Why Vonk exists

I've been on every dating app. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Happn — the whole carousel. And after years of swiping, I realized something that should have been obvious from the start: these apps don't want me to find someone.

Think about it. If you meet the love of your life on day one, you delete the app. You stop paying. The company loses a customer. So what do they do? They dangle possibilities. They gate features behind paywalls. They build algorithms that keep you coming back, not matching you faster.

That's not designed to be deleted — that's designed to be addictive.

Hinge says it's "designed to be deleted." They charge up to €45 a month and give you 8 likes a day. Tinder shows you hundreds of people you'll never meet. Bumble makes women do the work and calls it empowerment. They all sell the idea of connection while structurally preventing it. Because connection is the one thing that makes you leave.

So we built something different

Vonk is simple. Every day, you see two people. You choose one. If they choose you too, you start talking. That's it.

No infinite swiping. No likes counter. No algorithm trying to keep you on the app one more minute. Free users get one choice per day. Paying users get five. Everyone sees full profiles, sends real messages, and never pays to be visible.

When you've been dating someone for 30 days, we cancel your subscription. We don't try to win you back. We congratulate you. Because that means the app worked.

The business model is the product

We're not building Vonk to become the next billion-dollar dating empire. We're building it because we think dating can be simple, honest, and respectful of your time. A good dating app should have a high churn rate — because people keep leaving after they find someone.

The metric that matters is deletions.

We'll publish our deletion rate publicly. If people aren't deleting Vonk because they found someone, we haven't done our job. Not monthly active users. Not time spent in app. Not revenue per user. Deletions.

Starting in Amsterdam

We're launching in Amsterdam first. Small, focused, intentional — just like the app. If it works here, we'll grow. If it doesn't, we'll learn. But we won't chase growth for growth's sake.

Two people. One choice. If it works, you delete the app. That's success.