The founders of the LGBTQ+ dating app Bindr have turned their AI-powered marketing tool into a standalone company – one that’s now proving more profitable than the original venture, and may end up having a direct impact on Bindr as a result.
Bindr initially struggled with the “cold start” problem, a challenge faced by social platforms that rely on network effects but launch without an existing user base. To overcome this, cofounder and CTO Brandon Teller developed an AI tool that rapidly generated SEO-optimized landing pages targeting specific demographics. This innovation helped Bindr grow to 250,000 users in under three years.
Interest in the technology led Teller and cofounder Mary Richardson to spin off the tool into a new company, ColdStart, which offers a software development kit (SDK) for AI-driven content generation. The startup has quickly gained traction, raising $160,000 and securing more than $1 million in contracts with a dozen clients. More than 250 companies are on ColdStart’s waitlist.
“ColdStart is now the thing that can fund things like Bindr,” Teller told Technical.ly, explaining that revenue from the marketing tool could sustain the dating app without requiring aggressive monetization strategies. While Bindr still operates with a freemium model, the success of ColdStart may allow the founders to offer premium features for free, allowing the app to become a more accessible platform due to the sheer amount of revenue that ColdStart is bringing in.
What this will mean for Bindr in the long term is still a mystery, but from what the owners have said, users should probably not expect any major monetization in the near future.
