As Valentine’s Day approaches at Stanford, some college students could also be gearing up for first dates — not with folks they met on Tinder or Hinge, however with matches from a service known as Date Drop, designed by Stanford graduate pupil Henry Weng. Date Drop pairs college students with potential dates as soon as per week based mostly on their responses to a questionnaire.
A Stanford whiz child is making an attempt to disrupt a longtime business from his Palo Alto dorm? Cease me if you’ve heard this one earlier than! However younger adults are deeply disillusioned with the irritating, demoralizing state of on-line courting. Why not strive one thing totally different?
Over 5,000 college students at Stanford have given Date Drop a strive since its launch within the fall. It has additionally rolled out at 10 extra faculties, together with MIT, Princeton, and the College of Pennsylvania, and Weng says he needs to roll out Date Drop extra broadly in some cities this summer time.
“Our matches convert to precise dates at about 10x the speed of Tinder,” Weng instructed TechCrunch. “As an alternative of swiping, we get to know every particular person deeply and ship them one appropriate match per week.”
At first, Weng didn’t intend to show Date Drop into the inspiration of a startup. Then, a detailed pal of his met their companion by way of Date Drop. “That was after I acquired the sense that this was much less of a undertaking,” he mentioned.
Now, Weng thinks of Date Drop as simply the primary service from his startup, The Relationship Firm, which is a public profit company — a sort of firm legally required to contemplate social influence alongside income.
“This began as one thing I simply needed to exist on campus, and it grew to become an organization as a result of folks saved on asking for it of their faculties and I wanted assets to do this,” he mentioned.
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June 23, 2026
Already, Weng has raised “a number of million” from some angel buyers, together with Zynga founder and early Fb backer Mark Pincus, who has taught enterprise programs at Stanford (together with to Weng). Andy Chen, a former companion at Coatue, and Elad Gil, an early backer of Airbnb, Stripe, and Pinterest, additionally invested in The Relationship Firm.
“The long-term imaginative and prescient at The Relationship Firm is about facilitating all significant relationships: friendships, skilled connections, group, occasions,” Weng mentioned.
It’s par for the course to make use of algorithms to foretell if customers of a courting service could also be appropriate with each other — that’s how courting apps work. However Weng says his mannequin is extra geared towards forging long-term connections, with 95% of Date Drop customers saying they’re involved in relationships.
Weng explains that there are two core components at play. First, the questionnaire must be thorough sufficient to seize an actual image of who somebody is. “We do this by way of the questions, open-ended responses, a voice dialog, and different knowledge that the customers present,” he mentioned.
The subsequent problem is compatibility prediction. “As a result of we assist folks plan dates, we’ve got knowledge on which matches really work out. So we’ve got a mannequin skilled on real-world outcomes,” he mentioned. “Upon getting these two elements, the precise matching is customary stuff from matching principle literature.”
At the moment pursuing a pc science grasp’s diploma at Stanford, Weng has oriented his schooling across the financial and mathematical ideas of matching. As a Stanford undergrad, he created his personal main to review people, matching, and incentives.
“I began to see how matching shapes a lot of our lives,” Weng instructed TechCrunch. “Who your life companion is, who your pals are, what school you go to, which firm you’re employed for are all matching issues.”
Past his technical schooling, Weng discovered an surprising class helpful for studying to handle a startup: “Intro to Clown.”
“A core precept of clowning is that clowns are failures, and as a substitute of fearing failure, they enjoy it,” he mentioned. “As a product builder, your whole journey is simply repeatedly failing and getting again up. Clown class was an exquisite microcosm of that.”
Thus far, The Relationship Firm has two workers in addition to Weng, together with 12 college students who function campus ambassadors. As a result of their work revolves round forging matches, Weng has prolonged that mindset to how he manages the corporate. He provides workers a $100 month-to-month “relationship stipend,” which they’ll spend on dates, items, experiences, or something that helps them deepen an essential relationship of any type.
“Relationships are the only most essential consider an individual’s life,” Weng mentioned. “There’s additionally nice analysis exhibiting that cash spent on different folks makes you happier than cash spent on your self.”
Weng’s fascination with how folks kind relationships has additionally knowledgeable how he goes about his day-to-day life.
“Date Drop has proven me what number of attention-grabbing individuals are on the market that you just’d by no means encounter by way of your regular routines,” he mentioned. “It’s made me extra open to folks I wouldn’t have crossed paths with in any other case.”
