Next Baghadjian went to John Pleasants, the former CEO of Ticketmaster, and former Apple CEO John Sculley. That was also compelling to me, that it was based on content and community first, not just how you look or where you went to school,” Shane says. “I think the North Star for Lolly is to foster relationships that wouldn’t otherwise be seen in the traditional dating space. Schermerhorn reached out to longtime family friend Jane Metcalfe, the cofounder of Wired Ventures, who eventually decided to invest, and former Sequoia chief marketing officer Blair Shane, who serves as an advisor.
With a new direction in mind, the pair embarked on a mad dash to get in contact with past mentors and connections to ask for advice. in neuroscience to become an entrepreneur. I said, ‘Wow, people are already using this platform to date.’ We saw that innovation alluding to the future,” Baghadjian says.īaghadjian brought on Schermerhorn, who had just decided against pursuing his Ph.D. And I saw that people on TikTok were dating. “TikTok was just starting to get a lot of hype. Abandoning his original idea, Baghadjian began thinking about what dating would look like years from now. It couldn’t compete with apps like Tinder and Hinge, which started introducing their own video chatting features during the pandemic. Before he graduated, he sold the company, and says that with the proceeds, he bought his mom a car. Baghadjian started his first business in high school after he patented a new design for airsoft ammunition cartridges. from Lebanon when he was 4 Baghadjian says his mother worked three jobs to support them. Soon after, Baghadjian hatched plans for a video dating app called Skippit.īaghadjian credits his entrepreneurial mindset to a difficult upbringing in what he describes as a “tenement” in New Jersey. He was FaceTiming a girl he had a crush on when he was struck by an idea: Video is the future of dating. “On any other platform, you basically have one chance to say yes or no to another person before getting to know them,” Schermerhorn says.īaghadjian started what would eventually become Lolly from his dorm room at Babson College in 2018. Users can scroll past videos they don't like, or they can “clap” a video up to 50 times, which is the app’s equivalent of a “like.” Clapping a video feeds Lolly’s recommendation algorithm, all but guaranteeing that users will see videos from that person again. The biggest difference between Lolly and other dating apps: the absence of a swipe left function. “They think about this space deeply and use their own experiences and pain point as users themselves to scrutinize every element of the product experience,” Topher Conway, co-managing partner at SV Angel, said in a statement.
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