Instead of hosting a wedding dinner, Singaporean Nelson Tan (41) decided to pump the money that was going to be spent into developing a dating app instead.
One reason was mainly due to how he found wedding dinners to be rather impersonal.
“I wasn’t keen to host a traditional wedding dinner where guests may feel obliged to attend, and where we don’t get time to hang out with our friends,” he shared in an interview with Vulcan Post.
But more importantly, Nelson had a vision.
The vision was launching dating app Klick, something he says can be described as an “Instagram for dating”.
Convinced that “singles deserve better than using superficial and judgmental dating apps to find love”, Klick lets users showcase their personality through photo posts.
There’s nothing simpler than posting photos to showcase personalities and interests, and people are already doing that on social media, so Klick focused on photo sharing.
Nelson Tan, founder of Klick
Fortunately, Nelson managed to get his wife on board his mission, asking if she would rather “spend on a wedding dinner where guests would have forgotten about by the next week, [or] use the money to create an opportunity for couples to be together for a lifetime”.
“Our friends, however, didn’t believe that we’d do something so crazy – they remain pretty convinced there was a dinner they weren’t invited to, haha!”
No Co-Founders, $160K Invested To Date
As the sole founder of Klick, Nelson shared that while he had reached out to prospective partners at the start, they did not come on board as they “didn’t feel there could be an alternative to the typical photo-swiping model”.
“Some others also believed that the market was too saturated.”
The journey of entrepreneurship is lonely, but even with no co-founders, Nelson still pressed on, adamant on making it work.
He recalled listening to complaints from friends about their dating app experiences, where they were “forced to make snap judgments” and had to engage in “numerous chats” just to learn more about the other party’s personality.
One of them who worked in HR commented: “It’s like asking job candidates to come in for interviews based on their photos and without proper resumes, only to discover during the interview they’re totally unsuitable. It’s an insane waste of time!
Nelson Tan, founder of Klick
Nelson shared that he hopes that Klick would help singles “break away from the passive approach of dating apps, where users wait in the silos of their profile page to be discovered”.
With the Instagram/social media approach, users would be more motivated to “promote” themselves by posting updates so that they can be noticed by other users.
Having observed that most dating apps use algorithms to match users, Nelson thinks there’s something “more human and romantic” with their approach, instead of “a machine suggested I talk to you”.
“And love is complex – you are not going to like a person just because he/she shares the same interests. We are looking for a certain X-factor that cannot be easily reduced to data points.”
3,000 (And Counting) Users To Date
Since the app’s official launch on Valentine’s Day this year, Klick has gotten over 3,000 users to date.
Nelson revealed that while getting users on board wasn’t difficult as singles were willing to try new apps, getting them to share their stories was a challenge.
“Klick users were initially unsure of what to post or why they should do it,” he recalled.
“But once they started receiving more attention and chat requests, it became evident to them [how it] helped connect them to like-minded singles much more easily compared to profile-swiping dating apps.”
As for his monetisation strategy for Klick, Nelson shared that “unlike ‘free’ dating apps that require payment to chat, post, or browse, [he] wanted Klick to be really free”.
Users would be able to post, browse, and chat for free with no limitations, but he is currently “working on unobtrusive in-app ads”.
“We will create more powerful features for premium users in the future, but the basic functionalities will always be free for every user.”
“Why let your fate be determined by algorithms or wait passively to be swiped upon? Take charge of your life and be proactive about dating!”
We’d like to thank Nelson for his time!
