When you think of successful Czech startups, dating apps might not be the first thing that springs to mind. However, Cosmic Latte is a Czech technology company that is developing dating apps Zoe and Surge for the LGBTQ+ community.
It is behind the world's second-most-used dating app for LGBTQ+ female users, Zoe, and in the more competitive field of dating apps for male users, its Surge app is in the top ten.
Spun out of Czech development studio STRV, the company's name is inspired by the colour astronomers determined to be the average colour of the universe.
I spoke to founder and CEO Milan Kovacic to learn more.
The company emerged after the founders created a dating app prototype for a client at STRV: It was never used, so we decided to launch it, and eventually, it got pretty successful," shared Kovacic.
He recounts that back then, "It was different; there was a lot of excitement in the market, so people were very keen to try new things.
We also had a little bit of an edge with our LGBTQI+ dating platform."
The bootstrapped company is also a success. In 2023, it grew by 21 per cent, with its turnover climbing to $3 million and profit generating $430,000.
In June, the apps Surge and Zoe were downloaded a combined half a million times, for over 25 million downloads. There are 21 million users registered on the app. Last December, the more established Zoe app had grown 24 per cent YoY compared to December 2022, while the newer and faster-growing Surge reached 44 per cent.
Building for success
I'm curious about what success means to Cosmic Latte. Is it achieving the top spot for their apps or something more holistic?
According to Kovacic, leading by example, building community, and the structural integrity of the apps are critical to Cosmic Latte's success.
Most of the team comes from a technical background. Kovacic is a coder and is currently a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, where he pursued a degree in artificial intelligence and leadership through a Director's Award Scholarship.
"We are very passionate about delivering good, scalable code without a lot of technical debt; it's part of our culture and ethics.
It's really important for us to have high-quality sites that load well, have great UX, and don't crash constantly."
While today, there are a myriad of machine learning-embedded tools that can do the job for you, when Cosmic Latte was in its infancy, a customer success team manually wrote a message to every single user asking, "Hi, how are you doing? How do you like our app?"
Software with Pride
One thing Cosmic Latte works hard at is building supportive communities.
"It's essential to actually connect on the apps, not just to have a partner but also to be a big part of the community."´
Kovacic shared:
"I'm a gay man born in Slovakia, which, as far as Europe is concerned, is a relatively unfortunate combination.
I know personally, why it is important to connect LGBTQI+ people to fight for rights and contribute to the community."
"A couple of years ago, there was this shooting of two LGBTQ+ people in Bratislava, which is the city where I'm from. It was the first European terrorist attack against the LGBTI+ community.
And it happened in a cafe where I used to hang out. My mom was there multiple times, and my friend used to work there. So that's where I decided that, okay, well, I'm right now positioned in a place where I really can do something.
It really heightened the importance of creating an app that provides benefits to traditionally marginalised people."
He explained that he wants people to know there's an out and proud tech-educated Bratislavan gay guy running a business and doing well, detailing:
"I didn't know anyone like me growing up, the only people I knew who were gay were either caricatures from movies or people from art. Maybe people from Poland and the Czech Republic will have a similar sentiment."
Pride but privacy-first
Zoe is the number one LGBTQI+ dating app for people who identify as female in places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. As Kovacic notes, security and privacy are critical. The app prioritises security and privacy through features like Photo Verification and Private Mode.
"It's very important to protect our users. While a photo or profile leak is awful for anyone, a security breach in places where diversity is not as socially acceptable, such as Taiwan, is more serious."
In response, Cosmic Latte has implemented features like in-chat identity verification and AI-driven content moderation to protect against fake profiles—such as unicorn hunters and men pretending to be women—scammers, and inappropriate content.
Transgender and gender-fluid folk are welcome on the apps but must, like all users, disclose their gender identity — for example, transmasculine — on their profile. Human moderators are also used to further verify profiles.
Crucially, the company has also not built duplicate apps for its respective audiences.
For example, in creating Surge, Kovacic asked users, a question that consistently yielded valuable insights was, "Imagine you have a magic feature for the app, anything is possible, what feature would you want?"
Overall, the response was, "Well, I want to see the guy naked. Men are very visual — even if they are looking for a serious relationship.
After a year of development and optimisation, it launched a "Attractiveness Score" feature. This leverages historical data to identify what users find most desirable, integrating this score by prioritising these users in users' swiping queues.
This approach, A/B tested, yielded impressive results. User engagement, measured by swipes, increased by 30 percent, making it one of the company's most successful features in recent years.
The score is also used to create premium grids showcasing the most attractive users to each user.
Cosmic Latte is constantly testing new features. One area of exploration is dynamic images — profiles that come alive with subtle movement, offering a more nuanced impression.
Another development, set to launch has the working title "dirty drawings."" App Store and Google Play guidelines restrict nudity, so the company has gotten creative by using graphic rendering. This feature allows users to reveal more profile photos gradually through a series of progressively revealing panels, adhering to app store regulations.
Will an algorithm introduce you to your next partner?
When considering what's next for data apps, Kovacic believes that in the future, they will require little user engagement:
"I mean, Facebook knows more about me than my mother."
In a more immediate sense, this could result in more robust prediction algorithms that help long-term users recommend people with whom they are more likely to have a spark.
"You can train a neural network algorithm to assess who would be a perfect partner for you. Pushing a button costs $100, giving you your free, perfect partners. You should call them and tell them, "Yo, we are gonna hit it off; we are gonna be great together."
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