Love is in the air as angels invest £160,000 in Leeds dating entrepreneurs

LEEDS-BASED entrepreneurs have secured £160,000 investment for their dating app startup from angels in New York and London.

The JigTalk company and app, launched in 2015/6, went in for the major tranche of funding to enable them to expand rapidly over the next few months.

The concept behind Jigtalk is that users can talk first before seeing pictures of their potential dates, which are then revealed piece by piece as the conversation flows.

It also asks simple questions which reveal personality traits, a unique feature say developers, considering that more than 50% of conversations between dating app users end after the first “hi”.

Co founder of startup JigTalk, Max Adamski, hit on the idea for the app after months of unsuccessful Tinder swipes, growing the idea until it was a fully formed business opportunity.

Mr Adamski started to transform his idea into a business model after a PowerPoint presentation secured him £30,000 in pre-seed funding to build the minimum viable product. Teaming up with Alex Durant, the business continued to grow and a team of four including the co-founders and two developers launched the iOS beta version of JigTalk on 14 February 2016.

The app gained traction gaining 1,000 users in Leeds, and was perfected by the team, which now includes marketing manager Eve Kekeh, and non-executive directors Stuart Clarke of the Leeds Digital Festival and Media Yorkshire, as well as Jonathan Filewood, managing director of marketing agency Enjoy Digital.

Now, following the £160,000 angel investment, JigTalk is looking at city-by-city expansion over the next eight months through digital marketing, PR and an ad-sponsored TV series which is in the works.

Alex Durrant said: “JigTalk stands out in so many ways, be it’s bold jigsaw branding or even the name, ‘JigTalk’ – google it, nothing but us! However, the most stand-out elements of JigTalk is it’s truly unique selling points.There is nothing else like JigTalk on the market, it’s magic formula is there to make online dating fun for it’s users.

“For us it is simple. It’s all about the smartphone. It is the first place people look for anything now, whether it be what to eat for dinner at night or where to find love.

“Tinder has paved the way for a new, quick and easy way to meet people online and have helped in making it more socially acceptable to do so. This coupled with internet usage on phones now taking over that on a desktop, we fully expect the application dating market to grow even further. “eHarmony predict that by 2040 over 70% of relationships will be sparked online – the dating app will become more and more apart of everyday life over the coming years.”