The dating app landscape is exhausted. Tinder turned attraction into a swipe. Bumble gave women the first message. Hinge positioned itself as "designed to be deleted." Each innovation was real, but the underlying model—endless algorithmic matching, infinite choice, shallow profile optimization—remains unchanged. For millions of singles tired of the swipe-fatigue treadmill, the question isn't which app to use. It's whether app-based dating itself is broken.
Enter Beyond, a membership dating app that rejects the swipe entirely in favor of community, values alignment, and intentional connection. Founded by Oyku Saran, a bisexual entrepreneur and self-discovery advocate, Beyond represents a fundamental shift in how modern relationships—plural, diverse, and outside traditional boundaries—can find each other without algorithmic mediation.
This isn't just another dating app launch. It's a category reset.
The numbers are telling. Thirty-one percent of singles are now practicing "slow dating," prioritizing quality over quantity. Thirty-three percent of women say a lack of awareness about current events is a dealbreaker. And most significantly: one-third of Americans report interest in relationship styles beyond traditional monogamy.
Yet the major dating apps—built for a simpler era of binary matching—haven't evolved to serve this reality.
Mainstream dating platforms optimize for engagement metrics, not connection quality. They reward attractive photos over authentic self-disclosure. They filter for age, location, and attraction, but offer no way to signal whether you're seeking monogamy, non-monogamy, or something undefined. They gamify dating, treating potential partners as infinite inventory rather than human beings with values, intentions, and evolving relationship styles.
The result is a generation of daters who feel simultaneously overstimulated and unfulfilled. Too many matches. Too many meaningless conversations. Too little alignment on what dating actually means.
This is the gap Beyond is filling.
Oyku Saran's path to founding Beyond wasn't strategic—it was inevitable.
As a bisexual woman navigating her late teens and early adulthood, Oyku found herself questioning the monogamy-by-default that underpins Western dating culture. She felt the dissonance between her open mind and the conformity pressure embedded in every relationship she entered. She struggled with societal conditioning, felt like a "problem" for wanting something other than traditional partnership.
Then, after college, she met a couple. They were "monogamish"—fundamentally committed but open to fluidity, built on radical honesty and consent rather than possession or jealousy. In that moment, Oyku realized: the right person doesn't ask you to shrink yourself. They celebrate your open mind. They build with you, not against you.
That realization—that authentic relationships require authentic self-presentation—became the founding insight of Beyond.
"There is a shift in the way people date and connect that has resulted in an underserved and rapidly growing market," Oyku shared in an [exclusive interview with Authority Magazine](https://medium.com/authority-magazine/female-disruptors-oyku-saran-of-beyond-on-the-three-things-you-need-to-shake-up-your-industry-aeb4ef2a4c4a). She recognized that millions of people shared her experience: curious, self-aware, exploring relationship styles that didn't fit the mainstream narrative. Yet the apps available to them were indifferent to these nuances.
For Oyku, founding Beyond became a personal mission to create the community she'd been searching for—and to empower others to find their people without compromising their authenticity.
Beyond rejects the core assumption of modern dating apps: that individual matching is the goal. Instead, it inverts the model. Users don't mindlessly swipe profiles. They join a vetted community and connect through shared interests, values, and intentions.
"We're taking the focus away from 1:1 dating and swiping to 1:community," Oyku notes. This means real, in-person events. Group discussions on modern relationships. Retreats abroad. The app becomes a tool for community participation, not a replacement for it.
This shift is radical in the dating app space. Hinge tries to facilitate offline connection. Bumble adds friendship and networking modes. But Beyond puts community connection at the center, with dating as one natural outcome—not the sole purpose.
Anyone can download Tinder. Beyond requires an application and vetting. This sounds exclusive, but the reasoning is straightforward: quality requires curation.
Beyond's core values—Honesty, Intentionality, Diversity, Consent, and Self-Discovery—aren't buzzwords. They function as membership criteria. The vetting process ensures community coherence around these principles. It self-selects for people who are serious about authentic connection, not casual app browsing.
The membership model also allows Beyond to maintain active moderation and community standards. No one can hide behind an anonymous profile. Everyone is accountable.
Here's a feature that existing apps struggle with: Beyond allows users to filter by relationship style and sexual orientation. You can specify whether you're seeking monogamy, open relationships, polyamory, or something undefined. You can indicate your sexual orientation and explore without fear of judgment.
For the one-third of Americans exploring relationship styles outside monogamy, this is transformative. You're not hiding part of yourself. You're declaring it from the start.
Disruption, in corporate language, means breaking an existing market. But Oyku's philosophy goes deeper. It's about identifying what mainstream culture has missed and building something that serves actual need.
Beyond's research backs this up: increasing interest in modern relationship styles, rising LGBTQ+ visibility (the percentage has doubled in a decade), and a clear market ready for a product that acknowledges these realities.
But disruption isn't easy, especially for female founders. Oyku has been candid about the challenges: impostor syndrome, underfunding (women receive only 2% of VC funding), and the emotional toll of breaking tradition. Yet she's articulated three pieces of founder wisdom that illuminate her approach:
First: Don't take feedback personally. Early criticism stung. But Oyku learned to separate the feedback from her self-worth, using input to grow the company without losing confidence.
Second: Learn to serve your community. Early on, Oyku attended unconventional events with a transactional goal: find investors, find founding members. But a mentor challenged her. Why not show up to serve first? How can you inspire people to want to be part of your mission? That shift—from extraction to generosity—changed how she built Beyond.
Third: Enjoy the journey. Founding is taxing, especially in a fast-paced, high-stress role. But Oyku has learned mindfulness about stress and gratitude for progress. "Every day I am moving the needle by showing up and giving it my all."
These aren't tactics. They're philosophies that shape how Beyond operates at every level.
Let's be clear: Beyond isn't entering an empty space. Match Group owns most of the dating market. But Beyond is entering a *growing, underserved* space within that market.
One-third of Americans report interest in relationship styles beyond traditional monogamy. The LGBTQ+ population—long underserved by mainstream dating apps—is increasingly visible and vocal. Gen Z is rejecting the monogamy-by-default narrative. And across demographics, there's fatigue with algorithmic matching.
Beyond's market isn't everyone. It's the person exhausted by Tinder swipes. The person exploring ethical non-monogamy. The bisexual woman tired of apps that force her to choose. The person who wants to know someone's values before investing emotional energy. The founder, the artist, the activist who wants dating to align with their actual values.
That's a substantial market, and it's growing.
Oyku's personal journey—from questioning traditional dating to creating an alternative—is Beyond's origin story. But it's also a template for how intentional products emerge.
She didn't start with a business plan. She started with a question: What if dating apps served people like me? What if there was space to explore without conformity?
Her co-founding team has been instrumental in her growth—both professionally and personally. She's also been mentored by the founder of Skirt Club, a 10-year-old global community built on celebrating bisexuality and fluid sexuality at a time when it was far less accepted. That relationship illustrates something crucial: women building in non-traditional spaces often find community with other women doing the same.
For context, it's worth understanding what existing apps have accomplished—and what they've missed.
Hinge focuses on conversation starters and intentional design. Bumble empowers women by requiring them to message first. Tinder's 2024 "Loud Looking" trend explicitly encourages users to state their needs clearly. These are real innovations that serve real needs.
But none of them fundamentally rethink the model. All three are still primarily 1:1 matching platforms. All three operate on a free or freemium model, optimizing for scale and engagement. All three are largely indifferent to community coherence or values alignment.
Beyond goes further. Yes, it's designed for intentional dating. But it's *also* designed for community connection, for values coherence, for the person who wants to know—before even messaging someone—whether they share fundamental assumptions about relationships.
This is category-defining work.
If you're paying attention to dating trends, a pattern emerges:
Tinder's CMO calls out "Loud Looking" as the defining trend: singles unapologetically stating what they want.
Bumble identifies "Val-Core" dating: seeking partners aligned on values and social causes.
Hinge's positioning: "Designed to be deleted"—the goal is *off* the app.
These are all pointing in one direction: away from shallow matching, toward intentional, values-driven connection.
Beyond accelerates this trajectory. It says: What if we stop pretending algorithms can replace community? What if we centered values alignment from day one? What if we designed for people who are curious about who they are and who want to find partners—or partners and partners—who celebrate that curiosity?
This is where dating culture is headed. Beyond isn't predicting the future. It's building it.
Beyond is currently available in New York and Los Angeles. It operates on an application basis—you apply, you're vetted, and if you're aligned with the community values, you're in. This model sounds restrictive, but it ensures quality and coherence.
The company has already built a community of 5,000 members and received 10,000 applications, signaling serious demand. They're expanding internationally by 2026.
The next wave of dating isn't about swiping harder. It's about swiping *less*—and connecting deeper. If that resonates with you, Beyond might be worth exploring.
Learn more at datebeyond.co. And to dive deeper into Oyku's thinking on building disruptive products, read the full Authority Magazine interview that inspired this article.
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