Celebration of Shark Tank's $30mm Offer!

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Yes, you read that right! We are giving away THIRTY MILLION Coffee Beans!
Why? Because Mark Cuban offered $30mm to buy out Coffee Meets Bagel on Shark Tank and we rejected the offer!
Who? One lucky winner will be chosen among new members who sign up between January 9th and January 18th.
Who else? Whoever invited the winning member to Coffee Meets Bagel will also win 30mm Coffee Beans!
When? The winner will be announced on Monday, January 19th!
#Win30mm #SharkTank

About Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB): CMB  is a free dating service that helps members make meaningful connections. It’s designed for busy singles who want to find something real with little or no effort.

App Store
Get it on Google Play

In Response to OK Gorgeous

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Dawoon here, your CMB co-founder! Yesterday we got a tough but fair analysis of our site by OK Gorgeous writer Amy Copperman. Copperman used the site, assessed it, and concluded that Coffee Meets Bagel is not a ”vehicle for anything deeper than scoring more first dates.”

True, our daily matches do give you lots of chances for first dates — and don’t you need that first date to see if round two is worth a shot? The problem with 21st century dating is not that singles can’t score second dates and more – the real problem is there aren’t many opportunities to connect with new quality singles. Ironically, when we have many friends to hang out with and too many things to do, we have less time to make new connections.

Our members crave to meet new, interesting people, and we love helping them make that initial connection. A critical difference between CMB and other dating services is that there is no “browsing;” you simply get one person a day. Copperman explained how this can be disconcerting, but our philosophy is that the lack of browsing makes a person on CMB a lot more special because you’re not amongst one of the thousands of people being sorted through.

The piece also made a good point – is CMB a site that helps you in “finding the one” or just “finding the one you want to have coffee with.” To us, someone we want to have coffee with is a great start to finding the one — because relationships and chemistry is hard to predict, and you just never know.

There are a lot of dating sites out today, as Copperman noted. A common response I get when I tell people that I run an online dating company is “I don’t do online dating.” I always respond by asking, “Why not?” I think everyone who is single and looking to meet others should be doing so both online and offline; dating sites are just additional channels to meet who you are looking for. Many people are concerned with overwhelming profiles and meeting creeps online. I founded CMB so I could address both concerns – It’s easy and simple— 3 minutes a day to check in, done. And there’s no creepy factor because our matches are your friends of friends!

OK Gorgeous has always been one of my go-to sources for cheeky news – and we at CMB dug the feedback from a straight-talker like Copperman. A critical eye is what makes us keep striving to make our site better for our users. As always, feel free to share your thoughts, comments and suggestions with us at [email protected]!

We're not your ordinary "Online Dating Site"

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The dating service industry is worth more than $2 billion and is constantly growing. Yet the stigma attached to the word “online dating” never seems to diminish.

There are some good points made by those who disapprove online dating. Here is an article that lays out why online dating is a mis in providing people with chances for true romance, mainly based off an interview with Eli Finkel, an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University.

Negativo

1. Online dating sites pours out TOO MANY profiles of people that lack information, and you end up “shopping” for a future lover
2. Questions the accuracy and reliability of the algorithm online dating sites are using, and believes the algorithm does not produce any better results than meeting someone in random. 

I think Finkel has a point here. Coming through endless lists of profiles that may or may not come with long essays about their lives and personalities (self-reflected…i really question how accurate that is in some cases) can get nauseating and time consuming. It’s already off to a bad start when you feel drained even in the process of getting started before the actual date.

That’s why we pride so much in what we are and what we do. Coffee Meets Bagel cuts down the time and work our members have to do. We too strongly disapprove the idea of “shopping” for your potential romantic interest and even more so of being drained out and discouraged during the process of meeting someone.

As for the algorithm aspect, yes people may say they want one thing and indicate that on their profiles but when they are matched with the person with all the points they may not have chemistry and have nothing to do with each other. Yet we added something more to just what people put on their profiles. CMB connects people through their mutual friends, helping them to have a better judgement on what the person is like and automatically gets rid of that fear factor, “what is this dude is creeper..I don’t even know him.”

That is why we would rather be called as an online social gaming platform where people meet, build their network, and hopefully find love on the way. We’re not an “online dating site” where people shop for love. We make it happen by connecting people quickly as possible and allowing them to SPEAK  and COMMUNICATE with each other to find out who they really are. No lingering behind profiles and guessing.

So at the end of the day I guess Finkel and CMB do come to the same conclusion. “There’s no better way to figure out whether you’re compatible with somebody than talking to them over a cup of coffee,” said Finkel and we absolutely agree. Hence our name, Coffee Meets Bagel :) 

'Single' or 'In a Relationship'

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‘Single’ or ‘In a Relationship’… does it really matter which one you put up as your Facebook status?

After reading an article on USA Today I’ve realized both singles and couples get involved in drama over Facebook’s relationship statuses. For singles, it’s a question of whether or not you indicate you’re single on your profile. Does it seem too desperate to say you’re single? Yet you want others to know you’re available, so what do you? For those who are in relationships, is it necessary to report to the whole world that you’re in a relationship? Maybe one person in the relationship wants to make it official by locking the other down on Facebook and the other person can think it’s unnecessary and immature.

Yet, if you are already in a relationship where your close family and friends already know of it, why wouldn’t you announce it on Facebook? It is just a Facebook update, right? I do understand dealing with random people’s comments under the status update can be annoying and time consuming but if your girlfriend or boyfriend really wants to show everyone you two are together why not do it?

I’ve seen so many people talk about Facebook’s relationship statuses and what it meant if somebody didn’t show their true status. I say, the best thing to do is not post your relationship status at all. That will eliminate all drama from the source!

What is your take on relationship status updates?

should we text or talk on the phone?

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A good number of my friends are on board and are loving Coffee Meets Bagel- not because I’ve brain washed them with it but because they appreciate the quality of the members and  the simplicity of the system.
Many of my friends have been matched and went on dates with their bagels. I was surprised to see the different personalities come out in this process. Once a bagel and coffee gets matched, they have a private line they can communicate through. This way they can text without giving each other’s real phone number.
There are 2 different ways different bagels approach this situation.
The first, which I thought would be the case for most matches, is that the two text for a couple of days to get to know each other. If the two “click” they will exchange their real numbers and plan a date to actually meet up for coffee.
However I’ve noticed that many bagels are much more aggressive, proactive and forward. After the first text, he goes straight to, “This is my phone number*** *** ****, what’s yours?” I’ve seen another bagel ask for the real number and asked if they could talk over the phone that evening. He skipped the whole texting process and jumped right into the phone call stage. Sexy and Confident? I don’t know, but definitely bold.
For my friend’s case she was turned off by such forwardness but I think it take’s great confidence. Also, it shows that the bagel did not want to beat around the bushes and knew what he wanted.
It’s hard to figure when it’s the right time to exchange each other’s real number, TALK on the phone and to meet up for a date, when you two have met through such social platform. But hey, have fun with it, don’t take it too seriously, but not too lightly.
If you two “click” hopefully you don’t have to think about it too much and can just go with the flow.

Referrals: The best product validation?

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It’s been 3 weeks since our launch on Valentine’s day! I’m so thrilled to see this community grow over time. I’ve gotten to know some of them personally and though I have never really met anyone in person, I already feel as though I know some of them. This is a great platform for US to meet new people too!
I wanted to make sure that I keep our community updated on our progress. One important metric that we have been following is the number of referrals we’re getting from our existing members. Because we are still in private beta, our community has been growing  organically through word-of-mouth. It’s been extraordinary to see how many referrals we have been getting!
About 40% of our members (both approved and those waiting to be approved) have referred us to at least one of their friends. On average, they invited 5.7 friends! Honestly, I don’t have other benchmarks to understand where this stands. Is it off the chart? or standard among online products? I can bet that it’s pretty darn high for any social dating services. I tend to be very picky with products I recommend to my friends, so I appreciate deeply that our members have been so proactively sharing and talking about us with their friends.
I am following up to see how these numbers differ by gender. I have a sneaky suspicion that our female users have been much more active in referring us than our male members but that is a yet to be proven! Guys, please prove me wrong!
I want to take this opportunity to thank our members again for being our early users, fans, and advocates! We will do our best to keep up with our promise to bring fun and ease back to your social life.
Best,
CMB team