Four squares on a phone screen show photos of four women. Tap the one you like and profiles appear showing age, occupation, education, and current location: a 27-year-old dentist and a 23-year-old garment buyer in Beijing; a 24-year-old designer in Hong Kong, and a 32-year-old sales executive in Taiyuan.
This is Qiuqiu, or "cupid" in Chinese, a dating app that steers users to potential partners. It is the vision of former JP Morgan Chase New York analyst 27-year-old Michael Lewis, who moved to the mainland to chase his start-up dreams.
Daters have three categories to assess: appearance, background and people they know in common. "It's more in line with how people naturally meet," says Liuzhou-born Lewis, who emigrated to the US aged six. "If you have 10 friends, and those 10 friends each have another 10 friends, that's 100 people you can meet. It's quite exponential." Enormous too: the mainland has the world's largest singles population, estimated at 180 million.
To some, Qiuqiu is also an investment opportunity. Rich individuals bought a stake in the firm at an early stage, acting as so-called angel investors. These are investors that provide critical capital and guidance to a promising firm just as it is getting off the ground.
Such investors are "angels" in that they look over fledgling firms and nurture them with money and guidance in their early years. Angel investors fill a crucial niche in that they provide capital to new firms before they are big enough to get the attention of professional investors at venture capital funds, who generally won't look at any opportunity under US$1 million.
Because angel investors come in early, taking risky bets on firms that have yet to establish themselves, they typically get to buy into the company at a low price. The pay-off usually in comes in the form of a share sell-down at the firm's initial public offering or in an acquisition.