Founded by Amanda Bradford, The League is revolutionizing the dating world by adding a pinch of sophistication. Designed to help successful and career oriented individuals meet people with similar interests, The League’s unique selection criteria for membership sets it apart from its other competitors. From Linkedin based profiles to exclusive discretion, The League has set the stage on fire.
This exclusive dating app has a waitlist of around 100,000 people and has often been described as “Tinder for elitists” by a section of media.
“The League is a community of high-achieving, diverse, and influential members that will serve as trailblazers to help change the conventional gender views still prevalent in our society”, says Amanda Bradford tells herSaga defining The League.
An alumna of Carnegie Mellon and Stanford Graduate School of Business, Amanda worked with Salesforce and Google before coming up with The League. Amanda has an impeccable career and she is quite ahead of the curve. It was when her 5 year long relationship ended that Amanda realized the perils of the dating culture that stood before her.
“It became clear that I had effectively qualified out a large pool of guys that were simply not interested in dating a career-focused (“alpha” female) with little interest in playing the ‘traditional’ doting girlfriend. And to be fair, I qualified out guys that didn’t share my same drive to achieve, level of intellect, or desire to be in a relationship where our careers and social lives were of equal importance. I wanted a dating community of intelligent, educated people who are seeking a modern, egalitarian relationship.”
Amanda wanted to create a community for people where their accomplishments would not intimidate their partners. The League promotes gender equality and debunks the gender stereotypes about the traditional role of women in society. The League provides its users a platform to find a partner who has a dream of his own and would support you in your endeavors.
A unique feature that The League provides is that it helps you keep your personal and private life separate by allowing you to wedge out your professional contacts, coworkers or Facebook friends, and thus ensures discretion to its users. This feature is powered by LinkedIn which also allows the members to share their work and educational history which serves as a significant factor in finding an appropriate match.
The League raised $2.1M Seed from angels as well as institutions like Cowboy Ventures, xSeed Capital, IDG Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, Structure.VC, TTCER, Allen DeBevoise, Naomi Gleit, Mark Leslie, Peter Kelly, Tina Sharkey, Jillian Manus for The League. The app has a unique algorithm to scan applicants and grant membership, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that this app is not in everyone’s league. The app has received great response from its users. As Amanda shares,
“Users say that the people on the League all share a common drive, passion, and intelligence. They also feel they are treated with more respect on The League and that the people see them as a person, not just a flat profile photo. We have many users that are ‘exclusive’ to The League.”
Amanda herself uses The League and has had some wonderful experiences.
“I dated a great guy for 6 months that I met through The League! And all The League dates I’ve been on have been with great guys who have remained my friends.”
She discussed how most people presumed she was only the face of enterprise, and the software was managed by other people. But this is far from the truth. Amanda has written the first algorithms, designed and created the prototype for The League herself. She hired her team of engineers and invested a quality amount of time in coding and managing the releases.
“I was recently on a panel with the Chief Data Scientist at Match and the CTO of Zoosk (both men) talking algorithms and I think the audience was surprised that I had written ours. It frustrates me when people assume I’m just an ‘MBA’ with a PowerPoint deck, a great network, with no real concept of technology. I pair code with my engineers and I make changes directly to the code-base. Now that’s not to say the engineers I’ve hired can’t all code circles around me – because they can – but I do consider myself a technical founder.”
Amanda created The League to help people find a partner they deserve. As an entrepreneur, Amanda attributes two factors as catalysts to success. First is the ability to take risks and the second is to have confidence and to believe in oneself.
“Whether it’s landing that new job or finally starting your own business, stop talking about it and go after it. Think of how much money, time, and mental energy you invest in your education, your apartment, your wardrobe, TV shows, reading, your friends, family. What if you invested 20-40% of that into your true passion? Have the confidence in yourself and other people will believe in you as well.”
Interestingly, Amanda’s role model in life is a 25 year old fictional computer scientist CIA agent in a Patricia Cornwell series. She believes that a relatable role model ascertained to her that powerful and ambitious women can have family and a career. She thinks that we need more young and relatable role models on the main stage for the generations to follow and to break down the existing stigmas.
Sharing her vision for the app, Amanda says, “I really want to build a brand that stands for quality. I want users to know that when they use The League, they are guaranteed to meet ambitious, driven, smart, passionate people. This is a community for people that are attracted to intelligence, ambition, drive and passion, and for people that want a relationship that is a partnership of equals. The women in The League are as successful, if not more so, than the men and are looking to meet a partner who values and encourages that.”
Amanda Bradford has spiced up the market of dating apps by introducing The League, and stepped up the game by providing a unique platform for ambitious people. The standards are high and so are the stakes. You cannot fake your way into The League, you have to earn it.
