Sibley Grad Brings Singles Daily Deals in Online Dating

It used to be singles met each other through church or school, friends, relatives or at the bar. 

With digital technology and social media, many singles are taking to the internet to find love instead.

One in five new couples now meet on an online dating site, according to a 2010 study by market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey in conjunction with Match.com. Of those who are single and looking, 37 percent had visited an online dating site, according to a Pew Research Study from way back in 2006.

“I think traditional dating is old school,” said Kareem Ahmed. “It’s so much easier to look for people (you know have) your interests.”

Ahmed, originally from Mendota Heights and a 2004 alumnus of Henry Sibley High School, is the co-creator of Inbox Cupid, a new online dating site that helps users do just that. 

A self-proclaimed entrepreneur, Ahmed said he was musing one day about the growth of daily deals services like Groupon, “So I figured, why don’t we just do it with people?”

Ahmed went to his tech-savvy buddy, David Dellanave, and Inbox Cupid was born—or rather, sprang from two weeks of six-hour days, a plan sketched out on a legal notepad, and late nights in The Urban Bean coffee shop in Minneapolis.

Dellanave has heard many ideas come out of Ahmed, he said, but most didn’t pan out.

“This one just kind of struck me, for some reason,” Dellanave said. “It’s making dating fun—light-hearted and fun.”

After just a month-and-a-half in production, Inbox Cupid had more than 2,000 members in the Twin Cities alone and people signing up from 37 cities across the country.

“We don’t even consider ourselves a dating site –we’re a connection site,” Ahmed said. “We’re an extra chance at love.”

Inbox Cupid is structured like the daily deals site Groupon. Singles can sign up for the service, indicate the gender in which they are interested and start receiving daily “Date of the Day” messages. Participants can then choose to message the Date of the Day if they are interested. Ahmed said 90 percent of the people on Inbox Cupid are there to browse, while 10 percent opt to be the Date of the Day. The process is free to users.*

Each day a new daily date is sent out to the correct category of singles: men looking for women, women looking for men, women looking for women, etc. Messages are even mobile-enabled, according to Ahmed.

Participants are never forced to be featured as the daily date. Inbox Cupid can be as passive as someone wants–or as active.

Daily dates sign up for that service, create a profile, upload a picture and general information about themselves, then choose five questions to answer from the 100 available.

Questions could be, “do you like beer?” or “what is your favorite book/movie?” They also include relationship questions such as, “In an ideal relationship, what would you spend the majority of time doing?”

“We think dating is more about fate,” Ahmed said. The more people a user approaches on the site, the more people they see, the better chance they have a love. He doesn’t believe his site is the end-all-be-all of online dating. In fact, Ahmed encourages people to use many online dating sites.

“This actually takes no work,” he said. “It’s 365 extra shots at love.”

It seems Ahmed lives and breathes social media. He has signed up for all the dating sites he can think of–though he tells his girlfriend it’s research for work. He’s on Twitter, has his own blog, has been a consultant for online marketing for three years and even reconnected with his current girlfriend through Facebook after taking classes with her at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

“If there was a top 100 Minneapolis Twitter users, Kareem would be one of them,” Dellanave said. The two business partners actually met on Twitter nearly three years ago.

Ahmed has even used online dating sites for personal motives. A while back, he said he signed up for eHarmony, but the system told him there were no matches for him in the database.

“I was very disappointed,” he said.

Dellanave, too, has dabbled in the online dating craze. He said he understands how many people are ashamed of admitting they date online. People don’t want to talk about it and hide their profiles from their friends. However, both co-creators have featured themselves as the daily date on Inbox Cupid and lined up dates.

“Inbox Cupid was actually fun,” Dellanave said. “It’s growing every single day. People just love it.”

Ahmed recently left his job to focus on Inbox Cupid and his consulting company, New Economy Labs. Dellanave has pursued many online marketing ventures and business opportunities following his three years at the University of Minnesota. In addition to Inbox Cupid, he owns Movement Minneapolis—a fitness center in Plymouth.

*An earlier version of this story stated that users could send a message to the Date of the Day for 99 cents. This is no longer the case. Patch regrets the error.