Online dating for busy professionals
Fed up with working long hours, Grace Yusuf decided to leave her job in the finance sector and become her own boss.
Armed with a degree in computer science, the North Greenwich resident swapped banking for matchmaking and this week launched an internet dating website.
The 30-year-old, who was in HSBC's Financial Institutions Group at Canary Wharf between 2005 and 2007, said: "The hours were getting long and I just thought that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life.
"I was working until two in the morning some days."
KyuBid.com opened to the public on Monday, allowing members to submit their ideal dates before the site selects other members to bid for them.
It was while working at HSBC that Grace had the inspiration for the idea.
She said she and her colleagues were finding it hard to juggle hectic work schedules with their social lives and so she tailored her idea to those in a similar position.
Grace said that it takes just 15 minutes to sign up to KyuBid.com and start bidding for dates.
She said: "I had a general idea about an internet company but not specifically a dating website.
"But the eventual idea came about because I was looking through dating websites and found them really difficult to use.
"You have to invest too much time to get anything out of them - writing your profile and emailing people.
"In finance, you lack the time to do that so I thought there must be a better way of doing it."
Grace has been running the site for a small amount of invited people before opening it to the public this week.
Initially it was going to be called Date Broker, where the site plays the role of a broker, finding dates for its users.
But Grace said research suggested people wanted more control over the system.
However, the final website maintained a key role in the matchmaking process, something aided by Grace's banking experience.
She said: "I used my knowledge of the markets to create a site that worked like a stock exchange by allowing singles to quickly create and find eligible matches for their dates.
"You can think of it as an eBay for dates."
Go to kyubid.com
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I wish this young lady a lot of luck. I'm thinking it's going to be difficult to compete head to head with the existing dating sites.
She does have a valid point in that many of these existing sites don't make it real easy for people to find other singles that they are compatible with. There's a lot of trial and error that goes into the process (sort of like life itself), but if she's able to cut down the discovery time significantly, I think she'll be able to carve out her own niche.
Great idea... I just can see a problem with most people only getting bids from people that they wouldn't actually be interested in meeting.
Thanks for the comments Guys. And actually the site is set up so that you will only get contacted by people you would be interested in meeting. When you create a date, you need to specify the type of person you would like to go on the date with. And the system will only allow those people who match your desired profile to see and bid for your date :) .
Fantatic idea Grace...i wish you all the best
Fantatic idea Grace...i wish you success in this venture