Christopher Gimmer, a student in Carleton University’s accounting program and a commerce graduate, launched ClassmateCatch in September of this year. The site has signed up more than a thousand people at Carleton, the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College and Queen’s University.
The pool of potential dates may be smaller than at bigger sites such as eHarmony or Plenty of Fish, but Mr. Gimmer believes a site user will be more likely to meet someone he or she is interested in because the only people they’re interacting with are other students.
“A lot of people, when they sign up on Plenty of Fish, they’re just overwhelmed by the amount of people that message them that really they have no interest in,” said Mr. Gimmer.
“What we’ve done is basically made it a much more relatable experience and we’re trying to promote more quality matches.”
Users who sign up to the site have to give the e-mail address they get from their school. That not only makes sure only students are taking part, said Mr. Gimmer, but also prevents people from creating a number of different profiles using different e-mail addresses as they can with other sites.
ClassmateCatch has so far been selling ads through Google and to campus clubs. He declined to say how much money the venture has made, saying only that whatever he and business partner Marc Chouinard have taken in has gone right back into the business.
They hope to further grow the business in the coming months by expanding to include the University of Toronto.
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