The world’s most popular dating app seems to be looking deeper into friend-finding as well. The San Francisco startup HEY! Vina and its friendship-based app gathered $1.4 million back in July during a summer seed funding round. Tinder has now revealed that their team was one of the investors that contributed to the friend-matching company.
Tinder’s announcement follows a very active couple of months for the matchmaking app, as it has continuously introduced new features to expand its social range beyond just casual dating. The most recent were revealed yesterday, with the app getting a new side-feature called Tinder Stacks integrated with iMessage for social polling on whatever users need help deciding.
The investment on HEY! Vina rises on the horizon as a potential move from Tinder to further expand its social empire towards a friendship development service too. While the exact amount of money that Tinder pitched in remains undisclosed, CEO Sean Rad stated that the company’s investment in HEY! Vina was a “meaningful” one.
HEY! Vina is focused mainly on women, but that may change in the future
The social app HEY! Vina was born as a joint project between entrepreneur friends Olivia June Poole and Jen Aprahamian in San Francisco last summer. HEY! Vina is aimed primarily at adult women looking for friendships based on their interests and locations.
HEY! Vina depends on Facebook as its main engine for matchmaking. The app takes data from women in the same place and other variables to then create a quiz. Both potential friends must answer the test to get to know each other better and potentially meet up at one of the places they both frequent.
The startup launched the app in select markets back in January, with an overall good reception from target audiences and visible progress as it held a millionaire seed funding round just a year after its inception.
Tinder will mentor HEY! Vina as part of their investment
Not only has Tinder contributed a significant sum of the $1.4 million raised by HEY! Vina, but it will also walk along the road with the San Francisco startup to show them the way towards success.
Tinder has agreed to mentor the friend matchmaking app team to help it grow and expand as it becomes available in more cities in the upcoming months. Online outlets also don’t discard the possibility of a merger in the future, what with Tinder having its friend-finding app in Tinder Social.
Acquiring HEY! Vina would put Tinder one step forward towards converting the event meetup-based Tinder Social into a matchmaking app for those who just want to be friends.
Source: TechCrunch