Why I Started JOAD
Where it started
The first version of JOAD was called “Blind Love”. I wrote it down in May 2024, in a note on my laptop, and most of what I believed when I wrote it turned out to be wrong. But one idea survived, and JOAD is built around it.
This is the story of how I got from that note to here.
It started with frustration. I didn’t start JOAD because I spotted a gap in the market. I’m still not sure it will make any money. I started it because online dating is in crisis and someone needs to do something. I may as well be that someone. I came to that conclusion through my own experiences, but also through extensive research.
I was previously in an ethically non-monogamous relationship, where my partner and I were free to date other people, openly and with each other’s knowledge. I used the sites built for people like us. It didn’t take long for some trends to form. She was constantly inundated with low-quality messages. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get any attention. And then there was the way the apps charge for additional features: the ones that supposedly make you stand out, or let you actually use the app for something useful.
I lost my previous partner to cancer. Before anyone asks, I am in a monogamous relationship now, and that was my choice. But the principles I learnt back then around communication, trust and openness still form the foundation of our relationship.
When I first started using the apps, I thought I was the problem because I was getting no matches. So I started looking around and reading about other people’s experiences. It turns out my experience was quite normal, and so was my partner’s.
I then looked wider than dating apps and realised that the whole industry is a mess. Overall, people find it harder to date, and fewer dates happen. You’ve all heard of the male loneliness epidemic, and of the various flavours of radical feminism built around the idea that the world would be better without men.
My conclusion was the same as everyone else’s: on average it seems men hate women, women hate men, and dating apps profit from the whole sordid situation.
At that point I should have let it go and accepted that this is the world we live in now. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
A better way
I thought to myself: there must be a better way. Two beliefs kept me going: 1) there are still many decent men and women out there, and 2) there should be at least one dating app that lets people find and date each other in a cost-effective, transparent manner.
Let me talk about the second point first.
A 2024 note in my journal had a list headed “Transparency”:
- No ranking by algorithm
- Be honest about the gender split (the ratio of men to women)
- Know whether a member actually replies to messages
- How many dates actually happened
Two years later, that list became the defining feature of JOAD. Members see the numbers that other dating apps keep hidden. This may make us look bad, especially at the start, but people need transparency. The headline number is the last item on that list: real meetings that actually happened.
Now, the first point.
I think the dating crisis is real. Men and women have lost the ability to communicate with one another. People have forgotten what it takes to start and maintain a relationship: trust, openness, effort and commitment.
We live in a world where marketers and product designers are always making things easier, simpler and faster. Those are great attributes for a product or service, but they do not transfer to relationships. If we want better relationships, we, men and women, have to put in the work.
That is why JOAD will do what it can to restore the balance that is so sorely needed, by partnering with selected service providers to help people relearn how to have healthy, strong, happy relationships. We will build a community that shares our values: people who know that quality takes effort.
In early August 2026, I took the whole design apart and rebuilt it. Five things changed.
Everyone is in. JOAD doesn’t care whether you are straight, gay, or any other sexual or relationship orientation.
Built for monogamous and open daters equally. My own story starts in an open relationship, but JOAD is not only an ethically non-monogamous app. Someone looking for one partner for life matters to JOAD exactly as much as someone dating openly with their partner’s knowledge. Both pay the same, get the same features, and say precisely what they want, so each is only shown people who want the same thing.
One flat price. An earlier version had its own in-app currency for paying for attention. I dropped it. Now everyone pays £10 a month, and there is nothing else to buy. With nothing extra to sell, we have no reason to fiddle with the numbers.
The numbers became the product. Transparency used to be one feature among many. Now it is the reason JOAD exists.
A new name. We went through several names. The new name is Just One A Day, because that’s what you get: one recommendation a day that you can reach out to.
The bottom line
By the end of August, I had written a manifesto. Its first line is the whole reason for all of this:
Fix online dating, one date at a time.
We aren’t trying to build the biggest dating app. We’re trying to build the one that produces the most real dates, honestly counted, and we will publish that number even when it isn’t flattering.
That’s why I started JOAD.
No comments yet.