Dear Lettr Dating subscriber,

Hey, Sean from Lettr Dating here. In this email, I was hoping to proudly announce that the Lettr Dating iOS app was ready to download on the app store. However, the App Store review process is brutal - particularly for dating platforms (as they should be). We'll finish it up in a few days and it should be ready by next week. In the meantime, the web application has been ready for months and applications are open and it would also really help if you sent your friends our email subscription link

The app in an iOS simulator as of (February 1, 2026). I have a preview copy on my personal iPhone as well.

Rain Or Shine: Lettr Dating is launching in the next 2 weeks

All engines are go. However many members we start with - whether it's 5 or 50 or 500 - it's all up from there

How you can help

tl;dr we need more applications. We recognize that getting your friends to sign up for a mysterious NYC dating platform with a small digital footprint might be a tough ask, but our lack of footprint is because we've had our heads down -- web app, iOS app, digital infrastructure. However, we have created some content that you could share.

• Our Blog: Lettr Dating is Launching in NYC
• Follow the Lettr Dating Instagram page
• Join the Lettr Dating subreddit. Any questions you have for us that you want to ask publicly you can write in there and we'll respond

We have a Referral Program!

Oh and by the way, did you know we have a referral program?

We're paying $10 for every referral which is accepted and $1 for every application ($11 total per accepted application). We paid out a few of our referrers from last season.

To sign up, go to https://manage.lettr.dating/referral-program/signup and get a code. Every application which uses your code will be tracked and you will be paid out. There are some terms in the page there but we've already paid out a few referrers from last season. If you have any questions on this, just contact us and we'll get back to you ASAP

The referral dashboard. Some sections need a little work but all applications using your referral code will be tracked

A look behind the curtains

A little self disclosure: I personally have been working on Lettr Dating since July 2023. According to my time tracking logs, since then I have put in 1,654 hours of work into it (or, 41 work weeks of 40 hours). When I started, I was already a senior software developer at my company leading new projects while maintaining complex systems. But even then my knowledge and skills as a developer have improved dramatically since 2023.

The earliest mention of Lettr in my Notion docs

My personal time tracking logs. I had put in 100 hours by November 2023 and just passed 1650 today.

In that time I've seen so many dating platforms come and go and this trend will continue. But I told myself from the beginning that if I was going to work on this, it had to be done right: without external pressure from investors or the need to make product decisions that generate fast revenue now but set up the platform to cut corners later (what we know of today as "enshittification").

Lettr Dating has no debt, I pay the server costs with funds from my day job, and the infrastructure is solid and ready to scale. According to some growth modeling I've done, the Lettr Dating platform could handle the first 200,000 users without any big changes to the tech stack (this is what I've focused on the past year). And even then these projections are probably playing it safe since we wouldn't be handling a hundred thousand users swiping concurrently while they kill time waiting for the G train.

So, imagine this for me...

Imagine there was this new dating platform where everyone had to fill in their profile and everyone lived in NYC. It started with 50, maybe 100 people. Pretty small, but enough to establish a community. Since every member would be required to fill in their profile with something about themselves, naturally, profiles would express each individual's personality and their vision for the future.

Reading some of these member's profiles would let you know off the bat that you were incompatible, which is great for both parties, because you each could avoid investing time and energy into getting to know one another. You could hide this member's profile and move on.

On the flipside, there would be a fair share of member profiles you would come across where their profile drew you in. Good looking, funny, same interests, same vision for the future - you'd naturally see these qualities come out in the prompts that everyone is required to fill out. And no, it wouldn't require you to swipe every day in order to be shown to other members by The Algorithm. If you felt like logging in once a week to see what's new, that's fine.

In the development of this intentional culture, members would see that writing general and vague profiles was actually the culprit of bad dating all along. Pithiness and irony would be out! Sincerity and vulnerability would be in! Over time you would notice a trickle of new members creating profiles and wow, just like that, the platform would have thousands of members and an established culture of effort and openness.

That's what I imagine Lettr Dating will become in the very near future. And together, I think we can make that happen.

Regardless if incumbent platforms have "millions of users", what does that even matter to you, a New Yorker? We'll grow Lettr Dating and when it gets to even 10,000 members I guarantee you the experience would be better and more humanizing than any app/platform that currently exist. That's the bet I made 2.5 years ago and continue to make every day that I work on this.

Lettr Dating is not a fly-by-night dating app. For me, I cannot imagine wanting to work on anything else.

Okay now, back to work people!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us here [email protected]. And thanks again for your time.

Sean from Lettr Dating