Entrepreneurship, technology, building a business.
Magnet: Attraction On The Spot

Hi everyone, this is Alessandro Schiassi, founder and CEO of Magnet!
Magnet is the first on-site attraction app, merging the best aspects of online dating and real life approaching. With the check-in feature, Magnet allows you to quickly browse and filter singles around you, in real-time. If there is mutual interest, you get connected with a 5-minute chat. Break the ice and meet up on the spot!
What's different from other apps like Tinder, Bumble, Happn, Hinge, etc?
• It on-site: We already filter people by going to specific places and events, so why not connecting with them while there?
• It’s in real-time: On average, it takes 2 weeks before the first date. With Magnet, you don’t need to organize any date, just meet up on the spot!
• It encourages face-to-face interactions: You only have 5 minutes to break the ice via chat, then just meet up and check if there is any chemistry!
• It’s safer and stress-free: Are you not enjoying your encounter? Just excuse yourself and go back to your friends! No more being stuck for two hours on a lame first date!
Gone are the days where you have to endlessly swipe through a never-ending stream of strangers while bored at home. And forget about getting unsolicited pictures that make you questions why you’re on a dating app in the first place!
With this version, there is no proximity restriction, but eventually, we are moving it to 200ft. Think a check-in in Magnet like a PokéGym in Pokémon Go, where you need to be close enough to access it. We hope to make dating safer, more efficient, and overall a more fun experience. Let me know what you think!
https://www.imzy.com/yeahmagnet
Alessandro




Huh, this is really interesting! Sounds like the best of both worlds and moving in the direction of augmented reality in a way—just helping to improve your real-life experience rather than replace it with an online experience. It would also be great because I hate going to parties because I feel awkward just trying to walk up to people and talk to them, but this would basically serve as an introduction!
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in creating this app? What was the most controversial decision your team fought over when figuring out what you were going to build and how it should work?
What's your strategy for how you're going to acquire users? A dating app is similar to a community platform—no one wants to be on it until other people are on it too, which can make it really difficult!
How large is your company right now? Have you had challenges yet in terms of starting and growing a company, independent of what you were building? What's your advice for other people looking to create their own startup?
Hi Kaela, thanks for your enthusiasm! We indeed define Magnet as an on-site app that merges the best aspects of online dating and real life approaching! And our goal is to fight social awkwardness everywhere, starting with dating! Since you mentioned AR, I was really happy to see how people went crazy for Pokémon Go since it shares so much with Magnet!
I had the idea about two years ago. Luckily, pretty much everyone loved the concept and gave me amazing feedback. The hardest part has been the fundraising since development can be quite expensive. I had a very clear idea of the main features of the app, which are basically check-in, the visualization of the venue (called Magnetic Field), the profiles with photos/profile details/ice breakers, the double opt-in, and the 5-minute chat. The last probably was the most discussed, but we all agreed that you don't need much time to chat if you are a few feet away.
The user acquisition strategy is by far the most controversial since the whole concept is hyper-local, the opposite you want to have in a social platform. But where other people see a challenge, I see an advantage! Since we have complete control of which venues we can show on the map (and therefore where users can use Magnet), we can create exclusivity and monetize through venues and promoters instead! At the early stage, we are focusing on an on-site advertising strategy, approaching potential users directly while at an event or organize some ourselves.
The company is still very small, about 12 people, mostly advisors in separate fields. We all work on remote and basically meeting up whenever is necessary. I didn't have many problems on convincing people on joining us. That demonstrate the importance of a great idea. My suggestion for other entrepreneurs is to share your idea because that would help you to find team members. Ideas are just multipliers of execution, so you need to understand the value of each. If the idea is worth 1000 and it's multiplied by 0 (your execution) the result is still 0! You need to keep shaping your vision with whatever you have or you can learn, eventually you'll attract the right minds for your company!
Really cool. It actually seems like being a location-based app could give you a lot of benefits for growing in a way, since you could even only release it in a single city or Jair a few cities (like Austin or New York or some other dense population area with lots of singles), and target getting all your users in the same area, so that they all have other people to interact with, and then slowly branching out. Could give you a way to focus all your users rather than having them spread super thin.
The idea of sponsoring events is really interesting. Even if you're not hosting it yourself, having a booth at Comic Con or something would be really cool. You're guaranteed to have a lot of people in the same area who share at least some common interests, and maybe they want to meet more people like them to hang out with while they're there!
The complete control of scalability is something not every startup can do, so we are lucky also in that sense. We are focusing on the LA market with very cool venues, but eventually we are planning on expanding in other cities as you suggested.
We already filter people by going to specific venues events, Magnet simply takes advantage of our social behavior and eases real life connections :) Comic Con is definitely in our scope, so it's SXSW, Coachella, etc.
Awesome. Good luck!
Thanks! I made a Imzy community page: https://www.imzy.com/yeahmagnet