Gather was cofounded by Jim Yang, an Indonesian-born tech entrepreneur who began his career in the US in 1995 when he was still studying computer science at the University of Texas. 

The app is designed with Asian users, especially women, in mind; as Yang said, “Gather is designed to optimize processes of IRL [in real life] meeting between women and men. The app has to be aware of all the socio-norm interactions between women and men, especially in Southeast Asia and India, where women’s safety is the utmost important thing.”

Gather lets users organize on-demand social “Gatherings”, be they group gatherings or individual meet-ups. To host a Gathering, women choose one of four social activities: lunch, coffee, drinks or after-hours. They set the Gathering time and location and invite other friends to cohost. Users are able to discover nearby Gatherings, see cohost profiles and apply to stop by. Hosts will then be able to decide the number of guests they want to meet. 

Only female users are able to create group gatherings. Yang said this was intended to ensure women’s safety. “Initially we lock men out of creating a Gathering. They can only join. Once men go through successful gatherings, well-behaved guys will be able to unlock and create their own gatherings.”

Claiming to be the second generation of location-based mobile dating apps, Gather aims to solve what the first generation dating apps haven’t been able to do successfully: form organic relationships between its users. 

“Tinder is successfully expanding the dating pool, which generates a lot of matches for some people, but most of them are not available to meet you. Scheduling a real-life meeting is a challenge. One-on-one dates are also awkward and time-consuming and can’t be done on a whim/whenever you’re available,” said Yang.

Six month into its initial launch, Gather has garnered 300,000 monthly active users including 100,000 located in Indonesia, mainly Jakarta and Bandung. Yang studied the local dating behavior and therefore understands how Indonesians love to meet in informal gatherings via a group of friends before finally embarking on a real dating situation.

“A single girl brings her single girlfriends. A single guy brings his guy friends as well. We are trying to mimic and facilitate this process of informal gathering using a mobile app that knows your availability and locations,” he said of Indonesian dating customs.

The app recently formed a strategic partnership with local food and beverage conglomerate Ismaya Group. Gather users will be able to host Gatherings at Ismaya restaurants. Gather is currently in the seed round with US$500,000 investment from Silicon Valley angel investors, but has so far failed to attract any interest from venture capitalists.

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