Former Tinder Executive Taru Kapoor Launches Dating App Rivet, Company Completes $10.5 Million Seed Round
Former Tinder executive Taru Kapoor has launched the dating app Rivet, which opened to U.S. users on September 24. The company completed a $10.5 million seed round, with investors including Peak XV Partners, Shine Capital, and Blume Ventures. Former Tinder and OkCupid CEO Elie Seidman is an early investor and serves as an advisor during the development phase.
Kapoor joined Tinder in 2015, overseeing operations in India, and later expanded her role to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Turkey, spending about eight years with Tinder and Match Group before leaving in 2023. Co-founder Rajat Sahni previously managed the used car business at CarDekho. The engineering and machine learning teams are primarily based in India, with an office in the National Capital Region of Delhi.
The product categorizes users into Daters, who are looking to date, and Matchers, who help others find matches. The system first ranks potential matches based on preferences, interests, and dating intentions, and then allows other users, invited friends, or Elite Matchers to judge the suitability of the pair. Daters receive only a few curated introductions at a time, which may include types they would typically swipe away. Kapoor noted that after swiping through about 200 people on Bumble or Hinge, judgments become quicker and more transactional.
Before its launch, Rivet was tested in Charlotte. In June, Kapoor mentioned that the app had thousands of users. A Bloomberg interview described Matchers as volunteers tasked with scoring compatibility for strangers. A circulated release description stated that strangers could facilitate introductions and receive monetary rewards once a match is successful. The company's public statement did not clarify the compensation rules as being based on engagements.
The $10.5 million will be used for product development, distribution, and expansion in the U.S. Once a match is successful, Daters will leave, and Matchers do not need to be single themselves. The funding currently comes from the seed round, not subscription revenue. The app has not yet disclosed the number of paying users.
In terms of market mechanics, while buyers under the old model aimed to maintain single subscription users, Rivet shifts the buyer to those willing to vote for strangers. The driving events are the seed round and the U.S. launch, not matchmaking transactions. Funds from Peak XV and other investors are entering the product, but it remains unclear whether returns will flow to the introducers. The beneficiaries are new applications that differentiate through manual screening, while sliding apps that charge based on duration are under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Kapoor's eight years at Tinder involved integrating the sliding product into India, and Match Group credited her with OkCupid's growth in the region. She left a category she helped amplify. Seidman, who has served as CEO of both Tinder and OkCupid, returns to the same issue as an advisor and early investor. Rajat Sahni comes from the used car trading sector, not matchmaking.
The $10.5 million does not buy a user list. The funds are directed towards U.S. distribution, engineering and machine learning in Delhi, and the process of filtering candidates before allowing people to vote. The motivation is that the sliding pool has grown large enough to show about 200 people each time, with manual judgment being replaced by speed. Rivet restores scarcity to the number of introductions rather than the duration of membership.
This structure is similar to the roles of shadchan in Jewish communities, family matchmakers in India, and traditional matchmakers in China: people introduce based on results, not duration of stay. The sliding era removed introducers and replaced them with subscriptions. Since 2022, Match Group's paying users have continuously shrunk, a result of this charging model, not Rivet's data. The industry position is about category redoing, not market share control. The thousands of users tested in Charlotte have not yet formed a network.
Structurally, this represents a shift in pricing power. The revenue of old apps points to keeping users for another month, while new apps that charge based on successful introductions direct revenue towards matches leaving. The reason is that success itself deletes two paying users, making the subscription model contrary to user goals. The seed round buys time to convert users from singles to introducers, not a commission structure that has already been proven.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Success leads to user loss; the charging direction is reversed.
Sliding sells duration; matchmakers sell results.
Changing users to those who won't graduate helps retain the product.