Ana Kirova is a frequent user of her own dating app—but not without complications.
As CEO of Feeld, which describes itself as “a dating app for exploration, curiosity and pleasure,” Kirova never knows when to divulge her role at the company to potential matches. “Should I say it outright?” she asked rhetorically while sipping coffee earlier this week inside the Ace Hotel Brooklyn’s restaurant, As You Are. Right now, she said, she’s “talking to a couple people that I find very interesting.” But will they assume she’s just in it for the research?
“When it comes to actually meeting people on the platform,” Kirova said, “I’m still navigating it.”
A Bulgarian citizen currently based in Porto, Portugal, Kirova had come to New York—her first ever trip to the U.S.—for in-person strategy sessions with company leadership, some of whom she had never met in person. When she wasn’t in meetings, she spent the week walking around Brooklyn taking photographs (“That’s my hobby”) and popping into shops (she was particularly fascinated by a pharmacy in the Dumbo neighborhood that sold “candles in weird shapes”).
I wanted to sit down with Kirova after hearing her app come up repeatedly during recent conversations with people in tech, its name uttered in both whispers and enthusiastic endorsements. Feeld is what one might describe as an open-minded dating app, a safe place to linger whether you’re looking for “a third” or you want to explore ethical nonmonogamy—polyamorous relationships with multiple partners, or casual arrangements with groups. Anecdotally, the app appears to be making the rounds among tech leaders—Kirova has noticed “a lot of them” on the platform.
