GoDaddy brings Tinder-like app to Hong Kong to help entrepreneurs

US domain name and web hosting company GoDaddy has launched a Tinder-like app for aspiring entrepreneurs in Hong Kong to post their ideas and receive feedback from the community.

The app, called Flare, was first launched in North America in May and is now being expanded to potential entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Aspiring entrepreneurs anonymously post their ideas with a photo that appears on users’ home screens. Users swipe left to ignore, swipe right to save for later or click on to learn more and show their support by pressing “Love”.

“We wanted to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with a way to easily validate their ideas from a wider community, wider circle of people, with various backgrounds and expertise,” said Tina Nguyen, director of product management and co-creator of Flare.

Roger Chen, vice-president of Asia for GoDaddy, said the company chose to launch the app in Hong Kong as its position an international city with a growing number of start-ups makes it a good test market for Flare.

“We’re trying to put Flare into markets where there’s already a plentiful start-up ecosystem, so there’s a whole bunch of crowd sourcing, accelerators and incubators in Hong Kong.”

A survey by InvestHK reported that the number of start-ups in Hong Kong grew 46 per cent last year to 1,558 compared with 1,065 in 2014.