Halal! Is it me you're looking for?
A deep dive into the business of dating apps with the founder of Muzz
Over the last couple of weeks, my IG feed has been filled with photos of billboards of a man called Mohamed looking for a wife (and no, we’re not going to question what my algorithm is trying to tell me).
It turns out it isn’t some wealthy guy who can afford to pay for billboards across New York, Toronto, and Mississauga (to name a few places) but a campaign by Muslim dating app Muzz — once known as Muzmatch (but we’ll get into that in a bit). The brains behind it? None other than its founder, Shahzad Younas.
After having the idea for Muzz, he built the company’s first prototype in 2015 from his home in Essex. He then joined the most famous accelerator in the world, Y Combinator, in San Francisco as the first Muslim-focused company. Nearly a decade later, Muzz now has a team of 150, is available in 160 countries and is approaching 14 million members globally.
We’ve exchanged DMs over the years across social platforms, but it took getting him to join me for a fireside chat on the Startup Life stage at Sifted Summit — yes, my alter ego is being a tech person — for us to finally get some face-to-face time. Of course, to make up for it, I forced him to continue chatting to me afterwards!
For those who don’t know, what is Muzz?
I always say, us Muslims, we don't date, we marry. So Muzz is like a Muslim dating app, but I prefer to say it’s a Muslim marriage app.
Was romance a big thing growing up for you?
Love, the L word, romance…wasn't really something that I saw much of. Marriage and ‘the family’ seemed like a functional relationship where everyone played their role. Things changed when my siblings got married and had kids. My family started hugging and showing emotions I hadn’t witnessed before — kids really can soften people and bring beauty to a situation. I now know I want to show more emotion and affection to my own family.
I do still believe in clear roles and responsibilities in a family. Our faith shows us how to treat family members and a partner, from finances to affection. But it can be hard to get the balance right in the modern world where more things are shared between a couple.
Why did you start Muzz?
At the time, us singles were stuck on horrible old websites that were ugly, expensive, and intrusive — they would ask for information like your weight and income. We deserved better than that. So I quit my ten year long career at Morgan Stanley, learnt how to build apps and went about answering one key question: How do we create something super serious for Muslims?
Is there a business case for serving this niche audience?
You say niche but we’re a fifth of the world’s population. We're two billion people. I believe most religions are in decline but we're the fastest growing religious group, globally. Muslims love having babies! Although it’s not an obligation in Islam, we do see having children as a blessing and Muslims definitely are more likely to make the decision based on their trust in God than external factors. Don't get me wrong, women are having kids later in life, couples are having fewer kids than the previous generation and the cost of having a child is on the rise. Yet, the population is growing. It’s also massively underserved. The opportunity is huge.
Why wouldn’t they just go and use one of the well known apps instead?
Listen, our goal is to get people married and off the app, whereas most mainstream ones are heavily gamified and geared towards keeping you on the platform. That’s their business model.
Also, if you're looking for the person you're going to inshallah spend the rest of your life with, not just someone within a five miles radius to go for a drink with, you need to be more specific about your needs. And you need a company that understands you need to figure out if there will be strong foundations as quickly as possible.
It's such a different mindset. You can’t let emotions drive you early on. You have to be somewhat functional in your search to find the right partner. Compatibility then vibes. It’s quite different to the Western world of dating where you go and see how you get on first, then chat about how you want to live your life.
What are these marks of compatibility?
It can be:
Family background and expectations
Values
Outlook
Languages
Ethnicities and culture
Religiosity: how practising are they? Do they care about God and religion as much as you do? Equally, you might be a Muslim who isn't that practising but you still want to marry a Muslim because that part of your identity is important to you.
Unlike a lot of people are led to believe, Muslims are not a monolith, so we have to build a product and features that work for everyone. We aren’t just going to go in and replicate products like Bumble and Tinder. They don’t address our needs so what’s the point? If you want something casual, please go there. Don't come to us.
Is there anything that surprises you about what you’ve learnt about your audience?
I find it super interesting that our data shows that people are more than willing to talk to someone abroad, fly across the world, get married abroad. Half of all the people on Muzz are talking to someone from a different country! It feels like a crazy new world full of opportunity and, for me, that's beautiful.
Somewhat related, half of all of the matches are between people from different ethnic backgrounds which I just think is amazing.
So when you first started you were called Muzmatch…
I can't say that, you can…
And that's because the Match Group took you to court in 2018. It believed that the name Muzmatch benefited from the branding of the Match Group. The London courts ruled in its favour in 2022.
Long story short, they tried to buy us in 2017. And a few times afterwards. I think the highest we were offered was £35m. We said no and their team offered us a deal: we can keep our name as long as we don't sell to one of its competitors. That didn’t make sense. So they sued us here and in the States. Then they sued us here and there, again. I genuinely thought our case was stronger, we were more prepared and were thorough so we went to appeal. We lost. So now we’re called Muzz.
We survived and that's the important thing.
What's been the impact for the company?
Well, it was expensive. The whole thing including legal fees, the settlement, etc. cost us about two million.
I learnt that you have to be ready for whatever outcome. I’m so glad we were already working on things internally, including almost a complete rebuild of the app, website and design. I just wanted a really impressive relaunch if we lost and had to change the name. I didn't want to come off like a loser with a new name stamped on the same product. That would have been rubbish.
What about for you?
I was not this grey before, I swear! It's stressful. I was very vocal about the court case. You can still go on Twitter and LinkedIn and find everything. I got a lot of PR from the whole thing and I was like, OK, I’m going to make the most of this.
It’s not just your own PR that you’re known for. Muzz has a reputation for being cheeky. Muslim focused marketing has always been very serious and you guys are definitely not that. There was an ad I saw on the metro in New York recently that made me giggle. I think it said, “1 million Muslims in New York and you're still single.” Like, OK, damn, relax.
Another fan fave is ‘Halal. Is it me you're looking for?’ Or the one we ran in Pakistan around not marrying your cousins, which went down like a house on fire.
I always want to approach stuff with humour and bring a lightness to it all. So yes, I’ve always found a lot of Muslim directed marketing to be quite dry and a bit boring. I didn’t want to be that. I love that our billboards are laughed at, shared with friends and even used as marketing case studies.
I'm also very conscious that more non Muslims are going to see our advert than Muslims, whether you like it or not. And Muslims always get a bad rep in the press for everything. Like a volcano goes off…must be the Muslims. So we get to have moments that show another side. Interestingly, many of our non-Muslim colleagues heard of us through an ad in the real world.
Let’s talk about dating app fatigue. I hate apps…
Why?
It’s a mixture of I don’t have time, I want a meet cute and, honestly, it makes me judgemental. From all my Brown Bodies chats and beyond, it’s clear I’m not alone though. Do you think people have dating app fatigue?
The big boys in the dating world need to ensure engagement at any cost. They’re trying to keep you in the app. They’ve gamified it too much, they paywall everything and they’ve encouraged (and not stamped out) bad behaviour. It’s created fatigue, exhaustion and annoyance. Everyone is sick of it not working and it’s not fun.
There’s also the gender divide. Men will like one in two women they see. Women will like one in eleven. It's brutal. It's cold out there. Men, I feel you. But also on the other side, women aren’t being served properly and they’re getting fed up.
There’s also loneliness. A lot of people live in big cities but don’t have friends or don’t have friends that fill their cup. They’ll turn to dating to fill it instead. Or they’ll use apps to find friends but that’s not working either. Swiping for friends is weird because, and I don’t know about you, I’m not making friends based on whether I find them attractive! So again, people are in a place where they don’t feel fulfilled.
But it’s not just the apps, right? We’re now seeing people use AI to create their profiles and even have conversations with potential partners.
Every dating company was in a rush to get on the AI train. Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, famously said, "If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges," and she wasn’t joking. Oh, it's horrible.
Why do people hate dating apps? Inauthenticity. Filtered photos, well crafted stories… Then you add AI chat and there’s no realness anywhere. Imagine, you then meet IRL and the guy can't string two sentences together. It's a waste of time.
I do think AI companions are going to be big, depressingly. You’ve got someone there to talk to, who wants to get to know you and is your friend. It's always going to be nice nice and never argues or nags. Islamically though, that’s not marriage material.
A huge thanks to Shaz for the conversation!
You can find him being fiery over on Twitter and LinkedIn.
This is a longer piece than usual. If you have any feedback, please do drop me a note.