Launch HN: Muzmatch (YC S17) – A place where 400M single Muslims can meet

[brod_ie]

Hey HN!

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 The casual Western apps don’t cater for this market and the existing Islam-specific offerings are outdated, ineffective websites.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!

[tboyd47]

My wife is a user of this app (she has used to to help her sisters look for husbands) and so far I think it's a good product. You were wise to include the wali/chaperone option because that is clearly a key feature for many sisters.

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

[brod_ie]

Very happy to hear that and thank you

Absolutely it's a challenge and we're aiming to be as inclusive as possible

Interesting, if you email me ([email protected]) I can look into this further for you

Thanks again

[1123581321]

Commenting on the wali/chaperone feature: I'm actually surprised that MuzMatch is the first network I've seen with support for unobtrusive third parties in conversations. I think there might be a general business opportunity there if they execute the limited dating application well. CCing/BCCing in a business setting is a limited communication management tool vulnerable to political distractions. Idling in chat is unproductive.

[brod_ie]

Totally

Don't get me started on email..!

[philsit]

Great market. You should look for some help with the copy writing. I had to read some sentences twice.

[anindha]

Dating apps right now feel a little like pre-Facebook social networks. There is one for every niche.

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.

[navalsaini]

Different dating apps cater to different mindsets towards dating. Some ban pictures in favor of words; while others only work if you have great pictures; then others want one to mention their annual income ranges.

[brod_ie]

Interesting concept, the key difference with specific niche apps is the intent of the user when signing up

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

[JessOpearlo]

How many marriages have happened through your app our of interest?

[brod_ie]

We've had 600 confirmed weddings and 6,000 couples leave after finding each other within the app

We think the former is likely higher too as many choose to keep it private

[rotemy]

I think I remember, something like 6000, right?

[ashayh]

The HN description says: "users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations "

The site says: _Women_ can include a guardian in their conversation for extra peace of mind.

Which is correct?

[brod_ie]

The chaperone feature is coming to both genders in the next major version. Historically it was just for women as we used to refer to it as a "Wali" which Islamically is only for this sex

[err4nt]

As long as some 'users' are also 'women' both can be correct at the same time. I don't necessarily see a conflict between the two statements! :D

[the_common_man]

Can you explain, how you make money? In the play store there are some bad reviews about in-app purchases. What is your pricing and what do you price for? Thanks

[brod_ie]

We monetised through a mix of In App Purchases for products like Extra Swipes (see more profiles daily) and Instant Match (guaranteed to be seen to a soecified user) as well as a Premium subscription offering that includes some supplemental features as well as bundles of the IAPs. People don't always like the realities of the app economy but in truth we didn't monetise anything that was previously free. The free product is still as functional as ever. We modify pricing from time to time, you can see these in-app and in-stores, thanks.

[biztos]

This looks like a really good idea. I wonder if there is a wider opportunity beyond the Muslim-specific context for some kind of Anti-Tinder.

Out of curiosity, how does "all profiles being verified manually" scale?

[brod_ie]

Thank you

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

[navalsaini]

Pretty cool guys. I can see from the play store comments that your users love the app. Best wishes.

Whats 'Halal, free, and fun'?

Whats you tech stack like?

[brod_ie]

Thank you!

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

[navalsaini]

A few harsh comments in play store are interesting too :p

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.

[navalsaini]

And what is the reason for not having a teaser video? I hear they improve the download rates.

[teej]

I'm annoyed that you came in, advertised your product, took up front page space, and didn't bother to answer any of the interesting questions. I feel as if you are taking from the community and not giving back.

[brod_ie]

Sorry to hear that, I thought I chimed in on most topics! All hands on deck for demo day, having another read through now

[marrone12]

Your hero div has some weird overlap issues in smaller screen heights http://imgur.com/a/yxyHr

[brod_ie]

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I never foresaw such a small vertical to horizontal ratio screen!

[praneshp]

Nice service!

Is the "Wali" a human being? If yes, how will that scale?

[newscracker]

It'll be a verified email address that the member selects, to whom the chat transcripts are sent. [1]

> 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...

[MarkMc]

Interesting that you seem to have gained traction even though your competition has been around for 10 years or more.

Good luck!

[brod_ie]

Thank you! The older the company (typically) the harder and slower it is to innovate, we think they've completely missed to opportunities smartphone present.

[nrclark]

How does the Wali part work? do you employ conversation reviewers? Does one dater recruit an outside person?

[funwithjustin]

Who did your icon illustrations? They're great!

[brod_ie]

Thanks, I do all of our design but I can't take credit for these other than some colouring and minor alterations, they're from a generic set I bought a while back

[botrot]

In terms of gender, I am fluid. Does muzmatch have plans to support additional gender options? The current format only allows "Male" or "Female".

[leesalminen]

Does the religion allow for this? Not sure that it does.

[brod_ie]

We're supportive of this and is definitely on our radar

[Cenk]

Yeah, this should be an option

[smegel]

> Chaperones: In keeping with Islamic tradition, users can opt to have a “Wali” present in their conversations

Sounds like a pretty unique feature in the world of chat apps. Were there any technical difficulties in implementing that?

[brod_ie]

Great question. Not particularly as the current Chaperone system works as an email digest of conversations sent to your confirmed guardian. In the future we want to explore adding full muzmatch account functionality here so the chaperone can sign into the native apps and view conversations in a more realtime manor.

[frik]

Would be interested in your relaunch 2015+ - how have it got traction? Was it rebranding? How have you got the initial traction? Sending emails to closed real world community? Postings on FB?

[Cenk]

Link for the lazy: https://muzmatch.com

[dang]

Added above. Thanks!

[dang]

There are plenty of apps for Christians, as for all other kinds of specialized markets.

When you say 'white Christians' you're changing the subject in a particularly trollish way. Please don't comment like that here.

[colmvp]

If you made an app just for white Christians, as a non-white non-Christian I'd be fine with it because it saves me from having to a) look at their profile, b) potentially get matched up with them, and c) waste my time. Chances are they want someone who shares a lot of their same beliefs and more importantly want someone faithful to God.

Like it or not, people have preferences.

A few year ago, I joined Match. You know how many of my 'matches' explicitly stated they don't want to date my ethnicity and only want to date their own? A lot.

Then I joined CoffeeMeetsBagel. And while I never explicitly mentioned a preferred ethnicity, they kept matching me up with women of my own ethnicity despite the fact that 50% of the people in my city are not my ethnicity. Again, how much of that is women explicitly stating they don't want to be matched up to men of my ethnicity?

My point is that even though some apps have a generalized population, the idea of intermingling is a minority. In the U.S. I think interracial marriages are like 10% of all total marriages. And religion has way more differences in terms of life style and philosophy than ethnicity.

[ramphastidae]

> Why do you want to keep people from spedific religions stick together? It's for a society always better if groups mix instead of this ghettoization. I know that still many try to stay with their folks which is ok but why to enforce it?

They are not forcing anyone to do anything. They are giving people an option.

If a Muslim wants to marry another Muslim, and this helps them accomplish that better than Tinder or any other apps, that's great. Why is that such a problem for you? Why do you even suppose it's any of your business?

Full disclosure: I am agnostic.

[tboyd47]

If you are choosing a life partner it makes sense to filter for religious beliefs because that is something you need to agree on to raise children together

There are lots of dating services for Christians only, that's not new.

Just because people are super religious doesn't mean they are resistant to all types of change. Not sure what you mean by "super religious" but I know a lot of people personally who have found this app useful who are practicing Islam in a traditional way