This is the Dating App Where Poor People Are Not Welcomed

October 13, 2014

Call society superficial, but the hard truth is that “birds of a feather flock together.” If you’re successful and attractive, you probably don’t have time to waste with people below your class level. Enter Luxy, a new dating app that claims to be “Tinder, minus the poor people.”

Unlike Tinder, who allows anyone to sign up, Luxy focuses on only having members in the 1 percent, whether it’s millionaires, supermodels, high level executives or any other group of elites.

For now, Luxy does not have a formal verification process for members. They are mainly relying on the Luxy community to judge a person’s wealth based on their appearance and interests shown on their profile. “These members drive the best cars, hang out at the fanciest hotels, live in the biggest houses, wear the best clothes. It doesn’t take long to weed out those who belong on a different kind of dating site,” Luxy spokesperson Darren Shuster told Business Insider.

One of the co-founders and the acting CEO of Luxy goes by the name of “Tim,” choosing to remain anonymous due to the controversial nature of the app. However, he was kind enough to come out of the shadows to do an email interview with NextShark.

How did you come up with the idea? Was it an “aha!” moment or a gradual process based on your experience?

At the end of last year, a friend of mine who was single and graduated from University of California, Berkeley told me about his problems of finding his girlfriend online. He is an entrepreneur and quite busy every day. As you may know, these kinds of people are quite picky and have no much free time. His dream lover could be a model, actress … and other beautiful women. To save the time, he tried many online dating sites and dating apps such as Tinder and OKcupid, but unfortunately, he finally found that those sites waste his time since most of the members are not those people he expected.

He knows that I am a product manager of a website, so he told me that if there was a dating app exclusively for rich people and beautiful people that he would like to try it out. Most rich men are seeking beautiful women, so I decided to create a dating app only for rich people and beautiful people. Those people are usually pursuing luxury life, so I chose Luxy as the name of this app.

How many users do you currently have?

Sorry, we don’t want to disclose the number of total members at this time. We are going to release this data with some other data in the near future.

Are you currently single or taken? If taken, did you meet your significant other online?

I am not single now, and we met when I was in college. I indeed tried out online dating before, but unfortunately, I didn’t have any success on those sites. I don’t think those dating sites are doing good, and I hate searching people manually every time after I logged into my account.

We read that you’ve been getting some negative feedback in regards to your app. What is the most common thing you hear and what’s your argument to it?

Yes, people are complaining that:

1. There is no way to verify if a person is rich or beautiful.

2. Many people are angry about being removed by us without any explanation since they think they are qualified to join Luxy.

3. Luxy is for rich people and beautiful people, but it’s free.

My answer to those complaints: Luxy is a new concept and product, and the current version is for testing the water, so we made it as free first. Also, our staff is manually checking each profile to identify if the owner is rich or beautiful, and many people are removed by us. We are creating a income verification system and it will be released later. Also, we are planning to make it as a paid app soon.

Will you ever reveal your true identity? If yes, when do you think would be the right time to do it?

At this time, I am not sure if I will reveal my true identity in the future. I am just a cofounder of Luxy, and we have a spokesman. I just want to focus on improving our product first.

As an entrepreneur, what is the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

I don’t think I am an entrepreneur. But the most important lesson I learned so far is that the most important thing for forming a team could be choosing the right person. Once you have chosen the good teammates, everything will be simple.

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