What began as a campus matchmaking experiment at Stanford has quickly become a venture-backed startup. Graduate student Henry Weng has transformed Date Drop, a weekly, questionnaire-driven pairing service he built for classmates, into The Relationship Company, a public benefit corporation focused on nurturing meaningful connections.
Date Drop departs from swipe culture by sending students a curated match once a week based on a rich intake that includes open-ended responses and optional voice prompts. The premise is simple and pointed: reduce noise, increase intent, and prioritize relationships over endless browsing.
From Dorm Experiment To Public Benefit Startup
More than 5,000 Stanford students have tried Date Drop since launch, and the service has expanded to 10 additional campuses, including MIT, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. With strong word-of-mouth fueling demand, Weng is preparing broader rollouts beyond universities.
The turning point came when a close friend met a long-term partner through Date Drop, convincing Weng that the project could have outsized impact at scale. He incorporated The Relationship Company as a public benefit corporation, a structure that legally binds leadership to consider social outcomes alongside profit—an unusual move in consumer social products.
The team remains lean: Weng plus two employees, supported by a dozen campus ambassadors. Reflecting the mission, staff receive a $100 monthly “relationship stipend” to invest in dates, gifts, or experiences that deepen important bonds—a small but telling bet on prosocial design within the company itself.
Inside The Matching Model Powering Date Drop
Weng frames the system around two pillars. First, the intake is designed to capture personality and values, not just preferences. Users answer detailed questions, add free-form reflections, and can record a short voice note to convey nuance that text alone can miss.
Second, the prediction layer learns from real outcomes. Because Date Drop helps coordinate dates, the model can observe which pairs meet and, over time, which matches tend to progress—giving it feedback loops many apps lack. With those inputs, the service applies tools from matching theory to optimize pairings, an approach rooted in scholarship from Nobel laureate Alvin Roth and the Gale–Shapley framework that underpins stable match systems.
Crucially, the audience signals high intent: Weng says 95% of Date Drop users indicate they are seeking committed relationships. That aligns incentives for slower, higher-signal matching and contrasts with the instant-feedback mechanics common in mainstream apps.
Funding And Market Signals For The Growing Platform
The Relationship Company has raised a few million dollars in angel funding from notable backers, including Zynga founder and early Facebook investor Mark Pincus, former Coatue partner Andy Chen, and entrepreneur-investor Elad Gil, whose early bets span Airbnb, Stripe, and Pinterest. The investor mix underscores a thesis that consumer social can be rebuilt around smaller, higher-quality interactions.
The timing appears favorable. According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 30% of U.S. adults have used online dating, with many younger users reporting fatigue and frustration from gamified swiping and low-quality interactions. A weekly, no-swipe cadence that emphasizes compatibility could reduce decision overload and improve follow-through—two chronic weaknesses in large, open marketplaces.
A Broader Vision For Relationships Beyond Dating
While Date Drop is the first product, Weng says the company’s North Star is to facilitate all meaningful ties—romantic, platonic, and professional—along with the events and communities that sustain them. That ambition reflects a growing body of research: the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development links strong relationships with greater well-being and longevity, while Science has published evidence that spending on others tends to increase personal happiness.
Weng’s academic path tracks the product’s DNA. As an undergraduate he designed an interdisciplinary major around humans, matching, and incentives; now, in Stanford’s computer science master’s program, he’s doubled down on the math and economics that inform the system. An unconventional influence also shapes his leadership approach: a course in clowning that celebrates failing forward—apt preparation for shipping products that must iterate in public.
What To Watch Next As The Platform Expands Widely
As The Relationship Company expands beyond campuses, the key questions will be whether the weekly-drop model scales in cities, how the team preserves safety and privacy as richer inputs like voice grow, and whether a PBC structure can align monetization with user well-being. If early campus traction and investor interest are any guide, Date Drop’s deliberate pace may prove to be its competitive edge.
