How to Get a Girlfriend with Connell Barrett
Do Women on Tinder Ignore You? The Man Who Invented Swiping Reveals How to Finally Get Matches (with Tinder’s Jonathan Badeen)
Thu, 08 May 2025
Back in the day, Jonathan Badeen was an introvert struggling to meet women and get dates. (Sound familiar?) So he did what any guy would do—he co-founded Tinder, invented swiping, and changed dating (and the world) forever. In this encore episode of “How to Get a Girlfriend,” Badeen joins host and dating coach Connell Barrett to help you finally get quality matches on the apps.In this episode, Jonathan and Connell discuss:5:59: Why Tinder is for More than Just Hookups19:26: The Aha Moment when Jonathan Came Up with Swiping22:49: Why Authenticity is What Women Want—on Tinder and in Real Life31:57: The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Good Matches35:35: The Myth that “Dating Apps Just Don’t Work”39:29: How to Inject Fun into Your profile to Get Women Messaging You First41:15: How Shy Guys and “Nerds” Can Win on the Apps52:21: Why Jonathan Would Swipe Right on Minnie MouseListen now for wisdom from the man who changed dating—and finally land great Tinder dates!FOR A FREE STRATEGY CALL WITH CONNELL TO FIND OUT IF DATING COACHING IS RIGHT FOR YOU:http://www.datingtransformation.comWANT A FREE COPY OF CONNELL’S NO. 1 AMAZON BESTSELLING BOOK, “DATING SUCKS BUT YOU DON’T”? EMAIL CONNELL AND WRITE “FREE BOOK” IN THE SUBJECT LINE AND YOU’LL GET IT INSTANTLY:[email protected]
Chapter 1: Why is Tinder more than just a hookup app?
Let me start with a play devil's advocate about something. I'll tell you something I hear from a lot of my clients when I send them to Tinder and to other online dating platforms. They say, ah, Tinder, come on. That's for hookups. It's for casual flings. That's not where I'm going to find love. It's not where I'm going to find a girlfriend. What's your response to that?
I'd say two parts to that. One, you know, most relationships probably started with a hookup. So just because people, you know, a large contingent of users on Tinder, I think it's the majority, I don't know the latest numbers or whatnot, but, you know, they're actually looking for a relationship. Doesn't mean they're not. open to a hookup. So there is that.
But on top of that, it is used for everything. The number of marriages that have happened is insane. I get invited to different weddings and stuff like that. And it's really what you make of it. I think some of that stigma really came out of the fact that we launched the app on college campuses. That's sort of where we started. And that's kind of That market, that's kind of what they do.
They're a little bit more hookup-centric and all, and so it kind of came from that. But it really isn't. It's whatever it is that you're looking for, you should be able to find it on Tinder and, of course, the other platforms.
Absolutely. I have dated some wonderful women I met on Tinder and other apps, but we're going to talk about Tinder today for obvious reasons. And I had some flings, and I had some real relationships, and I had, to your point, I had a couple things that started off seemingly casual, but then they became something a lot deeper.
So yeah, something casual or what you might think is casual at the beginning can actually become something longer lasting, right?
Well, it starts off less pressure. It's a little bit easier to be your more authentic self when it's low pressure like that.
Yeah, I've also found it a lot easier to get a woman out on a date with you, looking at it from the straight male perspective. It's easier to get a lot of women out on a date with you if it just seems low pressure. It's like, hey, we're going to have fun. We're going to have a drink or two. We'll talk. We'll chat. Who knows what might happen? As opposed to, I must find my soulmate on this date.
So there's nothing wrong with having it low pressure. It's just a way to get more people out on dates with you.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the invention of swiping on Tinder?
Not that you should be very focused on whoever you're with or whatever, but I mean, just like, it's just that... There just isn't that pressure. You realize how many people there are out there, especially in a big city like Los Angeles, but you realize how many different options there are and you have a means to find them.
I remember I felt the same way as you. I had very few dating options back when I first started working on my dating life. When I realized I needed to, I had a scarcity of options. If I had one date every three months, that was a really good quarter for me. So the pressure was on. And I remember... It was a combination of Tinder and Match. I was using those two platforms.
And I remember one night through both of those platforms, mainly Tinder, I had three straight dates and three straight nights and three different really cool, cute girls. And all three dates went pretty well. I think I made out with all three girls and all three nights. And I walked home on that third night thinking, oh my gosh, I didn't know that I was that attractive to women.
And I think I took all the credit in the moment. But it was the platforms that were giving me the beginnings of abundance, the beginnings of some options. And that felt amazing to my confidence.
Well, it's you. It's just a matter of pulling you out. These platforms are nothing more than... In many ways, I see them less as dating services and more as introduction services. They're not there for you on the date. They're there to get you introduced to somebody for the date.
I think it's what you make of them and how that affects you and allows you to come out of your shell or express yourself.
A lot of guys struggle with what to talk about on dates. how to hold a good conversation. Do you remember, I'm going to ask you to summon your younger, singular self. When you first started getting some good options, do you remember any tips that began to work for you, especially when you felt more comfortable?
Yeah, I mean, I guess to me, you know, it's always just a little bit about, you know, what you do and what your family. I mean, obviously, you know, you don't want to focus too much on, you know, what you do. That sometimes can be a bad thing to some. But, I mean, it is a big part of our life. Yeah.
you know, and try to figure out, um, the other person's interests and just sort of, you know, for me, it was generally just trying to, to keep it sort of natural. The most, you know, trying to force something was where it probably wasn't going to go well. Um, and so it was, um, Yeah, it's just trying to learn about the person.
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Chapter 3: How can authenticity improve your success on Tinder?
Yeah, I think that's a lot of people end up taking it out on dating services as well as online services in general because of... of either what, you know, the people on there or what they're doing and all. And it's, it's it is kind of what you make of it. It's not to say it's all perfect. It isn't, but it is there, there are certainly ways to have a better profile than that for sure.
Pictures are important.
It comes down to those core foundational things. Really good photos, attractive photos, and some personality and not just pure information on a profile.
Absolutely.
Do you have any favorite... These could be things that you saw on Tinder when you were there. Any favorite little prompts or bios that made you laugh over the years? Because they were so good, or maybe they were so bad.
There's so many. I can't remember. I'll tell you, though, I think one of my favorite things, though, is that I don't even think it's on Tinder. It was a friend of mine that put on his profile that Kinj has some sort of audio thing, and he used an AI thing. I don't remember if it was Obama or somebody basically vouching for him in the little voice note thing. Yeah.
And it's not like nobody thinks that it's Obama or whoever it was doing it. It's just something that's a little fun and playful, and it's something that he certainly attested to. And so I thought that was...
That was fun and clever. Yeah, variety, a little pattern interrupt. A lot of my clients have had success with, on Hinge you have the low-key flex caption prompt. And I'll just say, put a screenshot of a really high credit score. Low-key flex, 810. I get so many matches, my clients do too. It's like, ooh, I think that's a high-key flex.
And it's not even my credit rating, it's just an 810 credit rating or whatever. So finding ways to have fun, finding ways to enjoy it. And that gets back to something when I was asking you about how the swipe right is all about fun. Because it feels good. It feels good to swipe right and get a match. And I think part of what Tinder's big innovation was
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Chapter 4: What are common myths about dating apps and how to overcome them?
Chapter 5: How did Tinder's swiping feature evolve from an educational app concept?
So there was a little bit of that element going on. But I think even just the sort of the swipe action itself ends up sort of having an emotional connection to it, you know, where you're sort of like, oh, hell no. There is that sort of emotional connection to it. I think that interface and everything in general, it kind of feeds into that sort of almost
people watching kind of thing that we we that people like to do um and to me i'm you know i like to think of as a disney fan i always think of uh of mary poppins and uh the uh a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down and so that was you know not necessarily that quote being you know very cognizant of it when we were creating tinder but this idea of like look this is you
dating can be a difficult thing. Um, and, and going through all of these things and let's see if we can try to make that process fun. Um, and sort of disguising the work. Um, and because Tinder, you know, I think compared to other platforms that pre, uh, that, uh, predated Tinder, Tinder was a little bit more of a numbers game.
It was a bit more, go through a whole bunch of people and that's going to ultimately, whether swiping through a whole bunch of people and then going out on dates with a whole bunch of other people, the idea is you're going to increase the chances of finding the person that's right for you. Other platforms were a little bit more focused on diving into the person.
You'd spend more time on those and all. So we had to make something that was fun to get you through more people faster.
The man listening to this episode, chances are his biggest... the biggest thorn in his paw of online dating, Tinder or whatever app he's on, he's not getting very many good matches, if any. He's swiping and swiping and swiping and he's just very rarely, if ever, getting that it's a match. What advice would you give that guy?
What should he look at first to start getting some of those matches and start getting those great feelings you get when you start swiping right and getting matches?
Well, I think some of it starts with trying to portray your best self, whether that be evaluate your photos and your profile and everything. Everything on there, evaluate it. you'll notice a lot that people put horrible pictures up on there.
I'm not saying you have to be a model or anything like that, but horrible quality photos, things like that, and run it by your friends, preferably women, who can say either, oh, that's not a good picture of you, or like, yeah, that's not really going to be interesting. a woman.
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