Rivet

Rivet was founded in 2025 by Taru KapoorTaru KapoorTaru Kapoor is a technology entrepreneur and founder and CEO of dating platform Rivet. She worked at Boston Consulting Group and Sequoia Capital India before leading Tinder and Match Group businesses in India and other Asian markets. She left the group in 2023 and founded Rivet in 2025.Open the full entry and Rajat SahniRajat SahniRajat Sahni is an entrepreneur, angel investor and co-founder of dating platform Rivet. An IIT Delhi graduate, he was involved in founding Notion Ink and led CarDekho’s used-car and automotive-finance businesses before co-founding Rivet with Taru Kapoor.Open the full entry and is operated by MeantToBe, Inc., which is based in New York. Kapoor joined Tinder in 2015 to build its business in India and spent eight years at Tinder and Match GroupMatch GroupMatch Group is a U.S. publicly traded online-dating company whose brands include Tinder, Hinge, Match and OkCupid. It developed from IAC’s dating businesses and completed its separation in 2020. Subscriptions and à-la-carte purchases are its principal revenue sources; its shares trade on Nasdaq under MTCH.Open the full entry, with her responsibilities later expanding to South Asia, Southeast Asia and Turkey; she left in 2023. Sahni previously served as CEO of CarDekhoCarDekhoCarDekho is an automotive marketplace and information platform headquartered in Jaipur, India, operated by Girnar Software, offering new-car information and comparison, used-car buying and selling, car finance and insurance.Open the full entry’s used-car business.⁠[1][2][3][3][3]

Besides the United States, the company has an office in Delhi NCR, India, where most of its engineering and machine learning teams are based.⁠[1]

Before its national launch, Rivet tested its Social Matching model in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2026; Kapoor said in June that the app had attracted thousands of users. The company also experimented with offline events, including live dating shows in which the audience votes on whether two singles have chemistry.⁠[3][3][3]

Rivet announced its nationwide launch in the United States, free to download on iOS and Android, and disclosed $10.5 million in seed funding from Peak XV Partners, Shine CapitalShine CapitalShine Capital is a U.S. early-stage venture-capital firm founded in 2020 by Mo Koyfman, with offices in New York and San Francisco. It invests at company formation, seed and Series A stages and provides follow-on capital, across areas including technology, consumer businesses and finance.Open the full entry and Blume VenturesBlume VenturesBlume Ventures is an Indian early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Mumbai that invests mainly from seed to Series A in startups using technology to solve uniquely Indian problems or to build for global markets; its portfolio includes Unacademy, Slice, Spinny, Purplle and GreyOrange.Open the full entry, to be used to develop the product, expand distribution and scale across the US. Former Tinder and OkCupid CEO Elie SeidmanElie SeidmanElie Seidman is an entrepreneur, investor and venture partner at Shine Capital. He co-founded Epana and Oyster and served as CEO of OkCupid and Tinder. His career spans consumer internet businesses, financial services and venture investing.Open the full entry is an early investor and advised and mentored Kapoor during development.⁠[2][2][2][1][2]

Kapoor said that for many years she thought what she was building removed friction from meeting people, but instead it removed the people; dating apps expanded the pool but turned dating, a fundamentally social activity, into something lonely, overwhelming and transactional. Seidman said the swipe was one of the defining product innovations in online dating, and that human judgment and a real social community built on technology are the first genuinely new thing in the category since the swipe.⁠[2][2][2][2]

At launch the company released a survey it commissioned from Censuswide of 2,012 US adults, conducted September 15–18, 2026: 68% of Gen Z and Millennial respondents said they would be interested in helping someone they do not know find a romantic match if they could do so anonymously and the person made the final decision.⁠[2][2][2]

Kapoor said Rivet prioritizes the quality of connections over quantity, giving daters only a few pre-selected options at a time, which may include people outside their usual preferences; she said that after swiping through about 200 people on Bumble or Hinge, judgment becomes faster, more transactional and more judgmental.⁠[4][4][4]

Signing up is free, but some features are paid: messaging someone before the community has assessed the pair costs 1,000 Karma points per message, and a pack of 3,000 Karma points costs $9.99. Matchers earn Karma when they make successful pairs, which can be redeemed for profile perks, direct introductions, cash rewards or gift cards; the app also has weekly leaderboards of top matchers, live events, and promotions that cover half the cost of a first date.⁠[4][4][4][4]

Bloomberg reporter Samantha Kelly noted that Rivet is not the first dating platform to outsource matchmaking to a community of volunteers: Core, launched the previous year by reality television star Bethenny Frankel, also has other participants pick suggestions for users, and it is unclear whether such alternative platforms can attract large numbers of users. Rivet seeks to set itself apart with an AI preview feature that combines two people’s photos side by side to help judge whether their style and height match.⁠[4][4][4][4]

Kapoor responded that “humans introducing humans is the oldest technology,” saying more people are turning to human matchmakers but that this is expensive; those who can pay $20,000 for a matchmaker can do so, while those who cannot can get several matches on Rivet for free.⁠[4][4]

Users can join as a Dater looking for a partner or as a Matcher helping others pair up; people who are not dating or are already in a relationship can join solely as Matchers. The system first pairs users based on their preferences, interests, intentions and dating choices, then peers, friends invited by the user and Rivet’s “Elite Matchers” weigh in on which pairs feel right; two people who receive a high Social Matching score are introduced, and each decides independently whether to view the full profile, match and start a conversation.⁠[5][5][5][5][2][5]

The company describes the model as “the wisdom of crowds”: for each pair, Matchers answer a single yes-or-no question about whether the two would be good together; the views of Matchers with an accurate eye carry more weight over time, while careless takes are treated as random noise that cancels out. Rivet says profiles on the platform are verified and that voice-assisted prompts help users describe themselves and what they are looking for.⁠[6][6][6][5]

Rivet: Official website: https://www.rivetdating.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@rivetdating (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rivet-dating (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/rivetdating (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@rivetdating (opens in a new window)⁠[5]