Today, Bradford states, The League is more than a dating app. It is a community platform for meeting goal-oriented, equally-motivated humans. “In fact, we just launched GoalMates, a new product integration, as part of our largercampaign, ushering in a new era of dating where goals and goal-setting take center stage,” she explains.
At the same time, Bradford began recruiting successful men from her networks at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Google, and Salesforce – men who were single and looking for an equal relationship. Once she had them signed up, she asked them to refer friends who were interested in dating ambitious women. She then helped these progressive men launch on The League with “their best foot forward.”
Fast forward to nine months later, and Bradford had a minimum viable product ready to launch in San Francisco. Soon, The League expanded to NYC and LA. With the app’s early traction, Bradford was able to close a $2.3M angel round that gave her the capital and credibility to hire a VP of engineering and relaunch with a freemium model that offered a monthly subscription tier.
These days, The League is used in 155 metropolitan areas across the globe. It offers a free version and three types of membership to satisfy a wide range of user needs.Creating The League was an incredible experience for me that allowed me to use every facet of my creativity and technical skills, from copywriting emails, to running focus groups, to party-planning, to networking, to designing algorithms and app interfaces,” Bradford says.