Ryan and Shaz here. We’re building muzmatch (https://muzmatch.com), an app that helps single Muslims meet their partner. We refer to ourselves as a dating app largely for SEO but the reality is our users don’t tend to date, they marry!
Marriage is central to many Muslims’ upbringings and ethnic, family, and religious pressures make it a difficult search. The casual Western apps don’t cater for this market and the existing Islam-specific offerings are outdated, ineffective websites.
As a practising Muslim, Shaz experienced this problem firsthand. He quit a 10 year career in banking to write and release an MVP back in April ’15. With promising traction, he found me (Ryan) on LinkedIn in the then New Year. It was clear it could be a massive opportunity but I believed it needed to broaden its appeal (then it was as an ultra serious marriage service) and modernise its branding/marketing to position it for the new generation: this seemed like a great challenge!
We’ve tried to build a product that feels fun and light but respects our demographic’s culture and sensibilities, being halal is essential. Some unique features:
- Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations - Full privacy: Users can blur their photos and use a nickname to remain anonymous to friends and family - Fully verified: All manually approved, Selfie, GPS, and SMS verified users - Relevant: Profile information that matters to many in their search, like Islamic, sect, and ethnicity filters
We’re now ~2 years in with 200,000 users and are thrilled to have helped over 6,000 find their partner.
We’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!
I wonder why there isn't a platform for single people where dating companies are just apps on top of the platform. Seems like bad user experience that a user needs to maintain multiple accounts.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but I think the really big company in this space will be a platform for single people.
Strangers don't belong in that model because they are not friends. Most people want to keep strangers away from your real life until they become friends so having a third party site keeps that experience away from preying eyes. Once a couple is formed they will connect over facebook and start sharing their experiences.
You might be right though, it might consolidate in the future if people figure out really good interfaces that make it work well for many use cases.
We're solving for very specific requirements, aside from the benefit of shared identity I think it'd be a lot harder to keep the product free of feature creep and still appeal to all
Thanks for the kind words
I like the idea of having LinkedIn and not just adding all my work contacts on Facebook. I want to be sure that the information I share on the dating platform and Facebook don't mix too easily. Curating my Facebook data once when signing up to a dating app is fine.
We think the former is likely higher too as many choose to keep it private
Whats 'Halal, free, and fun'?
Whats you tech stack like?
Halal being "ok" Islamically, free as the old competition are very expensive, and fun so the process sounds noncommittal (many are put off by fearing being rushed into something they're not necessarily ready for)
It's a LEMP stack heavily utilising Memcached for performance and XMPP for real time functionality
and many downvotes are because there are in-app purchases. Seems to be quite a problem with play store. They should have an algorithm or UX flow to weed out such reviews.
So, this leads to my original question of whether the product will enable this. I'd hate (probably too strong of a word) to see a product get awesome HN coverage that actively works against ('discriminate') LGBTQX folks.
@abbasiddartha > beat me to it. I agree.
Perhaps if You see a business opportunity you could create an app that serves the Muslim LGBTQX community?
I think the real question is whether the app is intended for people who are currently practicing muslims or people who were brought up muslim. There's many non practicing Muslims who keep the Islamic morality like former christians and jews do.
She always mentions how she's puzzled over the "Always pray / sometimes pray / never pray" options under religious practice. Can you explain your thought process in coming up with those options?
I want to say that I can see why your app would be a tremendous challenge from a product development standpoint. What you have as a user base in America are basically a mix of many different immigrant cultures that each have their own idea of Islamic traditional marriage customs - Somalian vs. Arab vs. Indopak vs. West African vs. Cham vs. vs. vs..., as well as clashes between youth & elder viewpoints, as well as a large indigenous (I use the term loosely - we're all immigrants to an extent) American Muslim population as well (something that foreigners usually are shocked to hear - Americans becoming Muslim?! What!!). Do your research well & don't give up
I ask Allah to guide you to a product that is beneficial for the Muslims - and also materially successful!
Edit: Also, my email address was used at one point as the "wali" contact but I stopped getting digest emails from the conversations inexplicably. You may need tighter QA around that pipeline
Absolutely it's a challenge and we're aiming to be as inclusive as possible
Interesting, if you email me (ryan@muzmatch.com) I can look into this further for you
Thanks again
The site says: _Women_ can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind.
Which is correct?
Is the "Wali" a human being? If yes, how will that scale?
> How do I include a Wali or Guardian on muzmatch?
> We want muzmatch to be a Halal and safe place for all our members to find their partner.
> Women can enter a Wali or Guardian's email address in Menu → Settings to give them extra peace of mind.
> Once their email has been confirmed they’ll receive weekly transcripts of your Chats on muzmatch.
[1]: https://muzmatch.com/faq/how-do-i-include-a-wali-or-guardian...
Don't get me started on email..!
Out of curiosity, how does "all profiles being verified manually" scale?
It definitely keeps us busy 24/7 but we've built some internal tools to make this as quick and efficient as possible
We're definitely nearing the point of needing a dedicated Community Manager to take over this function
Good luck!
Sounds like a pretty unique feature in the world of chat apps. Were there any technical difficulties in implementing that?
