Credits: Photo by Iwaria FULL TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Where would you rather find love? From your inner circle? You know, leave fate to bring your soulmate your way. Or would go the unconventional way, scrolling through a list of potential partners from the comfort of your room? Maybe unconventional sounds easier and quicker, but what about trust issues and the general cultural bias, particularly in this part of the world? As unpopular as the terrain is in Africa, the online dating industry continues to attract a fair number of tech entrepreneurs. Adetolani Eko, Moronke Anifowose and Osagie Omonzokpia make up a team of such entrepreneurs.  On this episode of Built in Africa, we focus on Vybe, a Nigerian online dating startup that is designed to help Africans connect with other Africans both online and offline infuses a conventional touch into the online matchmaking process to retain the regular style of dating. The software engineering trio of Adetolani, Moronke and Osagie began their foray into the business of love in April 2019. But it wasn’t without the initial skepticism. Adetolani: We were a bit sceptical about it in the sense that there was no market leader that I could say, okay this is who we are following for this particular continent.  Narrator: That’s Adetolani Eko, co-founder and CEO of Vybe. By the way, Vybe is spelt VYBE. Adetolani: We decided to carry out some surveys and customer interviews. So we called different people we knew and also strangers. We didn’t tell them what we were working on, we just sort of asked them “what they thought about online dating? What are the general issues you face while looking for somebody or finding a partner online? Have you tried dating services? What was your experience, what were the things you liked and did not like?”  Narrator: The result of the survey bolstered their resolve; they built an MVP app which they launched in April 2019.  Adetolani: The feedback was amazing. We hit about 1000 users in less than 48 hours of launching the beta app. So we initially planned to do a sample size of about 500 users but users kept coming in and our servers even crashed at a point Narrator: The less traditional means of finding love has been around for a while but it became widespread with an increase in the use of Internet tools. While it is yet to be widely embraced in some climes, the online dating industry is worth more than $3 million globally. However, the Nigerian market is quite young. Because of this reality and the existence of competition, Vybe had to offer a different touch to make it stand out. The team had the perfect idea. Adetolani: Because of the peculiarities of the African market, the market we are going after, we noticed that it’s not enough to do an online thing. We decided to create an offline section where people can meet from time to time. A good example of that was a speed dating event that we had some time, late 2019, where we brought different single people together and then you’d go on short speed dates. And the event was incredibly successful Narrator: However, the numbers recorded from the physical events paled in comparison to online matches, but it was a necessary setback for the moment. Osagie Omonzokpia, the Chief Technology Officer explains why. Osagie: The speed dating event was free but it was for registered users only. So you register and we select, because we wanted to control the size. That was our first major event and we...