Maple founder Connor reveals how dating app algorithms secretly rank and league your profile, why Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble are built on the same psychology as slot machines, and why the system is structurally designed to keep you swiping instead of getting you matched quietly keeping millions of people single. Connor is the founder of Maple, a dating and social platform, and has spent years researching and building inside the dating app industry.
In this episode, he explains:
■ Why Apps Reward Activity, Not Relationships: Dating apps make money from the interactions on the platform, not from successful matches. He explains how that incentive shapes the products and why the people most capable of finding a partner tend to leave first.
■ The Slot Machine Effect: How variable rewards keep us swiping, why unpredictable results are more addictive than consistently good ones, and why he sees these products as validation apps as much as dating apps.
■ Too Much Choice: Why endless options make it harder to commit, why profiles feel like products, and how limited information means everyone ends up chasing the same people.
■ The Rise of Offline Connection: Why people are returning to in-person events after COVID, how a social club works as a “fourth space,” and the simple ripple effect that gets a room of strangers talking.
■ AI and the Future of Dating: Whether AI should write your messages or coach you to show up in real life, and the one myth about dating apps he’d like to kill for good.
03:19 Intro: Is Online Dating Broken?
04:47 How Dating Has Changed Over the Years
06:00 Are Dating Apps a Crutch?
09:02 What Dating Is Like in 2026
10:01 Why a Few Profiles Get All the Attention
12:19 How Hinge Ranks Profiles
14:33 What Do Dating Apps Actually Want?
18:20 Standouts, Roses and Thousands of Unanswered Likes
22:20 Choice Overload: The More You See, the Less You Match
27:06 Ghosting and How Apps Change Our Behaviour
30:00 Are Dating Apps Slot Machines?
35:06 Validation Apps: Why “Someone Liked You” Works
37:35 The Biggest Mistakes People Make on Apps
42:15 Why Gen Z Is Going Offline
44:57 Inside Maple Social Club
50:08 How Do You Tell People How You Met?
52:48 Are Dating Apps Safe?
54:06 Why Dating Apps Get Worse Over Time
01:01:47 AI and the Future of Dating
01:08:43 The Biggest Myth About Dating Apps
01:09:55 Fire Round
Questions asked in this episode (for reference):
- Over the years you’ve built Maple, what has changed in your opinion of online dating?
- If someone woke up from a coma after ten years, how would you describe dating in 2026 in two sentences?
- Is it true that a small share of men get most of the attention on apps?
- Do people now see profiles as products to swipe yes or no on?
- How does Hinge rank profiles from a technological standpoint?
- Is it true you can’t swipe yes on everyone or no on everyone?
- What is the goal of dating apps if succeeding means losing users?
- Which apps does Match Group own?
- Do the “good” profiles actually match your type, or everyone’s type?
- Is choice overload real, and does seeing more mean swiping less?
- Has the way we act on dating apps changed our in-person behaviour?
- Why are apps like Tinder compared to slot machines?
- Do we get the high from finding someone attractive or from being swiped on?
- What are the biggest mistakes people make on dating apps?
- Why are people engaging more with offline dating?
- What has hosting these huge events taught you about dating?
- Do people prefer to say they met at an event rather than on an app?
- Can dating apps be dangerous?
- Do you think most future relationships will be mediated through AI?
- Is access really the issue, or is it more about social skills?
- What is one myth about dating apps you could kill once and for all?
- Fire round: one word for Bumble, Raya, Hinge and Maple.