A note about who we are

Dating is broken because the companies that run the dating apps need it to be broken.

Their business model is simple: they make money when you keep using the app. Every match that turns into a relationship is a customer they lose. So the product is engineered for engagement, not for outcomes. The paid tier sells you "boost" and "see who liked you" — features that feel like leverage but are really rented placement in a queue someone built to keep you in. In 2024, six users sued Match Group in California, alleging the apps are "designed to addict users" and "lock them into a perpetual pay-to-play loop." Match Group denies this. The case was sent to arbitration. Whatever you make of the lawsuit, the underlying point is hard to argue with: a company whose revenue depends on your continued use will, eventually, build a product that keeps you using it.

Meanwhile, two generations of adults have watched dating go from butterflies to dread. Ghosting is normal. Cruelty is normal. Showing up to the date you agreed to has become a personality trait. The math is brutal: you can swipe a thousand profiles and meet two people in person, and one of those will cancel the day of. We didn't get here by accident. We got here because the platforms wanted it this way.

Love Letter is not designed to make money. That may change later, but right now the goal is one thing: great dates, on the way to affection, love, and meaningful connection. Period.

We pay for the platform a few ways. We're exploring partnerships with restaurants who'd pay us to encourage members to meet at their tables — they get diners, you get a real place to meet someone, and the incentives align with the goal for once. Beyond that we keep expenses low and we accept donations from members who believe in what we're doing. Wikipedia ran this way for years. Craigslist still does. The early internet had a lot of companies built on the idea that a thing could be good and useful without being a growth engine. That's our inspiration.

We curate aggressively. If you ghost the people you matched with, we push you deeper in the discovery stack so you become harder to find. Keep doing it and you're out. Same for misogynistic energy. Same for the burned-out anti-other-gender thesis. Same for the secretly-partnered people building heat without intent. We can't always catch you up front. We catch you on the way out.

The goal isn't more users. It's better users. The kind of people you actually want to date. The kind of people who are still in an emotional place where they can show up for a connection with optimism and good energy. That's a hard bar. We'll sometimes get it wrong. We're not trying to be cruel about it. But we have to start somewhere, and we have to have values, and we have to be clear about them. So this is where we're starting.