Innovator Albert Nguyen takes swiping to a new level (3, actually) with LUCK, an insightful new app designed to make online dating matches more meaningful.

First came Bumble, the online dating app that allowed women to take the lead in their pursuit of romance. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is actually the cover girl for December’s issue of Forbes, which is featuring the magazine’s “30 under 30” picks for 2017. With any “LUCK”, fellow inventive Austinite Albert Nguyen might be continuing the streak for 2018.

Albert Nguyen, tech entrepreneur, co-founder at LUCK. www.luckapp.co

Nugyen is the co-founder of new dating app LUCK, which features an ingenious, 3-swipe system to improve online matches. With other current apps like Bumble and Tinder, Nguyen says,  “A bunch of guys just swipe right all the time and it overloads the system with meaningless matches.” Nguyen’s theory is that if a little more investment is required, matches will be higher in quality. Rather than just a left or right swipe, LUCK divides the “interested” category in “real” likes (swipe right) and “fun” likes (swipe down). The company’s definition of those? “Real is a committed relationship, fun is everything else,” Nguyen says, although he is quick to add that exact interpretations are up to LUCK’s users. Other features to make sure guys (or gals) are actually willing to put in the effort? Puzzles to finish their opening message, and a 24-hour window for contacting a mutual interest.

LUCK became available for download nationwide on November 1st, and so far, Austin and New York City are leading the way in embracing online dating’s newest twist. Austin has proven to be a hotbed for online dating success, with the aforementioned Bumble recently achieving “unicorn” status (valuation of over $1 billion). Can Nguyen make it two for the Silicon Valley of the Southwest? While that remains to be seen, plenty of daters are lining up to try their LUCK.

Stout’s Innovation Education:

• Level-up an existing idea. Innovation isn’t always about reinventing the wheel; sometimes it’s just re-imagining it.
• Tap into empathy to recognize and solve a problem. Clever and cool are meaningless without a purpose to serve. And there’s no better purpose than making someone’s life better.
• Pick a roomy category or sub-category. While there are hundreds of dating apps, very few are so female-friendly. So there’s room to compete.
• Be willing to try. There’s never any promise of success, but the only real failure is failure to try. Even Nguyen acknowledges LUCK is no sure thing – instead, he says that  “I think people are curious to see how this experiment plays out.” Now that’s a Stout stance.

For the full article about LUCK, visit culturemap Austin. Wonder how many tries it took another famous innovator to get things right? Check this out.