Latest news with #Cerca
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
A new dating app made by college students uses mutual friends to match you. Read the pitch deck it raised $1.6M with.
While some new dating apps look to the future with AI, others are going back to basics. Myles Slayton, CEO of dating app Cerca, is betting that Gen Z dating app users want their next relationships to come from their already established social circles — not strangers. Cerca, which launched in March, curates matches with mutuals using people's contact lists on their phones. Cerca's users are limited to seeing four profiles a day and find out at 8 p.m. each day whether someone liked them back. The startup recently raised a $1.6 million seed investment led by venture capital firm Corazon Capital, Business Insider has exclusively learned. After returning to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., following a summer banking internship in New York City, Slayton spent his senior year building Cerca, alongside cofounders William Conzelman and Carter Rocket-Mun. "We built this app out of frustration with the other apps," Slayton said. Cerca users can see what contacts they have in common with another profile, and those mutual friends can join the app to help do the matchmaking themselves. "We want to show the mutuals — the people and friends that you have in common — and then show the info about the person, and then lastly, show the photos," Slayton said. "It's not all about what you look like." To join the app, users need to bring five friends, or they can bypass the waitlist if they already have five friends using it. The dating app landed on the radar of Corazon Capital's Sam Yagan, who previously cofounded OkCupid and was the CEO of Match Group (which owns dating apps like Tinder and Hinge) from 2012 to 2015. Yagan said Cerca's traction among college students caught his attention. The app has more than 20,000 users, and most of that user base is between 18 and 30, Cerca said. "There has been a very noticeable rejection of the swipe apps by Gen Z," said Yagan, whose firm's first investment in dating is Cerca. Using mutuals to match isn't completely novel. Hinge launched over a decade ago with a similar premise, and other dating apps have attempted to tap into the friends-as-matchmakers trend (including Tinder and Facebook). One of Cerca's unique features, though, is that you can look up specific people. "Everyone has four or five crushes in mind at any moment, right?" Slayton said. "As opposed to waiting days, weeks, months for that profile to appear, you can simply search up their name." The next generation of dating apps Cerca is one of several new startups taking on the apps dominating online dating right now. Other startups, like Sitch, an AI matchmaking app, also recently raised capital. (Applications of AI in dating have also spurred interest among some investors.) However, outside Cerca's algorithm, its product or branding does not heavily boast AI. "AI will touch everything in this world, every sector," Slayton said. "The one thing that AI can't touch is your best friend's opinion on something or someone." Instead, Cerca's growth plan will include an IRL events component, such as parties with mutual friends or activations on college campuses. "Almost every dating interaction that starts online ends up with the desire of being offline," Yagan said. "The more a dating app can integrate the real world into its customer acquisition, into its engagement loop, the more it naturally lends itself to success, which is ultimately, users going on a date." Note: Some details have been redacted. Its pitch starts by describing the app. Cerce Then the deck outlines the problems Cerca is trying to solve. Cerce The startup also outlines its plan for IRL events. Cerca has been hosting events in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami. "Cerca Events is an extension of our app, giving our users spaces to meet mutual friends in person," the slide says. The slide outlined a few planned events in New York and on college campuses. The deck wraps with a product demo. The slide includes a video showing how the app works and what the user experience looks like, including its mutual friend tools.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The B-52's, Devo to Embark on Co-Headlining Cosmic De-Evolution Tour
Two titans of New Wave, the B-52's and Devo, will team up this fall for the co-headlining Cosmic De-Evolution Tour. Although the B-52's embarked on a farewell tour three years ago — they've since confined themselves to a Las Vegas residency — the idea of joining the 'Whip It' troupe on the road proved too enticing to ignore. The two bands recently linked up (alongside Fred Armisen) at the all-star SNL 50 concert and discussed the venture. More from Rolling Stone Clave Especial Will Celebrate the 'Power of Corridos' During First-Ever Tour Marina Plots Regal 'Princess of Power' Fall Tour Marco Antonio Solis Unveils Más Cerca De Ti Tour Dates 'In 2022, I swore I'd never get on a tour bus again, but we were careful to say to our fans that we would still perform in special situations that don't require all of the awful tour travel,' the B-52's Fred Schneider said in a statement. 'Our Vegas residency is going great, and when we were offered the chance to do a small run of shows with Devo, we all said this is an extraordinary opportunity we couldn't say no to.' The B-52's Cindy Wilson added, 'When both of our bands performed at the recent SNL 50 concert at Radio City, we started talking and agreed we had to do these shows. Believe or not, we've never done more than a festival or two together in all this time. This will be amazing and I can't wait for The B-52s to share these stages with Devo!' The 11-date Cosmic De-Evolution Tour kicks off September 24 in Toronto and runs through November 2 in Houston. Fellow New Waver Lene Lovich will serve as the trek's opening act before the two headliners take the stage. Tickets for the tour go on sale to the public on June 20 at Live Nation, with pre-sales beginning June 16. As both bands said in statements, the two acts have long shared a mutual admiration for each other's music. 'The B-52s had one of the best sounds of any of the bands out there in the late seventies and early eighties – 'Rock Lobster' is one of my favorite songs – Devo used to sing it to Booji Boy after Devo shows,' Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh said in a statement. 'It was either fate or luck or the SNL anniversary that brought us all together to create this amazing chance to go out on tour. All I can say is Cosmic Devolution is REAL!' The B-52's Kate Pierson added, 'When we first came from Athens to New York City to perform, punk was in full force…and New Wave was right on its tail! We loved all the New Wave groups, including Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones. We also really dug the far-out weirdness of Devo, which seemed very in tuned to our sensibilities. We remember one of our first shows — amazed that David Bowie, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, Allen Ginsberg, Talking Heads and Blondie all came to see us! When we opened the Mudd Club, we partied with Devo and really hit it off on the dance floor. Later, Brian Eno went onto to produce Devo's incredible first album…and now we will align again! So put on your wig hats and Devo bonnets and get ready to party! This is going to be wild.' The B-52's and Devo's Cosmic De-Evolution Tour Dates September 24 – Toronto, ONT @ Budweiser StageSeptember 25 – Clarkston, MI @ Pine Knob Music TheatreOctober 2 – Mansfield, MA @ Xfinity CenterOctober 4 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts CenterOctober 5 – Wantagh, NY @ Northwell at Jones Beach TheaterOctober 16 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline AmphitheatreOctober 18 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood BowlOctober 24 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music PavilionOctober 25 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank AmphitheatreNovember 1 – Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance AmphitheaterNovember 2 – Houston, TX @ The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
Business Insider
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Meet the Yale student and hacker moonlighting as a cybersecurity watchdog
Alex Schapiro, a rising senior at Yale, likes to play Settlers of Catan with his friends, work on class projects, and lead a popular student website. But from his dorm room, Schapiro moonlights as an ethical hacker, uncovering security flaws in startups and tech companies before the bad guys do. Schapiro's bug-hunting work gained traction last week after Hacker News readers had thoughts about one of his recent findings: a bug in Cerca, a buzzy dating app founded by college students that matches mutual contacts with each other. The flaw could have potentially exposed users' phone numbers and identification information, Schapiro said in a blog post. Through an "internal investigation," Cerca concluded that the "bug had not been exploited" and resolved the issue "within hours" of speaking with Schapiro, a company spokesperson said. Cerca also reduced the amount of data it collects from users and hired an outside expert to review its code, who found no further issues, the spokesperson added. (The Yale Daily News first reported on Schapiro's findings in April.) A frenzy of venture investment, in part fueled by advancements in AI, has hit college campuses, leading students to launch products and close fundraises quickly. And with "vibe coding," or using AI to program swiftly, becoming the norm among even the most technical builders, Schapiro is hopeful that ethical bug hunters can help startups build and scale while keeping security a top priority. "These are real people, and this is real, sensitive data," Schapiro told BI. "It's not just going to be part of your pitch deck saying, 'hey, we have 10,000 users.'" Building Safer Startups Schapiro says he got his proclivity for programming from his mother, a former Bell Labs computer scientist. As many startup founders and AI researchers once did, Schapiro started building side projects in high school, using Spotify's API to curate playlists for friends and making X bots to track SEC filings. Teaching himself how to "reverse-engineer" websites led to breaking and making them stronger — a side hustle he now uses to poke holes in real companies before bad actors can. Ethically hacking is a popular side hustle in some tech circles. (A Reddit group dedicated to the practice called r/bugbounty has over 50,000 members.) It's a hobby that startups and tech giants stand to benefit from, as it helps them prevent data from getting in the wrong hands. Heavyweights like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and more run bug bounty programs that encourage outsiders to find and report security flaws in exchange for a financial reward. In his first year at Yale, Schapiro found a "pretty serious vulnerability" in a company he says generates billions of dollars in annual revenue. (Schapiro declined to disclose the company, citing an NDA he signed.) His discoveries have even led a company with "hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue" to start working on a bug bounty program of their own, Schapiro said. He has also been contracted by two other tech companies, including part-time work platform SideShift, to pentest their software. And last summer, he pentested Verizon's AI systems during an internship. "As someone who uses a bunch of websites, I want my data to be taken care of," he said. "That's my mindset when I'm building something. I want to treat all the data that I'm dealing with as if it was my own data." Joe Buglewicz for BI Slowing His Roll On paper, Schapiro seems like the archetype of a college-dropout-turned-founder: He has built and tested apps since childhood, and he runs CourseTable, a Yale class review database that receives over 8 million requests a month. Sometimes, Schapiro says, founders looking for a technical counterpart reach out to him, and VCs hoping to back the next wunderkind ask him when he's going to found a company. For now, Schapiro isn't interested. "The No. 1 thing stopping me from raising money right now is not funding," he said. "I would need to really invest a bunch of time in it, and I love the four-year liberal arts college experience." Recently, Schapiro has found himself learning how to become a smarter computer scientist — not in a machine learning class, but in a translations course he took for his second major, Near Eastern languages and civilizations. It helped him think about how he turns English into Python efficiently and effectively. "You meet so many interesting, cool people here, and this is a time in your life where you can really just learn things," he said. "You're not going to get that experience later in life." While he's not ruling out the possibility of founding a company in the future, Schapiro is fine slowing his roll until graduation next May. This summer, he's interning at Amazon Web Services, where he'll work on AI and machine learning platforms.
