When DOWN launched, the entire category ran on euphemism. Legacy apps talked about “soulmates” while their algorithms did who-knows-what in the background. Newer, casual-friendly apps hid behind labels like “friend-finding” because saying the quiet part out loud felt too risky for a pitch deck.
We decided to just be honest instead.
The most visible piece of that was ditching the industry’s left/right binary. Left/right forces every user into a single axis: interested or not. It says nothing about what they’re interested in: a coffee date, a relationship, or something more casual, which means two people can both swipe right and still be looking for completely different things. That mismatch is where most bad dating-app experiences start.
We built a three-directional system instead:
- Swipe up: looking for something serious
- Swipe down: looking for something casual
- Swipe left: pass
Instead of one “yes” bucket, users get two, each carrying actual information about intent. The point wasn’t novelty. It was removing the ambiguity that causes awkward, mismatched, or flat-out uncomfortable conversations before they start.
The result: since 2019, our match rate has grown 500%, which tells you something not just about DOWN but about the cost of ambiguity in general. When you give people a direct way to say what they actually want, they use it, and the people on the other end respond better because they’re not guessing.
We’re not trying to be a dating app that flatters itself with the word “soulmate.” We’re a platform built on the idea that sex-positive, transparent communication produces better outcomes for everyone using it, including the people who are, in fact, just looking for a relationship.