Rob Long is the CEO of the emerging Surf Dating. (Photos courtesy Rob Long)
Rob Long’s resume already includes bowling alley proprietor, restaurant operator and medical spa chain co-founder.
He’s just added yet another title: dating app CEO.
The owner of River City Roll, Bar West and Vita Pure IV is working on raising $2 million in investor capital for his newest venture, Surf Dating.
Long took over as chief executive of the startup late last year, after a friend launched it in 2023 and asked Long to get involved.
With Surf Dating’s target 22- to 32-year-old demographic being similar to much of River City Roll’s clientele, Long said it seemed like a good fit and joined the company initially as a partner, consulting on events and marketing.
As opposed to the “swiping” format of popular dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge, Surf uses a grid format, allowing users to see more potential matches more quickly.
Users also can filter potential matches by things like interests to shrink the grid to more personalized choices.
“I like to say it’s the Zillow for dating … you can see everyone, and you can sort and filter the grid by things you care about,” Long said.
Before letting users onto the app, a verification process ensures that each profile is from a real human as opposed to a bot, and a “connectivity” function shows mutual phone contacts between matches, making it easier for users to vet potential partners.
That connectivity function bred the app’s tagline, “friend of a friend of a friend.”
“Historically, with hundreds of years of matchmaking, what is the No. 1 thing? We think it’s a friend of a friend,” Long said. “[With Surf], not only is everyone real but you can also kind of socially verify someone.”
Surf’s eight-person team includes CTO Aleksander Dincic, COO Drew Nations, marketing director Gee Burridge and Kate Saltz of Hunton Andrews Kurth alongside others, including a small development team based out of Serbia.
The company has no official headquarters; its employees live and work in different cities.
Surf Dating uses a grid format, as opposed to the popular “swiping” format.
Surf Dating was launched on app stores in October 2023. The app went through a rebrand in August 2024, changing the logo and tweaking the app interface to make the “Surf we know today,” Long said, with a modern, sleek white look and a minimalist feel.
To continue building momentum, Surf is amid a $2 million capital raise. The company has locked down almost 75% of that total and hopes to close next month, Long said.
Though he declined to name specific contributors, Long said Surf has pooled a group of both local and nationwide funders from different industries and walks of life to bring as wide an audience as possible to the app.
“We view this raise as finding a group of folks as true partners that can help Surf grow,” Long said.
The app has active users in 48 U.S. states and is at over 13,000 downloads, up from 3,000 downloads in early 2024.
Long hopes the app will continue growing with the new capital, which he said will mainly be used on marketing, including for promotional photo shoots and potential partnerships with athletes and online personalities.
Surf Dating hosted several early-stage launch events with local schools, including the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. Though colleges aren’t always ideal places to market dating apps, the Surf team hopes to target college students as they head into post-grad academics and move into denser markets like D.C., New York and Charlotte, North Carolina, Long said.
The app has both a free plan and a $4.99-per-week plan, which gives users access to the connectivity feature and to more options on the grid, Long said.
Before the capital raise, which is the company’s first, all of Surf’s product development and marketing efforts were self-funded, Long said. Surf is currently generating revenue, he added.
In addition to being at the helm of Surf, Long remains the owner of River City Roll at 939 Myers St., co-owner of Bar West at 5811 Grove Ave., and co-owner of Vita Pure IV, which has two locations in Richmond and Prince George.
Long said the Surf team just learned of the first engagement a Richmond-based couple who met on the app. Locally connected success stories like that are a big part of his motivation to keep going with Surf despite his other business commitments, Long said.
“That wedding is happening next year, and I’m sure at minimum we’ll send a nice bottle of champagne,” he said. “It’s really cool to have a success story like that. It’s near and dear to my heart for it to be a Richmond couple.”
Oh let me get my checkbook out for this!! Such a priority in these times!
unfortunately, that’s the mindset that will drive profitability for this app.
So many better things to which to donate my hard-earned funds.
They aren’t asking for donations for you to get a charitable deduction. Its a capital raise seeking investors, right? I’d think the market for dating apps is probably full but I’m married so who knows.