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STARTUPS

France’s hottest dating app sets sights on Tinder

French start-up Happn, which aims to bring romance and chance back to online dating, has just broken a record by raising more than €20 million in a year. It's well set to take on Tinder.

France's hottest dating app sets sights on Tinder
Photo: Happn

Ever bumped into someone in the street or glanced at someone in a café and wished you had the courage to approach them?

Well if that's you, the chances are you might be interested in Happn, a French dating app that gives users the chance of turning a one-off everyday encounter into a romance.

The French start up, which is now serving singles in 25 cities around the world, has just announced it has raised another €12.5 million in funding, on top of the €8 million it raised in February, meaning over €20 million in less than a year.

That counts as a record for a French start up and founder Didier Rappaport says the money will help them conquer new markets.

The innovative app which is being billed as a rival to Tinder relies on geo-localisation – and of course, people being signed up.

Happn allows complete strangers to get in touch if they like the look of each other but didn’t have the courage or the opportunity to make face to face contact.

Unlike other dating apps like world leader Tinder, Happn aims to bring back a bit of romance – or at least give daters the feeling there was some kind of fate behind their encounters rather than an algorithm.

It can hook you up with someone you met once, someone you saw in a café one time or someone you pass on the way to work everyday.

And it’s proving popular with more than 6 million users worldwide – a figure that is expected to hit 10 million by the end of the year.

“We wanted to introduce a bit more real life into the dating experience. In big cities you cross paths with hundreds of people, but at the same time it’s in big cities where we have the most trouble meeting people,” communications manager Marie Cosnard, told The Local on Friday.

“It’s completely different from other apps which just use algorithms to link people based on the compatibility of their profiles. For us it’s all base on everyday encounters,” Marie said.

“We knew we could do something with the smartphone technology and use geo-localisation in real time.”

For that chance encounter to turn into a date, both would-be potential lovers have to be signed up to Happn.

They could then scroll through their virtual timeline back to the point they crossed paths and then get the relationship moving by “liking” the other person’s profiles.

Those who pay the premium package and have a real crush on the person can even send charms.

While the users of Happn are pretty similar across the 25 cities where the service is up and running, Cosnard says there are some cultural differences that they have noticed.

“In the UK women are much more pro-active than the guys and often make the first move. Whereas in France women are more likely to wait for the guy to lead the way,” she said.

Happn does have a rival in the form of Spotted, a German app that was launched back in 2013 but is failing to prove as much a success.

But Paris always did do romance better than Berlin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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BUSINESS

Why you’ll soon be able to set up a company in Spain with just €1 rather than €3,000

The Spanish government has approved a new draft law that will allow companies to start up with just €1 and for the process to be carried out quickly and entirely online.

Why you'll soon be able to set up a company in Spain with just €1 rather than €3,000
How you can start a business in Spain for just €1. Photo: Javier Soriano/AFP

Currently, you must have to have a minimum of €3,000 to form a Limited Company in Spain, but if passed, the new bill will require you to only have €1, allowing the process to be completed electronically in just 10 days.

By doing this, the law includes measures to diversify sources of financing and promote non-bank financing, on which the majority of companies depend.

The bill’s main objective is to remove obstacles in the creation of companies in Spain.

The draft bill also looks at expanding activities for which you won’t need to obtain a license and promotes the use of electronic invoicing between companies and the self-employed, which will contribute to the digitisation of business activities.

Another aspect that the bill covers are ways to support financing for business growth, such as venture capital and crowdfunding platforms.

The Vice President and Minister of Economy and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, has indicated that this is one of the “most important” structural reforms of the Recovery and Resilience Plan which Spain submitted to the EU, and is aimed at “improving the performance and productivity of companies, as well as job creation “.

Defaults are one of the main problems that threaten business solvency for many Spanish companies because invoices are often not paid by the maximum legal term of 60 days. This problem particularly affects the self-employed, who allow large companies to take much longer to pay invoices for fear of losing more work or damaging relationships in the future.

For this reason, they do not usually demand legal compensations such as recovery costs or indemnities, even though it puts pressure on their margins.

To combat the wide non-compliance with this maximum period between companies, the new bill also suggests an incentive system for meeting payment deadlines and implementing electronic invoicing.

Together with the Startups Law and digital nomad visa, which the government also recently proposed, it aims to promote entrepreneurship and tackle the problems faced by Spanish companies, which makes it difficult for them to grow, go international or restructure debt.

READ ALSO: Tax cuts and special visas: Spain’s new law to attract foreign startups and digital nomads

Spain ranks only number 30 out of 190 in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ report in terms of business climate, behind many other EU countries.  

The bill is expected to reach the Congress of Deputies at the end of this year and if passed, will come into force in 2022.

COMPARE: Could Spain become the best country in the EU for digital nomads?

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