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There are plenty of dating apps out there if you’re looking for The One. But what if you’re looking for The Two?
3nder (pronounced “thrinder”) is the dating app that provides this opportunity and more. It has more options for sexual orientation and gender identity. You swipe in different directions. It’s Facebook-authenticated, but you can choose your own name. And, of course, you can use it for hookups with multiple sexual partners.
Last week, 3nder raised half a million dollars in funding from undisclosed angel investors. The app’s founder, a twentysomething Bulgarian-turned-Londoner named Dimo Trifonov, talked to Re/code about the app.
The former designer says that you won’t just download 3nder because of the “two birds with one swipe” thing; Trifonov argues that his app has a unique design and superior choices for users to express their sexuality. He also says that his competitors aren’t just dating apps, but seedy sites like Ashley Madison.
“I wanted to create this minimal, futuristic product. All these sites for swingers, “have-a-threesome-dot-com” and all this kind of crap — they all use super-outdated technology. They have this scammy business plan where they create fake users to generate revenue from men, so this is how they survive,” Trifonov said. “We create this thing that’s affordable, there’s nothing sexualized. We don’t have naked girls, we don’t advertise naked girls.”
Still, 3nder most closely resembles a dating app. And most dating apps look the same, offering slight variations on a theme. You can swipe right if you’re interested in someone, and left if you’re not (3nder has swiping, but in different directions). Hinge uses your extended Facebook network to help arrange matches. Coffee Meets Bagel offers one algorithmically-crafted, artisan match per day. The League is Tinder, but for jerks.
The difficulty he had with his girlfriend in finding other “open-minded” couples led him to believe that with “other apps, it’s either gay or straight, and they don’t consider anything else.”
Though 3nder’s mission to expand the sexual horizons of its users has played well in the media, dating apps are a well-saturated space. Trifonov says that 3nder currently has around a million downloads. By comparison, the IPO filing of the Match Group (which includes Tinder, OKCupid and other dating/hookup services) says it has a combined 59 million monthly active users. Though the IAC-owned dating company didn’t break out individual app figures, those numbers blow 3nder out of the water.
Trifonov doesn’t dismiss this outright, but he says a problem with these apps is that you can’t tell what they’re designed for. Though the relationship-focused Coffee Meets Bagel and the gay hookup app Grindr have clearly defined purposes, Trifonov says Tinder doesn’t make it easy to tell if users are really there for one-night stands or more long-term connections.
“They have all sorts of people. People who just want to fuck, people who are looking for marriage, the love of their life,” he said. “The experience on Tinder, when you match with someone, you don’t really know what these people are doing there.”
As for how he plans to grow his user base, Trifonov says that the press attention he’s been able to drum up has been enough to propel the app for now.
And maybe word of mouth could be even more effective for 3nder: Your two friends could tell their two friends.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
