The runner-up of reality show The Apprentice Vana Koutsomitis is launching her crowdfunded dating app to coincide with Valentine’s Day this week.
DatePlay matches users based on answers to hundreds of Buzzfeed-style quiz questions, such as listing favourite politicians or attitudes to relationships.
Koutsomitis finished second to Joseph Valente in the 2015 edition of the BBC programme, and closed a £210k crowdfunding drive on Seedrs last summer, smashing its initial target of £120k.
Her app and its questions were developed in partnership with a psychologist, in order to bring a more playful aspect to online dating and capture aspects and shades of a user’s personality.
This helps build a profile to help connect customers with nearby people who share similar personality traits and preferences.
Koutsomitis said: “The world is full of seriousness and stress at the moment, so we wanted to bring something light-hearted and fun to the market.
“During these intense times, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and stressed out. DatePlay is here to take the edge off.
“We want people to play on a daily basis to find love.”
With one in five relationships now starting online, Koutsomitis told BusinessCloud last year she believes it’s the perfect time to launch her app.
She commented: “I think Sir Alan Sugar understands the opportunities of technology, but I think that the difficult part for him was maybe the dating space.
“I think it’s hard for people in a different generation to understand what the online dating world is.
“The online dating world has revolutionised the way we meet people now, it’s very different to how it was 20 years ago.
“We want to encourage people to explore and learn and research the online dating space because it’s going to grow and it’s only going to get bigger in time.”