Thursday nights at Washington Square Park, a thousand people in black Lululemon sets jog three miles and then hit a bar. It's a live-action Hinge explore page.
Lunge Run Club launched in May 2024 and scaled from dozens to 1,000 people weekly in under six months. Tinder saw what was happening and partnered with running app Runna to launch "SoleMates" — free 5K singles runs that sold out in minutes, 250 people per event.
Meanwhile, Bumble just cut 30% of staff. Tinder lost 594,000 UK users between May 2023 and May 2024. Match Group's CEO is on earnings calls defending the category while revenue growth hits its slowest pace since 2018.
The $6 billion dating app market isn't shrinking — 79% of Gen Z just report feeling completely burned out by it. Revenue keeps climbing while users exhaust themselves and leave. People still want relationships, they've just decided another profile and another "hey" that goes nowhere isn't the path there.
A massive cohort of high-intent, high-agency people will pay for something that feels curated and safe. Singles Pace — a tightly-curated, multi-city network of identity-based singles run clubs — captures that demand as infrastructure for intentional dating.
The Market Collision
Dating app burnout went fully mainstream in 2024. A Forbes Health survey of 1,000 Americans who used dating apps in the past year found 78% experience emotional, mental, or physical exhaustion from apps "sometimes, often, or always." Among Gen Z and Millennials, that number jumps to 79%.
Women report higher burnout than men — 80% versus 74%. The top reasons: inability to find a good connection (40%), getting rejected (27%), repetitive conversations (24%), endless swiping (22%).
The apps aren't just failing to create relationships — they're actively exhausting people trying to find them. Users report increasing cynicism about dating and reduced enjoyment of the process the longer they stay on apps.
But revenue stayed in the category. Global dating app revenue hit $6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $8.9 billion by 2030. North America alone generated $2.21 billion in 2025 and will hit $3.25 billion by 2030 at an 8% CAGR.
People aren't abandoning the pursuit of relationships. They're abandoning the user experience of swiping.
And IRL formats exploded in response. NYC run clubs became so saturated with singles that NBC News ran a piece titled "Run clubs in NYC have just become another oversaturated dating market."
Lunge Run Club — explicitly marketed as a singles format — grew from launch in May 2024 to 1,000 weekly participants by summer. The rule: wear all black if you're single. Post-run, everyone hits a partner bar.
Tinder, watching this unfold, launched SoleMates with Runna in London: three 5K singles runs across June and July 2024. Each session sold out in minutes. 250 people per event. Post-run drinks, co-branded goody bags, the whole deal.
Harper's Bazaar ran a piece in March 2025 titled "Spring 2025's Hottest Dating Trend in NYC: Singles Run Clubs." Demand for curated events is real, and people will both pay for them and self-select into them.
Why This Actually Works
Most people look at singles run clubs and see a cardio version of bar hopping. That misses the point entirely.
Every Singles Pace event applies three filters at once: intent (yes, this is for meeting people), lifestyle (you show up early in running gear), and identity (founders, designers, dog people, sober-curious). That combination attracts a specific side of the dating market: women sick of creepy DMs, high-earning people who optimize everything else in life, and early-adopter urbanites who create downstream social proof.
Most singles events manage one of those filters. Very few handle all three consistently across multiple cities.
The business model here creates repeatable, trusted cohorts of 30-60 pre-screened people who share intent, lifestyle, and identity. The events themselves function as content. Over time, membership and reputation become the product while the offline social graph becomes the moat.
Phase 1: The Quick Steal (0-60 Days, Single City)
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