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Donald Trumps return to office has bolstered a wave of apps. Bluesky spiked in November; Signal is seeing renewed attention. Niche dating apps are also raking in new usersboth from the right and left. Americans are dating across party lines less and less. In 2020, 71% of Democrats told the Pew Research Center they wouldnt date a Trump voter. Most also agree that cross-party dating is getting harder. App developers have seized the moment, creating new spaces for singles to connect within their political circles. But those efforts look different depending on which side of the aisle you gravitate toward. The MAGA movement has long flirted with its own dating appsnow one is gaining traction with hundreds of thousands of downloads and backing from Peter Thiel. On the left, attempts to build a liberal-only space havent taken off. Instead, progressive dating apps often feel more like a reaction born of resistance or fear. The right-wing dating apps resurgence Leading the pack among right-wing apps is Date Right Stuff, cofounded by former Trump staffer John McEntee and backed by $1.5 billion from Thiel. The apps 2022 launch was rocky, marked by few downloads and plenty of controversyincluding allegations that the FBI visited users who answered a prompt about the January 6 insurrection. One user, 18-year-old Grace Carter, told Wired that McEntee sent her uncomfortable messages via the apps Instagram. But since Trumps inauguration, interest has surged. In a recent interview with Andrew Zucker on the Golden Age podcast, chief marketing officer Raquel Debono said the app has now surpassed 400,000 downloads. Like Tinder and Hinge, Date Right Stuff is expanding into live eventsit recently hosted a Make America Hot Again party at Trump Towerand into platonic matchmaking. Sort of like a Bumble BFF, but with your right-wing BFF, your person to talk politics with, Debono explained. Security is also top of mind. Face ID verification is coming soon to make sure everyone is exactly who they say they are, Debono wrote in an email to Fast Company. Its all about meeting people who share your values, get your sense of humor, and let you be unapologetically yourself. Whether Date Right Stuff has staying power is another question. Back in 2018, Gaby Del Valle wrote about the rise of right-wing dating apps for Vox. Every app mentionedRighter, Conservatives Only, Donald Daters, Patriohas since disappeared. Where do all the liberals go? Sex and dating quickly became political flashpoints after Trumps first election. Some liberals refused to match with anyone who identified as Moderate on Hinge. Others looked to Koreas 4B movement, where women pledged to abstain from dating and sex altogether. But unlike the right, the left hasnt coalesced around a dating enclave, despite the fact that dating apps, in general, have long skewed liberal. According to a 2006 Pew study, online daters were more likely to express liberal social beliefs. But platforms explicitly designated for progressive users like Lefty and TruuBlue haven’t gained traction. Then theres the rise of fake dating. Lavender marriages (unions between LGBTQ+ individuals to mask their identities) have gone viral on TikTok in the wake of Trumps return to the White House. More queer daters are now seeking relationships rooted in political safety over attraction. In a grim twist, theres an app for that. Jeremy Del Zotto created Gen We, and recently launched a Lavender Marriages community on the app. The announcement video has racked up more than 500,000 views. In a recent update, Del Zotto said Gen We had thousands of downloads within weeks.
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E-Commerce
When Michael White struck out on his own after stints at DoorDash and Square, his plan was to help tech employees access the value of their equity while their companies were still private. But as White and his cofounder Gautam Gupta enabled workers to get a line of credit, they found that most people were using it to finance a home purchase. It makes sense, White says. That’s a big reason people seek liquidityor that’s one of the first things that people do if they have an exit. So it really led us to dive deeper into that and ultimately pivot. In 2024, White and Gupta relaunched their company Multiply Mortgage as an employee benefit that helps aspiring homeowners secure a mortgage. The company is licensed to originate mortgage loans in 19 states and works with mortgage brokers in nearly every other state. Through Multiply, workers can access expert advisors and discounted mortgage interest ratesand more recently, the company has also expanded to include more comprehensive education resources about financial wellness. For now, the benefit will remain a free service for employers, owing to Multiplys business model in which the company earns a commission on mortgage origination from all of its lender partners. (White does, however, note that the company might start charging companies down the road, as we build out more of the value that we’re providing companies.) Working with employers also gives Multiply a built-in pool of potential customers and lowers the steep cost of customer acquisition across the mortgage industry. Beyond that, building an AI-powered platform has enabled Multiply to reduce its labor costs while continuing to bolster crucial elements of the business; the company recently closed a $23.5 million Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins that will go toward getting its product in front of more workers and improving on its personalized services. We’re not building a self-serve mortgage, White says. For as complicated and stressful as this transaction can be, having a really high level of client service can make it go a lot more smoothly. So we’re really investing heavily in our team of mortgage advisors. In the past decade, companies have started offering workplace benefits that help support employees through various personal experiences, from fertility treatments to mental health support and menopause-related care. At the moment, many benefits managers and HR teams are daunted by the rising costs of healthcare, not to mention the overwhelming number of niche employee benefits now on the market. If medical insurance is going to consume basically all of your budget, companies have to make some pretty hard choices in other places, White says. Multiplys pitch to companies like Rampthe booming fintech startup that is one of its customersis certainly appealing from a financial perspective, but the return-to-office movement has also created an environment in which some employers are looking for ways to lure their workers back to the office or court prospective employees. Another buzzy tech startup is currently using Multiply in part because its employees are expected to relocate to cities that are not traditional tech hubs. “They are in the process of building out those teams with engineers that wouldn’t typically live in those places,” White says. “So what we’ve seen them doing with us is including us in their recruiting materials and really highlighting how this might not have been where you were otherwise going to livebut look at the quality of life that you can have. Look at what you’re able to afford from a home perspective; you can buy a home here, and here’s a resource that you can use to make that even more attainable. Some fully remote employers, on the other hand, are offering Multiplys services because of the geographic range the platform promises. The fact that we can help their employees in Michigan just as well as we can help their employees in California makes a big difference for them, White says. Companies have also found that providing Multiply as an employee benefit has encouraged some people to consider buying a home even if they previously assumed it was out of reachor, at a minimum, use the service to evaluate their options. “One thing that’s been really cool is how much employees are just exploring what homeownership could look like for them, evaluating how much they could afford [and] renting versus buying,” White says. “They’re able to take advantage of this resource, as well. They have unlimited access to those advisors.” For some clients, the lower interest rates they secured through Multiplywhich can be discounted by up to 0.75% and save them an average of $5,100 annuallyhave made all the difference in terms of being able to afford home ownership. Like other players in the workplace-benefits space, White also makes the case that may be most appealing to companies and HR teams who are sifting through a dizzying array of potential offerings. Going through a divorce or buying a home can be a lengthy, emotionally taxing experience, one that inevitably bleeds into the workplace. “If you know what to expect and you know how to adequately prepare for it, you can take a lot of the stress out of the processwhich is great from the company’s perspective,” White says. “If you have this big thing happening outside of work that’s stressful and distracting, then that’s going to degrade performance at work.”
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E-Commerce
Over the past three months, in a small print shop in Toronto, a group of people has been hard at work making the impossible possible: a book that can be read only when you pour water over it. The Dehydrating Book is the first of its kind. It was printed with a special hydrochromic ink that is invisible to the naked eye and becomes visible only when it’s wet. It is 100% waterproof and ships in a pouch full of water. Why? To raise awareness about the global water crisis. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The project is a close collaboration between Water for People, a global nonprofit that helps bring clean water and sanitation systems to underserved communities around the world; communications firm Edelman; and Toronto-based graphic arts studio the Gas Company. Water for People and Edelman came up with the concept. And after three months of iteration (and many sleepless nights) the Gas Company made it a reality by crafting a whopping 130 waterproof books. One of them could be yours freeif you subscribe to the Water for People newsletter and win the raffle that will ensue. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The water crisis, made tangible This book needs water. Just like millions of children in Latin America. This is the opening line on Water for Peoples website, and the sentiment behind it is literal. According to a UNICEF 2021 study, more than 1.42 billion peopleincluding 450 million childrendon’t have enough water to meet their everyday needs. That is one in five children worldwide whose ability to focus, learn, and achieve their potential is hampered by illnesses and decreased cognitive performance caused by a lack of clean drinking water. Water quality issues are so difficult to detect and monitor that the World Bank has called it the invisible crisis. By making a dehydrating book, the team wanted to make the crisis visible: When water disappears, so do opportunities like education. The Dehydrating Book is symbolic of the current realities and obstacles of communities in Latin America, says Mark Duey, Water for Peoples CEO. The region is currently facing a water crisis that’s holding children back. But no such book had ever been made before. [Photo: The Gas Company Inc.] The making of a waterproof book Doug Laxdal founded the Gas Company in 1996. Since then, he has built a strong reputation for kookie projects, as he puts it. In 2022, his team made a completely fireproof version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to raise awareness of book burnings and bans in the U.S. (The Unburnable Book fetched $130,000 at a Sotheby’s auction, and all proceeds went to PEN America.) Laxdal recalls that when he was first asked to make an unburnable book, he knew exactly what to do. This time around, he wasn’t so sure. A waterproof book is like putting metal in a microwave, he told me on a recent video call. You just don’t it. After he hung up with Edelman, his only thought was: What the hell am I going to do? If you google waterproof books you’ll find a smattering of options, from plasticky baby books to all-weather notebooks, but the Dehydrating Book proved to be a whole other ball game. It had to be waterproof, and the ink had to stick to the page without washing away, and the text had to appear only when you poured water over it. A game of trial and error First on Laxdals to-do list was the book cover. His first instinct was to utilize plastic, but the four plastic manufacturers he reached out to weren’t interested in the project. In the end, he landed on white acrylic, also known as plexiglass, which comes in a gloss finish but in this case was sanded down to a matte surface using an orbital sander. The cover closes around the pages of the book almost like a jewelry box. Then came the pages. Laxdal experimented with a flurry of materials, including Tyvek (a type of synthetic material thats often used to wrap buildings during construction) and polyester. The former wrinkled under water, the latter made the pages too stiff. Other options simply weren’t suitable for the kind of ink he had to use. Various test runs using pouches filled with water for a few days yielded unworkable results: Some ink ether bled into the water or turned sticky, effectively gluing the book shut. The final version is made with a synthetic paper called SuperYupo (regular Yupo wasn’t good enough). The book covers are acrylic. The outside is lined with another sheet of SuperYupo that is glued to the covers using a waterproof adhesive from 3M. The pages are sewn with standard polyester thread. Laxdal’s team printed the first layer of text with a UV litho press, which uses ultraviolet light to instantly cure the ink onto the page. Laxdal likens the process to UV-cured gel nail polish, except in this case, the UV machine is almost 100 feet long. Then, they used a silkscreen press to apply enough layers of hydrochromic ink to conceal the text printed underneath. Finally, they placed the book inside a plastic pouch and dunked it in a small aquarium so the water could flow inside the pouch before it was sealed. In a live demo on Zoom, I watched as graphic designer Layla Laxdal (Doug’s daughter) poured a glass of water over an open book, and instantly, a brightly colored hummingbird appeared on the page. The story, cowritten with students from Palmira, a village in Peru’s Cascas Valley, follows a group of animals, led by a thirsty hummingbird named Lupita, who travel through Peru in search of water. A spokesperson from Edelman explains that the message behind the book is el agua es vida, (or water is life): Its a motto that the community lives by, and it is a powerful reminder for us readers that without water, children cant thrive. By the end of my interview with Laxdal, some 40 minutes later, the image that came into view during the demo had started to fade, apart from one patch in the center where the water had pooled. That patch was still bright.
Category:
E-Commerce
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