Lucy Rout, founder of Haystack Dating.
Lucy Rout
Lucy Rout isn’t your typical entrepreneur.
The 30-year-old Londoner (London) is known for skiing on Bikini Island and consulted her Instagram followers to see if she should fly 10,000 miles with a man for her fourth date and used her eclectic experience to develop a new dating model that is all about making meaningful connections.
Rutt told CNBC that her confidence never diminished when using traditional dating apps.
After years of ghosting, she describes “the weird download dopamine cycle, trying some dates, experiencing bad behavior, writing it down, and swearing to never do it again, and then starting the cycle”, – Rutt determines the connections that people have longed for real life (IRL) in real life.
She came up with the idea of a haystack date to increase the chances of people building romantic connections.
She told CNBC during the interview, she told CNBC: “What we can definitely do is increase people feel safe and include in the right environment. Using some technology, leveraging their similar interests and fusing them together, just making it less needles in a hay box and more like needles in a sewing box.”
Rout not only wants her clients to appear in the event, but also attempts to have random conversations. Instead, participants filled out a form of data input through an algorithm that matched it with a small number of people with similar interests and personality traits.
“I looked at the parameters that lead to meaningful connections and tried to learn more about the psychology of how people work – introvert versus extrovert, level of effort, career ambition. I talked to hundreds of people about this, and I came up with this current algorithm, and we are always optimizing.”
Attendees are dedicated to activities like cricket or touch rugby for an hour and then spend the rest of the evening with the full guest.
Rutt said that up to 200 to 500 people have appeared so far, with 92% of customers appearing alone, and the cost of activities in London is about £30 ($39.85).
“Date Burnout”
Rut has been documenting her entrepreneurial journey and has been disgusted by the poor behavior of men in the dating world on Instagram for years.
She is a cancer survivor who made a pill case called Tabuu, which invested in the BBC’s Dragon’s Den in 2023. Prior to Haystack, she was Tabuu who worked remotely in Colombia, while posting clips of her life reminding women never to chase men “unless he is an ice cream man.”
Rutt told CNBC that using the dating app has seriously worsened her confidence in three years. She is not alone, and dating app users are becoming increasingly obsessed with online dating.
“In hell, real-life people don’t say something to me that dating apps. People behave better. They’re kinder.”
Lucy Rout
Founder of Haystack Dating
Regular use of dating apps can lead to a decline in mental health and negatively affect a person’s body image. study Published in April. The study found that increasing the number of partners available to dating apps reduces self-esteem. In heterosexual and LGBTQ+ connections, ghosts and online sexual violence are factors that cause psychological distress.
according to Ofcom Report Starting in late 2024, it tracks the way British adults spend their time online. From 2023 to 2024, Tinder lost nearly 600,000 users, with 131,000 visitors to the hinge, while Bumble dropped 368,000 users, while Grindr users dropped 11,000.
When millennials and Gen Z abandon online dating, IRL incident is making a comebackeven dating apps are trying to take advantage of the hype. Hinge announced a $1 million funding in March, with social groups in New York, Los Angeles and London building connections and relationships for young people themselves.
Bumble irl Founded in 2022, it is an exclusive in-person event centered around fitness, food, music and charity.
“Yes, you can come across 5 hinge dates in a week, or you can come across hundreds of bars at a time. I think people do want to find love, and they are no longer willing to let themselves encounter the crap that dating apps bring.
“That’s exactly where I’m getting. I’m going to date burnout. I’m just thinking about myself, you know, I’m not doing that anymore, I’m actually going to try to fix it for someone else.”
During an Entrepreneur Online Event, Rut met her current boyfriend in December 2023. In a series of events she recorded on Instagram, she flew to Southeast Asia to meet him again and meet him again. While she browses in her new relationship, Roud is developing Haystack to help others find love.
With nearly 50,000 followers, it was Rout’s Instagram community that drove the initial sales of Haystack and provided word-of-mouth reviews and suggestions that helped spread the news.
“While I’m going to say that the initial sales were certainly driven by my Instagram community, if you have a bad experience, you won’t go back. I won’t get into the numbers, but we have a high rate of return.”
Haystack to launch in Leeds, Lucy brings her event to other parts of the UK
“In the IRL incident, there is much more responsibility, and people behave differently than they actually behave. In hell, there is no way for real life people to say to what I say about some of the dating apps.
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