A Stanford grad student created an algorithm to help his classmates find love; now, Date Drop is the basis of his new startup Amanda Silberling 8:24 AM PST · February 13, 2026 As Valentine’s Day approaches at Stanford, some students may be gearing up for first dates — not with people they met on Tinder or Hinge, but with matches from a service called Date Drop , designed by Stanford graduate student Henry Weng. Date Drop pairs students with potential dates once per week based on their responses to a questionnaire.
A Stanford whiz kid is trying to disrupt an established industry from his Palo Alto dorm? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before ! But young adults are deeply disillusioned with the frustrating, demoralizing state of online dating . Why not try something different?
Over 5,000 students at Stanford have given Date Drop a try since its launch in the fall. It has also rolled out at 10 more schools, including MIT, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, and Weng says he wants to roll out Date Drop more broadly in some cities this summer.
“Our matches convert to actual dates at about 10x the rate of Tinder,” Weng told TechCrunch. “Instead of swiping, we get to know each person deeply and send them one compatible match per week.”
At first, Weng didn’t intend to turn Date Drop into the foundation of a startup. Then, a close friend of his met their partner via Date Drop. “That was when I got the sense that this was less of a project,” he said.
Now, Weng thinks of Date Drop as just the first service from his startup, The Relationship Company , which is a public benefit corporation — a type of company legally required to consider social impact alongside profits.
“This started as something I just wanted to exist on campus, and it became a company because people kept on asking for it in their schools and I needed resources to do that,” he said.
Techcrunch event TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston , more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately Save up to $300 on your pass or save up to 30% with group tickets for teams of four or more. TechCrunch Founder Summit: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston , more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately Save up to $300 on your pass or save up to 30% with group tickets for teams of four or more. Boston, MA | June 23, 2026 REGISTER NOW Already, Weng has raised “a few million” from some angel investors, including Zynga founder and early Facebook backer Mark Pincus, who has taught business courses at Stanford (including to Weng). Andy Chen, a former partner at Coatue, and Elad Gil, an early backer of Airbnb, Stripe, and Pinterest, also invested in The Relationship Company.
“The long-term vision at The Relationship Company is about facilitating all meaningful relationships: friendships, professional connections, community, events,” Weng said.
It’s par for the course to use algorithms to predict if users of a dating service may be compatible with one another — that’s how dating apps work. But Weng says his model is more geared toward forging long-term connections, with 95% of Date Drop users saying they’re interested in relationships.
Weng explains that there are two core elements at play. First, the questionnaire needs to be thorough enough to capture a real picture of who someone is. “We do that through the questions, open-ended responses, a voice conversation, and other data that the users provide,” he said.
The next challenge is compatibility prediction. “Because we help people plan dates, we have data on which matches actually work out. So we have a model trained on real-world outcomes,” he said. “Once you have those two components, the actual matching is standard stuff from matching theory literature.”
Currently pursuing a computer science master’s degree at Stanford, Weng has oriented his education around the economic and mathematical concepts of matching . As a Stanford undergrad, he created his own major to study humans, matching, and incentives.
“I started to see how matching shapes so much of our lives,” Weng told TechCrunch. “Who your life partner is, who your friends are, what college you go to, which company you work for are all matching problems.”
Beyond his technical education, Weng found an unexpected class useful for learning to manage a startup: “Intro to Clown.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-- --
PLEASE LIKE IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL TO SUPPORT OUR FORUM.
