Robyn Exton, a 29-year-old American entrepreneur, took advantage of the Parisian Pride March to launch the French version of her queer dating app, “Her.” The desire to fill the eternal void left in the world of female dating. But not this. We met her in Paris.
On the day we met Robyn Exton, founder of the app “Her,” her hands were painted in the colors of the rainbow flag, “because it’s Pride Month.” The bracelet on her watch necessarily shows the same colors, “but this, unlike the paint, is all year round,” she makes us laugh.
“Brenda, that’s enough!
” Her app, whose beta version was created in 2013, was born out of frustration. For her, it was “almost a matter of necessity.” When she was about 20 years old, this London-based Canadian geography student loved going to parties in East London. Driven by the desire to meet new people, she ended up browsing female dating sites before downloading apps “like Brenda” (now Wappa, ed.). The statement is bitter: nothing is made for girls like her.
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“I couldn’t believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, had been made for women who love women. The design and interface of all these sites were dusty, reminiscent of the 1990s. They were in no way representative of the entire community I belong to. I thought I should do something, because Brenda, that’s enough!
” A jolt that triggered everything
The future entrepreneur was first recruited by a friend at an advertising agency, “a stroke of fate” according to her, since the company has several sites to meet its clients. In 2012, one of her lesbian friends went through a breakup. Robyn helped her sign up on dating sites “so she could take her mind off things.” Bad advice:
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“She was even more depressed! It was embarrassing, even humiliating, realizing that no requests had been made for her.”
A jolt for the woman in a comfortable position. So Robyn decides to change her life overnight. Sure of her concept, she quits her job, moves back in with her father, takes evening classes to learn coding… and starts creating “Dattch,” the beta version of “Her.” An app inspired 100% by Grindr, the reference for gay men. “It was a pure dating app, and I think at the time I didn’t realize how opposed Grindr was to this paradigm in terms of dating sites. So, inevitably, it didn’t work.”
Multiple operations of Grindr
Exiled in San Francisco, the London entrepreneur moves from incubator to incubator, from launch to launch, before finding her ideal app. “Her” was born in February 2015, thanks to the $2.5 million raised by its founder. A sober interface, an elegant design, the app no longer only targets “women who love women.” Lesbians, bi, trans, pansexuals, but also non-binary, gender A… the app includes a total of 18 possible sexual orientations and 23 gender identities. The goal is LBT and clearly queer. Photo credit: HE. Among the features, we find the traditional “swipe”: swipe left (to mark disinterest), swipe right (to like), a sort of must-have for any dating app. But the most important thing for the entrepreneur was to meet all expectations.
“Some people want to make friends, others are looking for casual encounters or true love. Girls want to see, they want to read, so we banned profiles with a single photo like on Grindr. They were allowed to post multiple photos, but also to describe themselves in writing.”
Concluding that the expectations of women and men dating were very different, Robyn Exton compared the use of “Her” to that of “Grindr.” “Men send an average of 5.6 messages before meeting, women 173,” she says. Two levels of interaction, completely opposed, which make the young entrepreneur claim that her app will work in countries like France, where so many others have failed. She proudly announces that she has already conquered 55 and has three million users worldwide. Photo credit: screenshot from the HER website.
Forming a community
Creating a safe space where all people who identify as women can find themselves, feel confident and supported, is also the founder’s challenge. “Previously, interactions were rather individual. I think today, more than ever, we need community spaces. Movements like ‘Black Lives Matter’ or ‘MeToo’ have made us realize that when people come together, they have more strength, more impact in society. They become visible.” Photo credit: Screenshot from the HER Party NYC Facebook account. Creating a safe space online was ultimately just the beginning. A few years ago, this party organizer developed a concept for events, a sort of extension of the app into real life. Today, 16 cities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain host events sponsored by the app. “We just broke our attendance record! We gathered 1,200 girls last night in New York for Pride. Pure madness,” she hesitates. In Australia, “Her” also organizes camping weekends with queer girls. Her next project for France? Photo credit: Robyn Exton.
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