A dating app geared toward alternative relationships nearly doubled its revenue last year as non-monogamous, queer and kinky users helped the U.K.-based company expand its reach around the world.
Feeld, founded by an openly relationshipd entrepreneurial couple, has said it is “on a mission to elevate the human experience of sexuality and relationships” from its registered office on an industrial estate in Carlisle, Cumbria.
The app’s growth in popularity in recent years, amid growing interest in non-traditional relationship structures such as polyamory, meant that last year was the first in which Feeld was big enough to file full accounts at Companies House.
They show the company’s profits rose from £2.4m to £5.5m in the year to the end of 2023, thanks to revenues rising from £20.7m to £39.5m.
The bulk of that revenue is now generated outside the UK, with £33m of revenue coming from overseas. Feeld is available to download for free around the world, including in the US and Australia, and users pay to access its full range of services.
The company was founded by Bulgarian-born Dimo Trifonov in 2014 after he and his partner, Ana Kirova, both based in London, discussed opening up their relationship.
Kirova has been involved with the app, which was initially called 3nder until it was hit with a lawsuit from its much larger rival, Tinder, since its inception.
In December last year, she became CEO and led a rebranding process as well as a technology upgrade that was initially plagued by glitches, which the company says have now been fixed. The app has also increasingly expanded into social events.
Filings at Companies House reveal a change in Feeld’s ownership structure after Kirova took over as chief executive in December 2023.
Prior to January 2024, Trifonov owned the vast majority of shares. While he still holds the largest stake in the company, almost half of his shares were transferred to Kirova in early 2024. This reduced Trifonov’s stake to below 50%, according to documents which show Kirova now owns almost 24% of the company.
Before the transfer, accounts show shareholders received a dividend of £400,000 in 2023 and £292,923 the year before. Trifonov owned just over half the shares at the time.
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Kirova said: “I don’t believe in growth at any price and we don’t pursue it as a company. We listen to our members through different channels and do our best to grow Feeld in ways that support their personal journeys.
“Looking at current trends in the dating app industry, Feeld has proven that our model challenges tradition and people are responding accordingly.”
The company’s growth represents a setback from 2016, when Trifonov warned that lawsuits from Match Group-owned Tinder could force him to lay off his workforce.
At the time, Trifonov accused Tinder of “loading a nuclear weapon” against his startup, noting that Tinder itself was preceded by gay dating app Grindr, whose name differs by only a few letters.
Trifonov was forced to change the app’s name. Since then, the company has grown its staff from eight people in 2016 to almost 50.