How will Windr make money? The app itself will be free to use in its basic form, and we don’t want to include advertising that could get in the way of the user experience. With that said, there are numerous opportunities for Windr to monetize the experience. At launch, Windr will offer one premium service users can buy. For a small fee of $5 per month, users can indicate those watches in their collection that they may want to sell, and can even include a desired price. This would be based on the wrist shots they post, and users can even go into their galleries and mark particular watches for sale.

The idea is that many watch lovers frequently buy and sell timepieces or trade with one another. This is common user behavior, and Windr wants to make it more simple for those people interested in buying or selling, in addition to meeting new potential friends. Rather than focus on advertiser interests, we feel that the type of demographic who will be using Windr will have no problem paying a small monthly fee in order to either indicate that they want to buy a person’s watch, or offer their own watches for sale/trade. The $5-per-month fee includes both of those options, and we feel that this is a fair asking price to maintain that Windr is designed for watch lovers and supported by watch lovers. Moreover, no one actually has to pay for the app, this is just for those people who would like to meet other watch lovers while at the same time looking for watches to buy, and also being able to sell pieces in their own collection to local people who actually want them.

Another point related to the optional $5-per-month fee system mentioned above is that it is impossible to rely on doing sales transactions within the app as a way to monetize the service because users would simply do the transaction in person. We feel that this is a win-win scenario for our business needs as well as the success of the app and its user experience as a whole. Why pretend that Windr isn’t a business with growth and operating costs? It is, but that doesn’t mean it needs to make money in a way that feels disconnected from what the service is all about.

With that said, we have at least one planned advertiser solution for those businesses wanting to engage with Windr users. Let’s say you find a match on Windr but aren’t sure where to meet. We’d like to offer venue advertisers – such as restaurants – the ability to offer a watch lover pair an incentive (such as two free drinks or a discount) to meet at their location. Windr users can opt-in to meet at that location, receive the benefit of going there, while at the same time not having to go back and forth about where to meet. We feel that this solution not only allows the right types of local advertisers the ability to access the Windr community, but also simply the experience of meeting with other Windr users.

IAC’s Match Group is excited about interest-based peer meeting applications and how it can improve people’s ability to find others to enjoy their passions with. In an increasingly connected world, the busy professional ironically has even less time for leisure pursuits. It’s also just as hard as it has always been to make friends as an adult. With Windr, we seek to improve the experience of being an active watch lover, meeting other local like-minded people, and ideally, facilitating the hobby of horological appreciation by adding a new and useful tool for the community.