Would you pay $15 to go on a date? It’s just the price of a cocktail, argue Stanford dropouts Celeste Amadon and Asher Allen. They started dating app company Known based on their belief that frustrated Gen Z singles, tired of endless swiping, are willing to pay up.

Those signing up for Known start by talking with an AI, an onboarding experience similar to a phone call designed to encourage users to talk more naturally rather than type out answers into a form. Then the San Francisco-based startup introduces daters to one potential match at a time. If both people say yes, the app uses AI agents to book the first date for them and charges each person.

Fifteen dollars might sound like a lot for a single date, but Hinge subscriptions can cost between $30 and $50 monthly and Bumble’s monthly cost can range from $40 to almost $100. Amadon and Allen believe the incentives are skewed. They think dating apps should only make money when they actually help people meet IRL.

“It seems that most single people we know use dating apps, but they're not willing to pay for them because everyone has woken up to the fact that they're highly ineffective,” says Amadon, 22. “Using a dating app that doesn't help you get dates is just not useful. It makes you feel badly about yourself and people don't want to pay for things that make them feel that way.” The company’s no-show rate is less than 1%, she says.

Eurie Kim, managing partner at Forerunner Ventures, which led a $9.7 million funding round for Known in December, says the company’s pay-per-date model fixes that incentive structure.

“In the swiping culture, if you find a partner, you're no longer a customer,” Kim says. “That's the underpinning of why the incumbents can't just switch their model. This has to be a new experience that sets different expectations for behavior.”

For years, online dating promised more profiles, more matches and more relationships. But a new crop of young founders are trying to reinvent a product that has come to feel less like a path to romance and more like another algorithmic feed, optimized to keep users looking rather than help them form a connection.

Another startup, New York-based social platform 222, is trying to replace the swipe with group dinners, where a total of six people are matched together based on........

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