In conversation with Vinayak Sharma, Founder of "The Pool Circle"
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind The Pool Circle and what sets it apart from other dating apps in the market?
Vinayak- Like any other (self proclaimed) great product, Pool Circle was born out of frustration and a desire to fix the sub-par experience current dating apps like Bumble and Hinge provide.
We set ourselves apart by being a ‘Private Social Network. Which means invite-only access, events curated to the preferences of our user base. We are the first app that does not lose money when you find a partner, ironically, we monetise by facilitating dating experiences for you.
We are underway in developing a network of F&B establishments which can be held to the highest standards. No more calling for reservations. Use the app and pick from our curated list of date worthy establishments. Special seating, curated menus, whatever it takes to make your date feel special.
We pre-plan your meet cutes, so your date actually feels like a meet cute to you!
P.S. When a dating app says ‘Designed to be deleted’, it’s like a tobacco company pushing for legislation to ban cigarettes. No app makes money by getting their users to delete it, nor do they run for public welfare! Please don’t fall for it.
What unique features does The Pool Circle offer to enhance the user experience and differentiate itself from competitors?
Vinayak- We have a set of practices that set us apart from any other famous dating app around.
Ghost Mode - For women specifically, when they switch on ghost mode. No one can swipe on their profiles as they vanish. The women however can still keep swiping and match directly with those they swipe on!
Invite-only access - To ensure the crowd is curated
Event Curation - Instead of swiping, see these people in real life. Interact & Network to your liking.
Community building - Each city has a bunch of people who think alike and are potential buddies that never even come across each other. We enable users to reach out and interact with each other on our ‘inner twitter’ feature, which means you probably will have an idea of how they think before you even get to swiping on them!
Account Manager - each user has the ability to directly contact a representative of the circle. In case there is a bothering experience our user faces, they can directly contact the representative and have it resolved as soon as possible. This is the first time a social network is offering personal representative support to its users.
In today's crowded dating app market, how does The Pool Circle plan to attract and retain users?
Vinayak- We haven’t done much to attract users! Our concept alone has pushed a lot of people our way. Our DMs are flooded with responses from individuals who expressed the need for such a solution.
Any dating app has to rely on their offering to their users to sustain in this market. Our offering is simple, we want to make dating a community experience. Somewhere, quite sneakily, we want to help you make a lot of friends in our city/locality while using the hype around dating. We want to push you to great events with a curated crowd and an added sense of responsibility to be nice to each other!
We want to project being single as a lifestyle! In a country rushing to commitment, we want to help you make a friend first.
We plan to attract users by selling them a dream of an elevated and more relevant social networking and actually fulfilling this dream/expectation as well. We have devised features to limit churn unlike other apps by putting soft barriers to exit. Simply because we offer more than just dates. Why would you delete an app that helps you find out where all the nice and warm people around will be?
How does The Pool Circle address the issue of fake profiles and catfishing, ensuring a trustworthy environment for its users?
Vinayak- I’ll stick to straightforward answers here.
We manually screen each profile.
Go through social media accounts to see what kind of activity each user has
We have a Blacklisting system where the source of each invite will be held accountable. If you invite someone who creates disharmony, we will blacklist them and put you on a probationary period to ensure the safety and security of the entire community. Our goal is to exercise these powers as rationally as possible.
A personal account manager also helps the user in feeling at ease, in case a quick solution is needed.
What plans does The Pool Circle have for expansion and growth in the coming years?
Vinayak - We see ourselves as a cautiously growing community of proud yet humble individuals. Our goal is to create a chapter in each city. Right now, we’re focusing on Delhi NCR as we are still bootstrapped. Post funding we look to expand aggressively into cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune,etc. We have global ambitions as well with a revolutionary product like this.
We plan to create a network of individuals and social infrastructure such that a future user of Pool needn’t worry about the quality of social outings ever again! We want to be organisers of the biggest festival in this world. A festival that comes 52 times a year and a festival that is celebrated by every country in the world. “Weekends”. They’ll never have to worry about a decent social outing ever again, as we collect data on our users and create events based on their needs and suggestions.
Can you provide insights into the user demographics of The Pool Circle and how the app caters to different age groups and preferences?
Vinayak- Unsurprisingly, our user ratio is 2:1 tilting towards more women as we’ve marketed this product majorly to women. This is a solution made with the intention of solving each painpoint a female has while using a dating app. We are a women safety first platform that aims to uplift the dating experience of every ‘single’ individual. Inside the app we’ve kept no age filters. We don’t treat humans as products to be filtered. We want each user to come across all members of the community. No height filters or anything like that. We ourselves are wondering if gender preference while swiping should even be allowed. However, we realise that it's too radical a change for the times we live in. If our community accepts it, understandingly, we would love to implement such radical features! We’re inclusive and exclusive. We in our communications to our users encourage rationality and scientific thinking. Regardless of age, gender or preferences.
Finally, what message would you like to convey to potential users who are considering joining The Pool Circle?
Vinayak- Join Us, if you feel like you deserve an elevated socialising experience. Join us, only if you’re willing to be humble and rational. Join us, If you want to party hard. Join us, If you can take a joke. Join us, if you can make one as well. We’re all just a bunch of people making promises to be nice to each other. Join us, if you can promise the same!
