Bindr, the Pittsburgh-based bisexual, lesbian, and LGBTQ dating app, just won the first 2SLGBTQIA+ Entrepreneur Prize sponsored by QueerTech and presented at StartupFest. It’s the first to ever be introduced at the event, this was one of the largest prizes in the world for queer-owned companies to ever exist at $60,000.
In this highly competitive competition, Mary Richardson was able to dive into why Bindr was “not just another dating app” in Bindr’s practices of being open to everyone by not setting your sexual orientation, but also in how she was able to discover new technology to market her product to gain hundreds of thousands of users with no ad spend in only one year.
“I knew that I couldn’t afford to do what other founders did to get users. A year ago I had about ten thousand users and while that was great, it wasn’t going to sustain itself. So we got creative and built technology to fix our problem. It has worked very well, getting us hundreds of thousands of users organically,” said Richardson when pitching the idea of why Bindr was so successful when other similar apps hadn’t seen the same success, even with more funding.
Having developed a business model that supported other companies utilizing new targeting features for customers, this also allowed Bindr to focus on their mission of helping the LGBTQ+ community. With user growth being the main component of the company, the next focus is customer reengagement tools that Bindr is actively developing to offer to other companies.
“What sets Bindr apart from other companies is that we care about our technology being great, and our users being safe and represented. This has given us endless opportunities to license our tech to other companies also looking to solve the same problems we’ve had while keeping our core principles alive,” said Brandon Teller, the CTO of Bindr.
Knowing that women founders get 2% of funding and LGBTQ+ founders get .5% of funding on average, Mary had to get creative. Without traction, she knew she wouldn’t be able to raise the same way others had around her.
“I believe that when minority founders already know the odds are against them we see the world differently. I treat Bindr as the company that has to be 98% better than every other venture-funded company that exists because I know those are the odds that I have to beat. I know with how successful this has already become, it’s very clear the path that’s being paved for others and why we have to work harder,” said Richardson on how she personally deals with the dynamics of diversity in funding.
Bindr has gone on to help other companies affordably get their customer acquisition cost down from $30 in the consumer space to $0.20 with this new technology. Bindr’s goal is to help great products find real customers looking to solve real problems and is now working with hundreds of companies looking to disrupt their markets the same way.
You can find Bindr on either app store, worldwide, and they continue to use their own technology to grow everyday.
