INVESTMENT in Tangle Labs Ltd

November 6th 2013

Quirky App Set to De-Tangle the Complex, Costly Web of Online Dating

‘Love at first sight’ is the bold tagline for this ambitious, new, game-ified, dating app, Tangle, but for the four Italian founders whose brainchild allows users to go back in time to connect with someone who caught their eye, it’s a very real motivation.

What sets Tangle apart from the ordinarily costly and complicated web of online dating? The simple, user-friendly, purple app offers a connection based on a real-time, real-life encounter. Following a quick and free download from the Google Play app store, users can experience a refreshing and energising take on the often-overwhelming world of online dating. The Tees Valley based Tangle enables users to meet real people from real-time encounters; a step-ahead of the casual, randomly-generated ‘matches’ on competing sites and apps. Tangle’s founders claim to save users the ‘embarrassment of the first approach’, whilst providing an open platform for blush-free connections and conversations based on past meetings or sightings.

So, who said romance was dead? As the social stigma (and oft-unavoidable puns) of virtual dating encounters gradually fade, Tangle paves the way for more traditional dating concepts which still have a firm reliance on the romance of real-time encounters. It allows a user to think back to a time where someone caught their eye (but passed them by), and act on it; whether at opposite ends of a crowded train carriage or in the queue for a bustling coffee shop.

In a digital dating world filled with an estimated 200 to 300 dating apps, the concept of ‘love at first sight’ is often confused with love at first ‘swipe’, and an equally confusing array of matching mechanisms. The team at Tangle Labs in Middlesbrough have high hopes for the progress of their app enabling hopeful singles to meet through a simple user interface, based on traditional laws of attraction.

The attraction doesn’t seem to stop there; the Italian founders used their powers of attraction to secure investment from the tantalisingly-large Finance for Business North East Angel Fund this month. Taking advantage of a growing market of busy, young and tech-savvy singles, the Tangle Labs team aim to further develop and market their quirky app following a funding deal with independent fund management firm, Rivers Capital Partners.

According to Rivers Capital, a venture capital firm offering funds both managed by, and nurtured for, entrepreneurs, Tangle Labs are set to provide a genuine positive economic impact on the mobile dating application industry in the North East. Dr Michael Dickens, who led the investment team at Rivers Capital, praised the pioneering approach of the Tangle Lab team; ‘not only have the Tangle team developed a truly original idea, they follow a stringent business model that makes their ambitious goals for growth seem readily attainable now they have secured the funding to enable them to grow and develop’. The dedicated and supportive fund managers are working closely with the inventors of the Tangle concept to ensure that the innovative plan is exercised with total financial security, providing for unhindered growth and large-scale success.

As the dating industry has seen the migration of most users to mobile devices, the dating industry has been rolling out apps to connect an audience once captured almost exclusively by the Goliaths of online dating. Has Tangle got what it takes? Along with an unparalleled and enthusiastic passion for fresh ideas, there seems to be some first-rate funding opportunities in the North East, so this app breaking into a global industry but with an inherently local focus seems set for unhindered success.