Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming tech companies, Built In launched The Future 5 across seven major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five early-stage tech companies, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of LA’s rising startups from last quarter here.
* * *
Humans are social creatures by nature, hardwired with the desire to form connections with one another. Romantic relationships are one way people forge particularly strong ties, though attempting to spark this kind of relationship can be an intimidating or even discouraging experience. Believing everyone deserves at least a shot at love, Locale aims to be a pocket-sized wingman that helps its users make the first move.
Locale considers itself a community-driven platform for singles. As its name suggests, the app focuses on where users are physically located, but Locale is responsible for picking their meeting location. The platform partners with bars, lounges and clubs to create public meet-up hubs for singles. Through the mobile app, singles can find these spaces and events and then meet other singles in person once they arrive.
“There’s an entire wave of technology that’s looking to bridge the gap between the digital space and the real world,” Daniel Starr, Locale’s co-founder and CEO, told Built In. “I think to heighten that matter, the pandemic … showed us just how important it is to have digital mediums to stay connected, but now that we’re back in an era in which individuals can get back to more the IRL [in real life scenarios], a lot of people are even less willing to retreat into technology that keeps them in that [digital] space, especially from a social context.”
Starr and co-founder Mikael Toikka met as students at Boston University, where they both graduated in 2021. Starr had rather unsatisfactory experiences using legacy dating apps during his college years, and he learned that many of his peers shared similar sentiments. A classmate in a career counseling course inspired him to pursue an entrepreneurial journey, leading Starr to build a solution that related to his own dating experiences.
When you think of mobile dating apps, they’re really not dating apps. They’re actually just matching apps.”
One of the main trends Locale noticed among Gen Z dating app users is that only a small number of matches actually meet up in person, and many are losing interest in dating apps altogether. To keep younger singles on the dating scene, Locale aims to revamp this aspect of mobile dating by emphasizing in-person meetings rather than relying solely on digital communication.
Unlike most dating apps, Locale users don’t initially match with other singles on the platform. Instead, users log in and find a nearby meet-up event they’d like to attend. Once they arrive at the Locale location, they check in and take a selfie on the app.
This selfie will appear in front of the user’s additional profile photos and serves to help singles identify each other and prevent catfishing. This safety component is one of many that Locale employs to ensure its users are safe and comfortable when they meet new people. The company’s partner businesses also place security guards at Locale events and users can call 911 directly from the app in case of emergencies.
Locale’s platform also supports messaging, so users can continue conversing with each other even after the event has ended.
The company is working on expanding its product to encompass features like a pre-check-in user interface and matching with other users before arriving at a venue. Features like these are similar to offerings of legacy dating apps, however, Locale’s core product infrastructure will still focus on enabling in-person connection, differentiating it from these solutions.
“When you think of mobile dating apps, they’re really not dating apps. They’re actually just matching apps,” Starr said. “When you look at the way that they commercialize and [how] they generate money, it’s not by helping people meet. It’s by helping keep their users single and [staying] on the platform longer.”
Locale has seen promising results from its business model so far. When it first launched on the App Store in December 2022, the company hosted several public and private events and acquired more than 500 users, Starr said. Its public event at the Berkshire House in LA had about 60 or 70 attendees. Another at The Nickel Mine pulled in 80 to 100 users, according to Starr.
These events were successful in proving the value of Locale’s minimum viable product, so the company’s goal for the time being is to expand upon its current offering before relaunching and marketing with new features. The platform is currently active in LA and Boston with plans to expand into New York City.
As Locale continues to improve upon its solution, Starr and Toikka hope to create a social app experience that people genuinely enjoy and can feel confident using.
“I think the most exciting prospect of Locale would be that we’re building something that could quite possibly change the way that people go about interacting in certain scenarios and hopefully making that a better, more efficient and safer experience,” Toikka told Built In.
