In 2021, Kopi Date (by &Closer) joined Cohort 4 of Accelerating Asia’s 100-day flagship program.

As part of our award-winning accelerator, Kopi Date (by &Closer) will receive access to resources, access, and tools to fast-track growth. Applications for Cohort 5 are opening soon, join the waitlist.

Can you please tell me a little bit about your startup Kopi Date?

Kopi Date (by &Closer) is a social platform, where singles have the chance to meet new people and form rich and deep connections. We offer each date as a unique experience and opportunity for something life-changing to bloom. With open minds, zero expectations and mutual authenticity, our members are ready to once again humanise the dating process.

We're moving away from online dating apps and matchmaking agencies with a unique approach in celebrating our member’s stories and individuality as they hop onto the most authentic offline dates.

It's currently a membership program, but you can also opt in for the monthly subscription which you can cancel anytime. Every member that signs up with us gets to go on a monthly kopi date experience which includes a coffee and a complimentary beverage of their choice. On top of that, each date is served with our Experience Kit providing thought-provoking questions to keep the date fun and engaging! It’s designed so they can get to know each other on a deeper, more personal level.

What makes Kopi Date (by &Closer) different?

We’re not an online dating app, nor are we a matchmaking agency. With Kopi Date (by &Closer), members can say goodbye to endless swiping and meaningless texting. Our Kopi Date Experiences are fine-tuned to provide an optimal environment for genuine human connections.

We intentionally steer clear from the online, chat-based experience of a dating app. Instead, we take games and uncertainties out of the equation, to focus on meaningful and face-to-face connections. We’re not about serious, hour-long consults that you get charged exorbitantly for. We also focus much more on the fluid process of a first date instead of pushing for rigidly defined “success” no matter what. 

What's your traction like so far?

Currently, we have healthy traction and have been growing rapidly, we’ve quadrupled our monthly recurring revenue over the past six months.

We have served around a thousand dates, and we’re only at the start of our journey. We’re looking forward to growing our member base and bringing the Kopi Date experience to more people.

Also eventually move forward to the APAC region as we hope to serve some of our neighbouring countries as well.

What’s in line for Kopi Date (by &Closer) in 2021?

Yeah, so firstly want to hopefully serve more people in Singapore as we are looking to raise a seed round and grow our team. And we create more interesting features, where members can interact on the Kopi Date platform itself and create more meaningful connections there on top of the offline experiences.

Looking towards the future, we have goals to expand overseas as we are looking at different demographics that still have a similar culture to Singapore across Asia but with a Western influence in the sense that they consume a lot of Western cultures - international cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai ,Hong Kong.  

What’s the Kopi Date (by &Closer) origin story?

It’s actually quite a funny story but I think by nature both of us really hate small talk and interactions.

 And that's where we connected, we actually met each other on a dating app, three years back and we really connected on how much we really hate the nature of dating apps in general.

How Kopi Date (by &Closer) started is Jing, who is a Creative, and she wanted to sell some of her photography prints in a flea market back in 2018. Just so happens a few days before the event, her hard disk failed on her and so we got together to think of a Plan B. The creative challenge was to occupy the booth with constraint tagged to limited resources and time? After much thought and consideration, we developed a strategy of pairing singles for a date at the booth over a simple cup of coffee, and that was the conception of Kopi Date.

On the flea market day, we put together a small, cute booth and got to work,as people started streaming in. We went around the flea market (in Marina Bay Sands) with a clipboard filled with sheets of paper to store the information of people who were interested in participating. After every half an hour or so, Zhiqun and I would gather at our booth to exchange information about our candidates and identify possible pairings.

To our surprise, it turned out to be quite a big hit. People were dragging their single friends over and there’s a small crowd around it, people are asking us for non-existent business cards. And that’s how Kopi Date started, that's how we turned a small flea market booth to start up.

Why are you the right team to create this type of startup?  

We have quite a lot of experience in the B2C consumer industry. I used to be a Product Manager for a dating app back in San Francisco. Back then, I also worked for a new telco startup in Singapore. So I’ve got quite a lot of experience in that area.

 Whereas Jing's worked with many principle brands as an award-winning Creative, handling accounts from Nike to Singtel, UOB, Vespa and others.

So, on top of this passion and desire to stay away from the superficial interactions that we commonly get in the digital world and even real-life occasionally, we do have that wealth of experience that gives confidence to push this forward as we move towards our mission of humanising connections.

What are you hoping to achieve over the next hundred days during the program?

We’re looking to hopefully 10X our revenue and grow at such a speed and learn from the mentors and the people running Accelerating Asia.

We’d also like to raise a round so we can expand and create a small, tight-knit agile team to conquer the world with and expand our value proposition. 

Why did you choose Accelerating Asia specifically?

We did a little bit of research and talked to some of the previous alumni about Accelerating Asia, and all of them had really good things to say about the program  - the fact that Accelerating Asia is Founders-friendly, alumni feel like you’re on their side and more.

And, I think that really matters a lot as one to go into the program being super vulnerable and really connect, interact and learn from the team at Accelerating Asia and that’s one of the key drivers.  

So on top of that, I think the Entrepreneurs in Residence have vastly more experience building startups and they have really good advice. We really enjoyed talking to them and initially, that's why we thought this is the right program for us. 

 What are the top three drawcards of Accelerating Asia for you as a Founder?

1. The direct amount of interaction with some of the mentors in Accelerating Asia.

2. Access to investors. Because we had tried to reach out to investors ourselves and you know it’s a nightmare. We want to be better than and I think that’s where Accelerating Asia is a really good fit for us.

3. The connections, so, I'm speaking to the entire cohort. I think learning from their experiences they have especially, you know, you’re alongside others at an early stage and that’s important to be able to learn and grow on the startup journey with fellow founders.

A month into the Accelerating Asia program, what’s your biggest takeaway or top highlight so far?

A month into the program, we've made significant progress in product and growth as we became clearer on the key areas of focus for our business.

The top highlights are the exposure to investors, the opportunity to learn from and network with a diverse range of startup founders, and not forgetting the mentorship support from the Accelerating Asia team.

During our last recruitment round Accelerating Asia received 500 applications from over 30 countries, only 2% of startups make it through to our Accelerating Asia portfolio.

If you’re interested in connecting with Kopi Date (by &Closer), investing alongside us, meeting our portfolio companies, or just generally interested in talking to us about startup investing, please reach out and tell us a little bit about yourself.

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In making an investment decision, investors must rely on their own examination of startups and the terms of the investment including the merits and risks involved. Prospective investors should not construe this content as legal, tax, investment, financial or accounting advice.