Feeld's record year at a glance
Feeld, the British dating app built for non-monogamous, queer and kinky users, has reported its strongest financial year to date, pairing double-digit revenue growth with the largest shareholder payout in its history. Revenues climbed 32% to £64m, pre-tax profits rose from £9.3m to £11.4m, and shareholders — a group that includes the couple who founded the business — shared a dividend of £3.8m.
The platform markets itself as a dating app “for the curious”, and frames its results as evidence of rising demand from what it describes as open-minded people exploring love, desire and alternative relationships in a safe, inclusive space.
- Revenue rose 32% year on year to £64m
- Pre-tax profit increased from £9.3m to £11.4m
- Shareholders received a £3.8m dividend, the company's biggest to date
- Nearly 90% of revenue — £56m of the £64m total — was generated outside the UK
An app that started life as 3nder
Feeld's origins are unusual for a consumer technology company. Ana Kirova and her partner Dimo Trifonov launched the business under the name 3nder, pronounced “Thrinder”, with an initial proposition aimed at couples and singles looking for threesomes.
That branding did not survive contact with the legal department. A lawsuit brought by Tinder forced the founders to rebrand, and the company took on the name Feeld. What followed, according to the accounts and the company's own account of its trajectory, was a period of rapid growth — achieved while several far larger competitors were struggling to hold on to users.
The rebrand appears to have done little to blunt the app's appeal. Rather than fading after the name change, Feeld has continued to expand, and the latest filing suggests the business is now operating at a scale well beyond its niche origins.
Growing while the giants shrink
The timing of Feeld's results is notable because it lands in the middle of a difficult stretch for mainstream online dating. Match Group, whose portfolio includes Tinder, Hinge and OK Cupid, reported a 5% decline in user numbers earlier this year. That contraction came alongside widespread reporting of fatigue with the experience of seeking romance or sex through an app.
Feeld appears to be absorbing at least some of that restlessness. Its positioning — explicitly welcoming to non-monogamous, queer and kinky users — sets it apart from products designed around a conventional path to a single partner, and that difference may be precisely what is attracting people who have grown tired of the bigger platforms.
The contrast is stark: one of the sector's dominant players is losing users, while a UK-based challenger with a deliberately unconventional pitch is growing revenue by roughly a third and converting more of it into profit.
Nearly all the money now comes from abroad
According to accounts filed at Companies House, the sales increase reflected “strong global user growth”, with markets outside the UK driving the bulk of the expansion. The rest of the world accounted for £56m of the company's £64m in total revenues — close to 90% — with Mexico and Spain among the markets highlighted.
That geographic split matters for how the business should be read. Feeld may be a UK-registered company with British founders, but it is no longer primarily a British product. Its revenue base is international, and its growth story is now tied to how well its pitch travels across different cultures and dating norms.
For a company whose subject matter — non-monogamy, queerness, kink — can be culturally sensitive, that international spread is a meaningful signal. It suggests the addressable audience is not confined to a handful of liberal urban markets, even if the app's heaviest usage is likely concentrated in cities.
Has Feeld been watered down?
Growth of this kind rarely passes without commentary, and Feeld has attracted its share. The influx of new users has prompted reports that the app's edgy image has been softened by an arrival of people with more conventional — or monogamous — sensibilities.
Feeld's president, Kyle Brennan, rejects the idea that this represents a dilution of the product. In his telling, the shift is less about the app losing its identity and more about the wider culture moving in its direction.
“These numbers speak to something bigger than the growth of our business,” Brennan said. He described the results as reflecting a broader shift in how people think about connection, pointing to greater openness, curiosity and agency to do things differently.
What the numbers actually signal
Strip away the positioning and the financial picture is fairly straightforward. A UK-founded app with a distinctive cultural niche has grown revenue by nearly a third, expanded its profit, and returned a record sum to its shareholders. It has done so while the largest player in its category is shrinking.
Whether that momentum is durable is a separate question. Dating apps have historically struggled with retention, and the same fatigue that has hurt mainstream platforms could eventually reach Feeld's audience too. There is also the perennial tension for any subculture-oriented product: scaling up brings in new users, and new users reshape the community that made the product attractive in the first place.
For now, the founders and their fellow shareholders have reason to be satisfied. A company that once fought a lawsuit over its name has turned a niche proposition into a business with a global revenue base, rising profits, and a dividend to match.
The wider dating-app picture
Feeld's results land at a moment when the online dating industry is being forced to rethink its fundamentals. User growth has stalled at the top of the market, and questions about the long-term health of app-based matchmaking have become a regular feature of industry coverage — including speculation about whether artificial intelligence could resolve some of the sector's long-standing complaints.
Against that backdrop, Feeld's performance reads as a data point in favour of differentiation. Rather than competing for the broadest possible audience, it has built for a specific one, and that specificity appears to have translated into pricing power, loyalty and international reach.
The next test will be whether the company can keep growing without alienating the users who made it work in the first place — and whether the openness Brennan describes is a lasting cultural shift or a passing moment in how people approach connection.
This article is based on reporting by The Guardian. Read the original article.
Originally published on theguardian.com
