Coffee Meets Bagel is a dating app created for people looking for something serious and not interested in wasting time on the wrong people. The app features a well-curated community that makes it easier to meet your perfect match with confidence.
The platform requires every user to have a detailed profile explaining if they are interested in raising kids, their values, education, interests, and their plans for the family they wish to have.
The app’s outstanding feature is the chat. Coffee Meets Bagel chats keep conversations going. The icebreakers help you move your chats to real-life conversations. It is an excellent resource for true love stories and weddings of users who have found their destinies.
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Coffee Meets Bagel Background
The Coffee Meets Bagel app was launched in San Francisco by three sisters, Arum, Dawoon, and Soo Kang, in 2011. The app, which started as an innovative concept to eliminate the uncertainties of online dating, was later launched in April 2012 in New York City.
Before establishing the company, the three sisters visited San Francisco, California, to gather all the technical resources needed to create a successful app.
The app was then developed in less than a year, and after raising $600,000 from Light Bank, the app was launched in 2012.
It is an easy-to-use tool that uses data from Facebook to find suitable matches. It is not your ordinary dating app, as it stands out against the rest for its quality over quantity and its unrelenting spirit to provide meaningful connections using smart algorithms.
On the Coffee Meets Bagel app, men are referred to as “Bagels,” while their female counterparts are called “Coffee.”
The tool features its own currency called “Beans.” So, as a regular user, you can earn Beans after participating in activities such as referring and inviting friends to the app.
The app generates up to six matches for every lady daily. These men are identified through their Facebook connections and are thought to have higher chances of “winning” the lady’s heart. The app also makes solid efforts to dig deeper into its users’ personalities.
In 2018, Coffee Meets Bagel received a revamp, introducing users to a cleaner and minimalistic interface that enfolded their profiles, not photos. The app showcases profile texts and biography, which other users can react to by leaving a comment or “Heart.”
The dating app offers personalized matches, where every day at noon, you will receive a batch of your best matches for free.
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Its seven-day chat limit encourages you to look forward to actual dates and stop worrying about someone ghosting you. Simply put, their chats are made for meetings.
Coffee Meets Bagel is available on Google PlayStore for Android and AppStore for iOS. The app accepts users from all races, religions, gender identities, and sexual orientations.
It requires you to create a profile with a brief bio and five to eight photos, which you should be done with in under 20 minutes.
Pitch on Shark Tank
While it might have felt exciting to develop and roll out an app within a year, cash flow soon became a significant impediment to its growth. The three sisters embarked on a journey to get a financial boost, and in January 2015, they made their debut on Shark Tank.
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The three sisters are well accomplished. One studied at Stanford Business School, the second attended Harvard Business School, and the third attended the Parsons School of Design.
Coffee Meets Bagel was born of their pooled resources after quitting their well-compensated professions.
Facing the sharks, Dawoon, Arum, and Soo sought to raise $500,000 for a 5% company equity stake. At the time, the app was valued at $10 million.
Their request resulted in a heated discussion between them and the cast, and to date, it remains one of the most iconic discussions on the show.
While all the Shark Tank investors viewed the Coffee Meets Bagel venture as risky, billionaire Mark Cuban was intrigued and proposed to buy the entire Coffee Meets Bagel Company for $30 million, one of Shark Tank’s most extensive cash offers.
To the surprise of many, the three sisters considered Cuban’s offer too low as they believed that their platform had the muscles to compete with platforms such as match.com, which made about $800 million per year at the time.
The sisters did not disclose the exact number of users on the app as they believed it would have compromised their competitive position in the market. It turned out that they had to spend a lot of money on salaries for web engineers, including $100,000 for each.
However, the sisters had already earned $2.8 million in funding from one notable investor, one of the match.com co-founders who fell in love with their dating app concept.
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After Shark Tank
Many were eager to know what would happen to Coffee Meets Bagel after they left Shark Tank with no luck. While they might not have made a deal on the show, their popularity increased, eventually earning them millions in investments.
They secured more than $23 million in five investment rounds. The company continued to grow, and to date, it boasts over 10 million users worldwide.
The app has severally made it to the top 10 list of the best dating apps on app stores and has had a fair share against its competitors, such as Tinder, Bubble, and Raya.
It’s no doubt that Coffee Meets Bagel has been more profitable than what they would have gotten if they had accepted the offer from Mr. Cuban.
Coffee Meets Bagel Revenue
As of 2023, Coffee Meets Bagel is valued at $150 million, according to Networth202.com. Coffee Meets’ revenue growth has been steady, thanks to funding by over ten investors, including Quest Venture Partners and GingerBread Capital.
Sensor Tower notes that the total revenue for Coffee Meets Bagel on mobile apps was $1 million as of March 2023. The Mobile app revenue is $300K for Android apps and $800K for iOS apps.
In 2013, the San Francisco-based app attained a momentous milestone on AppStore. Sensor Tower Store Intelligence figures show that the app accumulated $10 million in revenue through in-purchases and subscriptions.
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User Statistics
Coffee Meets Bagel is very popular in the United States. American singles make up almost half of the overall app users, while female users outnumber their male counterparts.
Since its launch in 2012, the app’s demand has grown among both domestic and foreign users.
As mentioned earlier, the app has made over 150 million matches and is still counting. Most Coffee Meets Bagel users are between 30 and 49 years. Only 36% of the app users are 29 years and younger. Users above 50 years contribute to just 7% of the total users.
Total smartphone downloads total 200K, including 60,000 Android and 100,000 iOS downloads.
At the top list of countries that send the most traffic to the Coffee Meets Bagel app is the United States of America, at 52.48%. Other top countries include Hong Kong at 7.53%, Canada at 5.75%, the United Kingdom at 5.05%, Australia at 4.14%, and others at 25.06%.
The COVID-19 pandemic redefined how dating apps work. By then, Coffee Meets Bagel had already made over 50 million matches since its launch. According to the app, January is always their big month, but it has a disclaimer for users to note.
If users don’t log into the app for 14 days, their profile will be put on hold automatically. Online safety is a concern of every online user. For this reason, CMB devised a model that quickly detects scammers, which they later integrated as a third-party source.
In 2021, Coffee Meets Bagel added features that allow you to include your vaccination status in your profile. This followed stats, where 61% of its users considered vaccination status crucial to them, and 43% of bagels were ready to go on a date with a match who said they were vaccinated.
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Data Breach
In February 2019, the steadily rising dating app announced that it had suffered a data breach in which over six million users’ data could have been affected. Users’ accounts affected by the breach were created between 2017 and 2018.
Coffee Meets sent emails on 2019’s Valentine’s Day, notifying them of the personal data breach. Thankfully, the breach only affected non-sensitive information, but we cannot ignore that usernames, gender, and age information were tampered with too.
According to the app, a data breach happened when an unauthorized party accessed user data on the platform.
Still, Coffee Meets Bagel did not disclose the exact number of affected users. But the app insisted that it never stores sensitive information such as passwords or financial information.
However, the company slowly recovered after this significant blow, and by 2020, it gradually got back on its feet by introducing a virtual video speed dating feature.
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Pricing
Coffee Meets Bagel has a free version on PlayStore and AppStore. However, you can upgrade to its premium version to unlock more features and get more matches.
Additionally, its premium version promises you higher chances of going on a date, though its features keep changing.
Your upgrade can either be on the mini or premium version. The Coffee Meets Bagel plans start from $10 and include unique preferences that allow you to tailor your profile with filters such as only matching with users interested in having kids.
The mini version gives your profile up to three times a month, which makes you more discoverable on the app. You can also enjoy unlimited rewinds, reviewing a potential match you could have ignored.
You can also view when other users read your message and receive discounts on Beans to help you purchase more likes. The mini plan gives you a detailed report on when users were last seen on the platform and how they responded to their first message.
Its premium version costs $35 per month and includes all you get in the mini plan and more. The premium plan helps you see who likes you and decide whether you can connect or pass.
Additionally, you get eight flowers a month, so you can send them out virtually to someone you feel attracted to.
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Is Coffee Meets Bagel Worth Trying?
One thing that makes this app stand out against the competition is its advanced technology and matching algorithm that provide high-quality matches. First, the app matches you with people in the neighborhood who tick your boxes.
As you interact with other users, the app shifts its algorithm to incorporate your interests, social circles, and education.
Going by the testimonies of users who went before you, you can expect the algorithm to work for you. So, creating an account on this app increases your chances of moving conversations into the real world.
Once you find your match, you can start chatting on a free account. However, note that the chats will expire after seven days.
The seven-day chat limit is the app’s unique strategy to push users into the real world and is known to improve the quality of conversations among users.
I recommend this app to anyone looking for a serious relationship and wishing to make things move quickly.
However, Coffee Meets Bagel might not be the right solution for those looking for casual dating, who love chatting on dating apps, or who are only interested in swiping through hundreds of profiles without a clear objective.
The best part is that you only receive messages from profiles you like, so you don’t have to worry about hundreds of users flocking to your inbox with unwelcome photos or uninteresting pickup lines.
On the downside, the app only gives a few daily matches, which can slow the process of meeting the right one.
Final Words
Any form of online dating sounds risky with the talk of scammers, ghosters, and players, just to name a few. Like any other app, your safety is of utmost importance. Therefore, a few tips will help you confidently make that bold step.
You have seven days on the app, so wait until you feel comfortable taking things into the real world. As you anticipate that meet-up, do a little background check through social media to see if you can spot any red flags.
And when the actual day of the physical meeting arrives, notify a friend or family on where you will be going. Consider giving access to your location through iOS apps such as Find My Friends. Meet publicly in local restaurants, movie theaters, coffee shops, or parks.
Tom Clayton
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.
