A Stanford graduate student created an algorithm to help his classmates find love; Now, Date Drop is the foundation of his new startup

As Valentine’s Day approaches at Stanford, some students may be gearing up for first dates — not with people they met on Tinder or Hinge, but with matches from a service called Date Drop, designed by Stanford graduate student Henry Wong. Date Drop pairs students with potential dates once a week based on their answers to a survey.

A kid genius at Stanford tries to disrupt an established industry from his Palo Alto pad? Stop me if you’ve heard this before! But young people are very disappointed with the depressing and depressing state of online dating. Why not try something different?

More than 5,000 Stanford students have tried Date Drop since it launched in the fall. It has also been rolled out at 10 other schools, including MIT, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, and Wing says he wants to roll out Date Drop more widely in some cities this summer.

“Our matches turn into actual dates at about 10 times the rate of Tinder,” Weng told TechCrunch. “Instead of swiping, we get to know each person in depth and send them one compatible match per week.”

Initially, Weng didn’t intend to turn Date Drop into a startup. Then a close friend of his met his partner via Date Drop. “That’s when I felt like this wasn’t legitimate,” he said.

Now, Wing believes Date Drop is just the first service from his startup, The Relationship Company, a public benefit corporation — the type of company legally required to consider social impact alongside profits.

“This started out as something I just wanted to have on campus, and it became a business because people kept asking for it at their schools and I needed resources to do it,” he said.

Already, Wing has raised “a few million” from some angel investors, including Zynga founder and early Facebook backer Mark Pincus, who has taught business courses at Stanford (including Wing). Andy Chen, a former partner at Kuato, and Elad Gil, an early backer of Airbnb, Stripe, and Pinterest, have also invested in The Relationship Company.

“The long-term vision at The Relationship Company is about facilitating all meaningful relationships: friendships, professional connections, community, and events,” Wong said.

It’s par for the course to use algorithms to predict whether dating service users are compatible with each other – that’s how dating apps work. But Wing says his model is geared more toward long-term relationships, with 95% of Date Drop users saying they’re interested in relationships.

Wong explains that there are two key elements at play. First, the questionnaire must be comprehensive enough to capture a true picture of who a person is. “We do this through open questions and answers, voice chat and other data provided by users,” he said.

The next challenge is predicting compatibility. “Because we help people plan dates, we have data on the matches that actually work. So we have a model that’s trained on real-world outcomes,” he said. “Once you have those two components, actual matching is standard stuff from the matching theoretical literature.”

Currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at Stanford University, Wing has directed his teaching around the economic and mathematical concepts of matching. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he created his own major studying humans, conformity, and incentives.

“I started to see how shapes conform in our lives a lot,” Wong told TechCrunch. “Who your partner is, who your friends are, what college you go to, what company you work for are all identical problems.”

In addition to his art education, Wing found an unexpected class useful for learning to run a startup: “Introduction to Clown.”

“The basic principle of clowning is that clowns are failures, and instead of fearing failure, they enjoy it,” he said. “As a product maker, your whole journey is repeatedly failing and getting back up again. The Clown Class was a great microcosm of that.”

So far, Relationship has two employees alongside Weng, as well as 12 students who serve as campus ambassadors. Because their business revolves around rigging matches, Wong has expanded this mindset to how he runs the company. It offers employees a monthly “relationship stipend” of $100, which they can spend on dates, gifts, experiences, or anything that helps them deepen an important relationship of any kind.

“Relationships are the most important factor in a person’s life,” Wong said. “There’s also great research that shows that money you spend on others makes you happier than money you spend on yourself.”

Weng’s fascination with how relationships form between people has also influenced the way he goes about his daily life.

“Date Drop showed me how many interesting people you would never meet during your normal routine,” he said. “It made me more open to people I wouldn’t have met otherwise.”