Alone Together
An interview with co-founder, Daniel Ahmadizadeh, of the new innovative dating app, ‘Quarantine Together'—which uses current quarantine conditions to its advantage.
Daniel, please introduce yourself to our readers. Including where you are from and your occupation.
Thank you for having me, Brittany. My name is Daniel Ahmadizadeh. I’m a Bronx native and co-founder of Quarantine Together. I live by 231st street currently with my parents during Quarantine season. Growing up, I had a brief time where I went to middle school in Harlem, but I returned to the Bronx for high school and I’ve been here since then. Yeah, that’s kind of my story here as a local. 1 train all the way.
1 train all the way for me too. So, how have you been holding up during this pandemic? What do you find has been the most productive way to spend your free time?
Well, my dad’s a doctor in the Bronx. Immediately, the first concern was his health. For me personally, it’s been about just staying positive and taking this time to be creative. There’s a lot of negativity happening all around us. So it’s like, how can you create something that is positive? Whether that’s conversations you have with other people or projects that you work on. There are a lot of new behaviors that we have been doing since this all started. Six feet apart, face masks. Even though this virus is really negative, there are a lot of positives that can come out of it. When the recession happened 12 years ago, companies like Uber and Venmo were launched during this time. This has been an opportunity to make something good out of the bad.
Positivity is a great tool to deal with this stress. Awesome, thank you for that. So let’s dive in, shall we? What was the source of the inspiration for ‘Quarantine Together’?
Quarantine Together is a project that my friend and I kicked off and started working on for fun on March 8th. That same night, we launched it. It was very easy to get it off the ground. 14 days later, it was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. We have about 30,000 people all over the world that use it every day. We work on it nights and weekends. It’s been exciting to see how people are looking for human connection.
“The root of it is we crave authentic human connections.
Loneliness is not going away. In fact, it’s always been here before Covid-19. ”
Wow! QT has really taken off since its inception. How does this app stand out from other dating apps and websites, such as Hinge or Tinder?
Great question. So let’s think of people as “books.” Apps like Tinder and Hinge are first and foremost about your picture, your clever bio, and the ‘cover’. People are getting judged by that ‘cover’. With us, there’s no photos, no judgement. It’s two people, anonymous and having a private text conversation. The ‘content’ of said ‘book - that’s really the primary difference. For a segment of the population, physical appearance is the number one way that they want to connect with someone. And that’s fair. You have different types of bars. You have the Irish pub. You have the bar that plays Spanish music. And that’s what we’re doing here. Just like every bar has its own flavor and vibe, many apps are the same. Tinder is about hookups, Hinder is a little bit more serious, Bumble is women first. For us, it’s about people that don’t want to be judged based off of their appearance. They want to have a genuine conversation first.
As we both know, many dating apps and websites utilize the “swipe-right” technique or personal profile methods to match potential partners or friends together. Others use a ‘face-to-face’ speed dating method. But for ‘Quarantine Together,’ it uses a combination of the two, aiming for a genuine connection free from visual bias. Why did you go with this concept rather than the more common methods I described?
The root of it is we crave authentic human connections. Loneliness is not going away. In fact, it’s always been here before Covid-19. Just like we crave authentic experiences in life in general, we look at the movement of how things are happening. We don’t want fake, we want real. That’s why people buy organic food or look for real raw content. The reality is Tinder makes 2 billion dollars a year on revenue with 60 million users. What about all the people who aren’t on dating apps because of how they work? We focus on the users that never liked traditional dating apps. We think it’s a great opportunity to help those people.
Photo by Max Ducourneau
Does this app take into consideration non-binary people or members of the LGBTQ community? How so? (If not, any ideas on how to implement this?)
Absolutely. So when you look at our form to sign up, there’s a section for gender. There are multiple options, not just male or female. There is non-binary and we have a place where you can put it in yourself. Then we match people based off of those preferences. In fact, Buzzfeed did a video about the QT experience. One of the reporters in the video matched with another man and talked about his experience. QT is about no judgement… on all fronts. It comes down to connecting with another human being.
What kind of criteria do you use to connect people?
The way the matching works is by age preference, location, availability (when they send the ‘wash hands text), and gender preference. It can be tailored to preferences in regards to what is craved from this experience. This can all be accessed from your dashboard before you begin matching with other people.
The internet is a tough terrain to navigate for some, especially with internet bullying being a major social issue in today’s society. Have you all created precautions or a code of conduct to combat bullying should this problem arise within the realm of ‘Quarantine Together’?
When we match people, you get matched and introduced to each other. It might say “Daniel, meet Jasmin. You have thirty minutes to chat. Be kind to one another.” Then it says “P.S. If for any reason your match is being disrespectful, just text back ‘End Chat’.” This function immediately ends the chat. Look, when you’re texting your match, they don’t know your phone number and vice versa. It’s all anonymous and it’s a private number. Just like when you text your Uber driver.
So like a secondary number that keeps a level of respect and protection for both people?
Exactly. So let’s say your match is disrespectful or you’re having a bad experience, you text back ‘End Chat’. In fact, we think this will be a meme someday [laughs]. So we want to be proactive about bullying and we thought of this way to help users remain in control. Another thing that we do is that every single chat is rated by both parties. You’re not rating the person, necessarily, but you are helping us understand how your conversation and experience were. But we do ask you if we should keep your match in the QT community? And it allows you to explain. So the feedback really helps us police QT and help users feel comfortable.
Can you tell me a little bit about the process in developing QT with your team? Maybe give us a short rundown on the collaboration it took to create this app?
My friend and I were catching up via email on 3/8. Decided to build something that night and we launched the first prototype the same night. We used no-code tools like Typeform, Webflow, Zapier, and Twilio to make it happen.
Thanks for that, Daniel. So let’s take a step back and talk a bit about you. Are you currently dating? (IF yes, how did you guys meet, dating app?)
Not dating! Single.
What would you say is your most memorable form of connection with another person?
Ones where we have something to bond over. Where there is shared context. Sometimes it can be surprising context.
I understand what you mean. You never know what will spark a connection between you and someone else. Speaking of connections, the ‘Quarantine Together’ website mentions covid resources and donations. Could you explain this aspect and why it was important for you guys to include in this project?
My dad is a ER physician on the front lines and we recognize that many hospitals around the world do not have the resources for protection, so we wanted to link out to organizations that are raising funds for the cause.
Photo by Derick Anies
What was the most challenging part about creating this app?
The beauty of our app is that it is not even an app. No download required. It's all via SMS. The challenging part for us in creating QT in the early days (10 weeks) was more around messaging and positioning. Setting the vibe and energy of the QT experience.
What’s the most exciting part?
Feedback from users. They share with us magical conversations that took place and how QT helped them feel less lonely.
So once ‘Quarantine Together’ launches, what’s next for the app? Where do you see it going in 6 months, when hopefully, quarantine is officially over?
We'll probably just call ourselves Together or just QT. Loneliness isn't going anywhere.
Okay, to wrap up, I have one question I’m sure our readers have eagerly been waiting for: is this app available on all platforms, Android and iPhone? How do we sign up?
You can sign up on Quarantine Together - no app download required!