In a relationship? We'd love your thoughts on our new venture...

1 points by amongmany 12 years ago | 7 comments

Hi everyone, I'm Danny. I'm one of the co-founders of Date Night Is... (http://www.datenight.is). We're a newly launched NYC-based startup that's aiming to help couples keep date night on their calendars without going stale. We're completely bootstrapped and launched our MVP recently.

Right now, our primary product is an email based reminder that offers up date night ideas (the first email reminder will go out in the next week or two). Our goal in the future is to grow the technology to better learn about couples and their interests in order to customize the ideas that we're sending on a personal level.

We'd love to get feedback from the Hacker News community about what we have so far, where we're headed, etc.

Thanks in advance!

lsiunsuex 12 years ago |

Interesting...

An example of what a date night might be would be cool. Will you be geo-specific or general? ie: how about italian tonight or how about dinner at The Chophouse downtown?

A tie in with specials / promotions might be cool too: "2 for 1 drinks at this restaurant tonight"

I think if you collect some more information, you could produce better results: q: do you have a vacation planned and where? and you could provide a place to eat, something to do, etc...

amongmany 12 years ago | |

@lsiunsuex

Thanks for the feedback. The things you've mentioned are definitely a huge part of what we have planned. The email reminders will include Date Night ideas of the type you're recommending.

In the near term, recommendations will be either NYC specific OR general enough to work for people anywhere. However, our goal is to become extremely geo-specific once we've built the technology to a point where we can gather that information (as well as interests) easily. Promotions are also part of the idea; we're working on building partnerships right now to make that part of the offering possible.

Thanks for the feedback; it's great to see that our ideas and the things you're recommending are in line.

amongmany 12 years ago |

Big thanks for the input from everyone. Very helpful to see where we're on and off track. Thank you!

sharemywin 12 years ago |

you might want to think about gamification. points, levels, quizes. etcs. Obviously that could go in a bad direction but, if the couple is scored together probably not too bad.

amongmany 12 years ago | |

Interesting thought. Do you have a moment to expand on it further?

We've considered the possibility, but for the time being at least, we're aiming for this to be a tool between two people in a couple (or for a single person to use as an "angel on the shoulder"). Gamification requires pitting couple vs. couple within the ecosystem which might be odd for something that's designed to foster healthy relationships.

Or maybe we just haven't hit on the right idea for it yet...

lsiunsuex 12 years ago | | |

Gameification doesn't need to be a competition, you could make it achievement based.

"Achievement unlocked: stayed in a hotel with a jacuzzi" or "Achievement unlocked: shared a desert"

We're (the wife and I) aren't to the point where we don't do a date night, but even we're starting to forget sometimes how to keep it new and fun like sharing a dessert or holding hands or sharing a kiss on a balcony or ...