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Investment
M13 is excited to lead the $5M seed in Sitch, AI dating startup co-founded by Bumble and Snap alumni. The company, co-founded by Nandini Mullaji and Chad DePue, developed an artificial intelligence voice match-maker that rivals the personal touch Sima Aunty gives to her clients on the Netflix hit show “Indian Matchmaking.” M13 was joined in the round by a16z (speedrun) and a group of angel investors including Jeremy Liew, Anton Levy, Vanessa Larco and Mercedes Bent.
Why AI matchmaking is the future of dating: what makes Sitch different
Dating apps need a refresh, and the addition of AI into the dating industry today allows for an improved experience that starts with better personalization.
Enter Nandini Mullaji, someone who loves being a match-maker and who helped launch Bumble in India, and Chad DePue, a previous Snap engineering Senior Director and SVP Engineering at Uniswap, who came together to build on their separate expertises and create Sitch.
The app chats with you like a friend to get to know you and the kind of mate you are looking for. Then its AI algorithm curates several matches and introduces you to them through the app when you both approve of the matches. It will also find a time and place for you to meet up.
M13 partner Anna Barber says Mullaji and DePue have “an innate understanding of the category, what people need and marketing instincts about how to build this business.”
“It's really an incredible combination between two founders that you rarely see,” she added.
She followed the pair’s progress as they spun up the company in 2024 and watched as they not only got early traction with customers, but early conversion to paid members.
“That’s such a strong sign when people are actually willing to pay you early on,” Barber said. “It can be one of the biggest problems in launching and growing a consumer business. We realized that they had something that people were excited about enough that they wanted to pay for it.”
There's a massive gap between the low end of swiping dating apps and high-touch personalized service. That's the white space where Sitch is sitting. Sitch is a market-expanding technology creating a larger market that didn't exist, because they’re expanding the pool of people who want that higher level of service, but just couldn’t previously afford it.” - M13 partner Anna Barber
How Sitch works: AI voice matchmaker meets real-world connection
Modern dating apps are not so modern anymore. The swipe is so 2012. As The New York Times reported in 2024, “dating apps have hit a wall.” That said, dating services are still expected to grow annually by around 6% each year over the next five years.
So how do you improve on an industry for people who aren't ready to give up looking for the “one” and still want to do it from their phone? With artificial intelligence, of course.
The core model of dating apps is broken, leading to a higher level of dissatisfaction, Barber said. People pay for these services anyway because until now, there haven’t been many alternatives. For example, if you want that “Indian Matchmaking” personalized service, it can cost you anywhere between $10,000 and $25,000 to over $100,000 in some cases.
Mullaji and DePue want to change this with Sitch. The secret sauce behind the app is using AI to “replicate what a human matchmaker would do, while still feeling incredibly personal,” Mullaji said.
You can chat with the Sitch app, or call in and talk to Mullaji’s cloned voice so that the app can get to know you and ask you different questions about your likes, dislikes, hobbies, qualities, red flags and non-negotiables.
Then all of that information is summarized by the AI, and Sitch’s match-making algorithm will send you candidates. When both of you agree to meet, Sitch will set up a group chat like a friend would. The company is also planning a future feature that will help plan the first date.
“It’s an end-to-end experience that helps you figure out who you’re looking for, sets you up on dates, helps you understand what that experience is like and finally, maybe, helps you meet THAT person,” Mullaji said.
One of the important parts is that you are charged by setups, so both parties are in-it-to-win-it, so to speak. You’re less likely to ghost each other because you both have a stake in meeting up offline. In fact over 90% of setups result in users exchanging numbers, she said.
Sitch’s AI advantage: deep learning, big data, and human nuance
When DePue was thinking about his next move after Snap, he considered something with AI and relationships, and what that would look like: how do you help people make better decisions? How can you use AI to encourage people to connect but not replace human connection?
There were already startups out there that helped us better understand ourselves, DePue said, but what he found was that people didn’t want to pay for that.
“Also, you could see the trend, which is that ChatGPT is going to get good enough at this that there's not really a ton of room for us to do something better, especially if we're not building a social graph on top of it that gives us defensibility,” he said.
Where AI does well in cases like Sitch is being “exceptionally talented” at summarizing data in ways that would take a lot of work from a human. He gave the example of writing an employee review and all the steps that it takes to do a deep dive into a person’s performance, what they are good at, bad at and whether they have areas of improvement. It would take a lot of time to do that.
Instead, AI thrives on that kind of brain dump and can come up with a summary very quickly.
“We’ve leveraged that in the product design,” DePue said. “The biggest difference for what we're doing with AI versus say, what ChatGPT does, or other AI agents, is we are asking the questions and coming away from that with a summary of what you're looking for, versus you asking it questions.
“We've flipped the script in terms of how you interact with Sitch. The pattern matching is the secret sauce: we can look at every single person in our system, and we can use very subtle things about what we've learned from you to figure out whether you're a good fit with someone in a way that existing platforms just don't have that data,” he added. And with AI evolving so quickly, DePue says that pattern matching was not possible a year ago, or even six months ago.
Mullaji believes love could be a big data problem that AI can solve, not to find just one soulmate but to find “three to five really great people who meet your criteria, which could be the best chance of finding who you’re going to build a great life with,” she said.
Barber agrees: Sitch is solving a major big data problem.
“You cannot do what Sitch is doing without artificial intelligence,” she said. “The only way to take into account so many data points and end up with a result and a recommendation that is on target is by using AI. It's not just a one-time data intake, but it’s getting smarter over time as you give feedback on the people you meet. The matches also get better and better.
“When you combine that kind of precision and nuance with a larger pool of people, that gets really exciting, because you're going to be matched with people who are a great fit and that you would have never run across in your real life,” Barber added.
Founder story: Nandini Mullaji’s matchmaking legacy meets generative AI
Match-making is in Mullaji’s blood. Her grandmother was a successful matchmaker in India, pairing 26 couples.
“I grew up with that, and I'm very, very close to her and very similar to her in many ways,” Mullaji said. “Both of us have that innate desire to connect people and get to know people. We'll talk to people on flights and on the street. She did all of the matching with a notebook, diaries and her landline. I’m doing it with an app and AI.”
The first time Mullaji set someone up for real was during a sorority formal in college, but her friends have since reminded her that she set up a group of them in the eighth grade for a school dance.
She had another dating startup prior to Sitch called Setup, which didn’t end up working out. When she met DePue and started throwing ideas together, they came across a way to capture the real nuance and detail of traditional match-making with technology.
“I was not going to be able to speak and get to know 4,000 who signed up, but I could do it using Sitch,” Mullaji said.
Mullaji’s passion for match-making was something that DePue connected with. They hit it off immediately, he said.
“We ultimately focused on what we knew was our end game, which was match-making and building a real dating product,” DePue said. “We took her experience from what she did before, and what it felt like we could pull off with AI, and that's where our skills have been very complimentary.”
Sitch launches in New York with thousands of AI-generated matches
Meanwhile, Mullaji believes the dating industry is going to move from self-service to service, and being able to use online tools to meet people offline.
“AI is used as the connective tissue to connect us but is not meant to replace that human connection,” she said.
Sitch officially launched this year in New York and is generating thousands of potential matches per day among the over 10,000 profiles on its app. The startup is also seeing 30% of its members choose to set up profiles with the AI voice matchmaker.
In May, Sitch put billboards up in 260 MTA stations across New York and took over the NASDAQ Times Square billboard as part of its dating recession campaign.
One of the app’s features catching on is Communities. As Mullaji explains, it’s a way to meet people in real life using the Sitch app and a community code.
“People love an activity-based way to meet people and meet people where they are at,” she said. “If you are both working out at the gym at 7am, you're a particular type of person, and your lifestyles are probably pretty conducive. We are getting some reach-outs by organizing groups. Many times you don’t know who is single at parties. We’d then love to do something where we can give them a code, and then even the next morning, follow up with, ‘here’s who you should have met at this party.’”
Read more about Dini Mullaji
https://gurunandinisays.substack.com/
Burned out on dating apps? This founder says AI can help
The hot new dating app trend: matchmaking
Move over Hinge and Tinder, there's a new crop of dating apps
Follow Sitch
Investment
M13 is excited to lead the $5M seed in Sitch, AI dating startup co-founded by Bumble and Snap alumni. The company, co-founded by Nandini Mullaji and Chad DePue, developed an artificial intelligence voice match-maker that rivals the personal touch Sima Aunty gives to her clients on the Netflix hit show “Indian Matchmaking.” M13 was joined in the round by a16z (speedrun) and a group of angel investors including Jeremy Liew, Anton Levy, Vanessa Larco and Mercedes Bent.
Why AI matchmaking is the future of dating: what makes Sitch different
Dating apps need a refresh, and the addition of AI into the dating industry today allows for an improved experience that starts with better personalization.
Enter Nandini Mullaji, someone who loves being a match-maker and who helped launch Bumble in India, and Chad DePue, a previous Snap engineering Senior Director and SVP Engineering at Uniswap, who came together to build on their separate expertises and create Sitch.
The app chats with you like a friend to get to know you and the kind of mate you are looking for. Then its AI algorithm curates several matches and introduces you to them through the app when you both approve of the matches. It will also find a time and place for you to meet up.
M13 partner Anna Barber says Mullaji and DePue have “an innate understanding of the category, what people need and marketing instincts about how to build this business.”
“It's really an incredible combination between two founders that you rarely see,” she added.
She followed the pair’s progress as they spun up the company in 2024 and watched as they not only got early traction with customers, but early conversion to paid members.
“That’s such a strong sign when people are actually willing to pay you early on,” Barber said. “It can be one of the biggest problems in launching and growing a consumer business. We realized that they had something that people were excited about enough that they wanted to pay for it.”
There's a massive gap between the low end of swiping dating apps and high-touch personalized service. That's the white space where Sitch is sitting. Sitch is a market-expanding technology creating a larger market that didn't exist, because they’re expanding the pool of people who want that higher level of service, but just couldn’t previously afford it.” - M13 partner Anna Barber
How Sitch works: AI voice matchmaker meets real-world connection
Modern dating apps are not so modern anymore. The swipe is so 2012. As The New York Times reported in 2024, “dating apps have hit a wall.” That said, dating services are still expected to grow annually by around 6% each year over the next five years.
So how do you improve on an industry for people who aren't ready to give up looking for the “one” and still want to do it from their phone? With artificial intelligence, of course.
The core model of dating apps is broken, leading to a higher level of dissatisfaction, Barber said. People pay for these services anyway because until now, there haven’t been many alternatives. For example, if you want that “Indian Matchmaking” personalized service, it can cost you anywhere between $10,000 and $25,000 to over $100,000 in some cases.
Mullaji and DePue want to change this with Sitch. The secret sauce behind the app is using AI to “replicate what a human matchmaker would do, while still feeling incredibly personal,” Mullaji said.
You can chat with the Sitch app, or call in and talk to Mullaji’s cloned voice so that the app can get to know you and ask you different questions about your likes, dislikes, hobbies, qualities, red flags and non-negotiables.
Then all of that information is summarized by the AI, and Sitch’s match-making algorithm will send you candidates. When both of you agree to meet, Sitch will set up a group chat like a friend would. The company is also planning a future feature that will help plan the first date.
“It’s an end-to-end experience that helps you figure out who you’re looking for, sets you up on dates, helps you understand what that experience is like and finally, maybe, helps you meet THAT person,” Mullaji said.
One of the important parts is that you are charged by setups, so both parties are in-it-to-win-it, so to speak. You’re less likely to ghost each other because you both have a stake in meeting up offline. In fact over 90% of setups result in users exchanging numbers, she said.
Sitch’s AI advantage: deep learning, big data, and human nuance
When DePue was thinking about his next move after Snap, he considered something with AI and relationships, and what that would look like: how do you help people make better decisions? How can you use AI to encourage people to connect but not replace human connection?
There were already startups out there that helped us better understand ourselves, DePue said, but what he found was that people didn’t want to pay for that.
“Also, you could see the trend, which is that ChatGPT is going to get good enough at this that there's not really a ton of room for us to do something better, especially if we're not building a social graph on top of it that gives us defensibility,” he said.
Where AI does well in cases like Sitch is being “exceptionally talented” at summarizing data in ways that would take a lot of work from a human. He gave the example of writing an employee review and all the steps that it takes to do a deep dive into a person’s performance, what they are good at, bad at and whether they have areas of improvement. It would take a lot of time to do that.
Instead, AI thrives on that kind of brain dump and can come up with a summary very quickly.
“We’ve leveraged that in the product design,” DePue said. “The biggest difference for what we're doing with AI versus say, what ChatGPT does, or other AI agents, is we are asking the questions and coming away from that with a summary of what you're looking for, versus you asking it questions.
“We've flipped the script in terms of how you interact with Sitch. The pattern matching is the secret sauce: we can look at every single person in our system, and we can use very subtle things about what we've learned from you to figure out whether you're a good fit with someone in a way that existing platforms just don't have that data,” he added. And with AI evolving so quickly, DePue says that pattern matching was not possible a year ago, or even six months ago.
Mullaji believes love could be a big data problem that AI can solve, not to find just one soulmate but to find “three to five really great people who meet your criteria, which could be the best chance of finding who you’re going to build a great life with,” she said.
Barber agrees: Sitch is solving a major big data problem.
“You cannot do what Sitch is doing without artificial intelligence,” she said. “The only way to take into account so many data points and end up with a result and a recommendation that is on target is by using AI. It's not just a one-time data intake, but it’s getting smarter over time as you give feedback on the people you meet. The matches also get better and better.
“When you combine that kind of precision and nuance with a larger pool of people, that gets really exciting, because you're going to be matched with people who are a great fit and that you would have never run across in your real life,” Barber added.
Founder story: Nandini Mullaji’s matchmaking legacy meets generative AI
Match-making is in Mullaji’s blood. Her grandmother was a successful matchmaker in India, pairing 26 couples.
“I grew up with that, and I'm very, very close to her and very similar to her in many ways,” Mullaji said. “Both of us have that innate desire to connect people and get to know people. We'll talk to people on flights and on the street. She did all of the matching with a notebook, diaries and her landline. I’m doing it with an app and AI.”
The first time Mullaji set someone up for real was during a sorority formal in college, but her friends have since reminded her that she set up a group of them in the eighth grade for a school dance.
She had another dating startup prior to Sitch called Setup, which didn’t end up working out. When she met DePue and started throwing ideas together, they came across a way to capture the real nuance and detail of traditional match-making with technology.
“I was not going to be able to speak and get to know 4,000 who signed up, but I could do it using Sitch,” Mullaji said.
Mullaji’s passion for match-making was something that DePue connected with. They hit it off immediately, he said.
“We ultimately focused on what we knew was our end game, which was match-making and building a real dating product,” DePue said. “We took her experience from what she did before, and what it felt like we could pull off with AI, and that's where our skills have been very complimentary.”
Sitch launches in New York with thousands of AI-generated matches
Meanwhile, Mullaji believes the dating industry is going to move from self-service to service, and being able to use online tools to meet people offline.
“AI is used as the connective tissue to connect us but is not meant to replace that human connection,” she said.
Sitch officially launched this year in New York and is generating thousands of potential matches per day among the over 10,000 profiles on its app. The startup is also seeing 30% of its members choose to set up profiles with the AI voice matchmaker.
In May, Sitch put billboards up in 260 MTA stations across New York and took over the NASDAQ Times Square billboard as part of its dating recession campaign.
One of the app’s features catching on is Communities. As Mullaji explains, it’s a way to meet people in real life using the Sitch app and a community code.
“People love an activity-based way to meet people and meet people where they are at,” she said. “If you are both working out at the gym at 7am, you're a particular type of person, and your lifestyles are probably pretty conducive. We are getting some reach-outs by organizing groups. Many times you don’t know who is single at parties. We’d then love to do something where we can give them a code, and then even the next morning, follow up with, ‘here’s who you should have met at this party.’”
Read more about Dini Mullaji
https://gurunandinisays.substack.com/
Burned out on dating apps? This founder says AI can help
The hot new dating app trend: matchmaking
Move over Hinge and Tinder, there's a new crop of dating apps
Follow Sitch
Read more
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