Skeptical at first, but then saw this:

  Each blockage HowAboutWe found among the committed couples 
  they studied has a corresponding feature on the new site. 
  To overcome the inertia it detected, the site will offer 
  fully packaged date ideas. To address logistical woes, 
  HowAboutWe is working to make the packages available with 
  a single click that will book your taxi, theater tickets 
  and corner table at the Italian trattoria.

  For Mr. Schechter and Mr. Schildkrout, each idea leads to 
  another. They could arrange babysitters for couples. They 
  could help slouchy husbands send, with one click, fancy 
  date invitations that suggest a labor of many clicks. They 
  could allow couples to follow the dates of other couples 
  they admire — a digital way to keep up with the Joneses.

One click dates + inexpensive/vetted babysitter would be an enormous recurring revenue market.

The babysitter is the hard bit.

Since couples tend to collect a small number of sitters and stick with those - frequently friend-of-friend's older children within social groups (church, suburban neighborhood, etc.) - the most tractable approach is more likely to be a calendaring and booking system for sitters vs. a "vetted employee" paradigm.

Nanny Poppins could leverage this with an API for the approved/vetted sitters that are available for that set of parents. That's actually a pretty neat idea!

A big part of why I consider HN worthwhile to read and post to: we only have time to even attempt executing on so many ideas, but maybe someone else is working on it. Like a big "take an idea, leave an idea" jar.

will exec do babysitting?

Shit, I would use this for regular dating too. You'd just have to ensure that it doesn't make the girl feel like the guy's taking her on a "packaged" date (no common branding or anything).

sittingaround.com is babysitter co-op site, but it just added a paid babysitter function! and you can pay with your credit card! how amazing is that, I never have the cash for sitters. [disclaimer: I am friends with the founder.]

It took me until the 7th paragraph to realize this wasn't a competitor to Ashley Madison.

The name of this article is really unfortunate and will probably mislead many readers.

My startup is already doing this (for all couples, not just married ones) and our date subscription service is launched in SF:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/03/becouply/

http://www.becouply.com

https://www.becouplydates.com/

I read the article and thought "awesome", so if someone is already doing it, great! But I clicked through to your site, and I've now closed it without subscribing. Some feedback:

- "Live like a power couple": worst feature ever. I struggle to see how this could be a good feature, and offering this makes me believe you couldn't possibly offer something I want

- $199 a month, for 1 date. Well, one date a month is a bit crap, and $199 is a lot to spend for it. A "nice dinner" date night comes to maybe $120 including taxis, and I could add another $25 to have Exec arrange it if I needed to. (As a startup person, I realize your value is not limited to the value of the date, but you've managed to present the product in a way that I automatically equate "1 date == $199", so this may be a positioning problem)

- I realize your dates are a bit cooler than most, but I want to spend time with the wife, not talking to Chefs and stuff, and not being social with new couples.

- becouply.com is terrible. Becouplydates.com is a much better site, but why are there both? Are you making many becouplys (and so not focussing on the product I want)? Also, becouply.com says you arent launched, it has a twitter feed that has zero relevance to the product ("come see us at #launch", "well done on your acquisition") and has a different price ($149) to the becouplydates.com.

Thanks for your feedback. Briefly:

A "nice dinner" date night comes to maybe $120 including taxis

Regarding pricing and value, it turns out that different people have very different ideas of what constitutes "a nice date" and that's perfectly OK. Every date we send couples on includes drinks, a multi-course dinner, a fun activity, and round trip black car. Our customers love the service and the price point, but there are other types of dates out there too and we'll probably add more of them.

[T]his may be a positioning problem

We can always work on our copy, thanks for the feeback.

I want to spend time with the wife, not talking to Chefs and stuff, and not being social with new couples

Great point regarding what's important for your dates. Some dates have a group component and some don't. All of our dates have some sort of exclusive activity. Different couples have different preferences about this sort of thing and, again, that's ok.

Are you making many becouplys (and so not focussing on the product I want)?

Thanks for your feedback on the sites. We're integrating the two right now.

[it] has a different price ($149) to the becouplydates.com

I'm not seeing the pricing typo you've mentioned, but I'd love to correct it.

[it] has a twitter feed that has zero relevance to the product

It's just not the case that our Twitter account has "zero relevance" to the product. We regularly send our Twitter followers on cool dates with their partners. For example, we worked with Motley Crue to send a couple backstage to their Valentine's Day performance at the Hard Rock in Vegas. It's a Twitter account, so we use it to interact with people. It's not just a PR wire, so yes, you'll see something other than our press releases on it at times. :)

I'm sure the twitter feed is relevant in general, but right now it shows startupy things, not couply things. Filtering would help.

I looked for $149, and it was actually in the Techcrunch article. Not much you can do about that. Though it might be better to order your links differently.

Ah, gotcha, thanks for the heads up. Please feel free to e-mail me at pius@becouply.com if you have any other thoughts you'd like to share.

I think you should consider adding their 'follow this couple' feature. People like following, imitation is human nature.

Thanks for the feedback! Essentially the whole feature set they describe in the article is just a clone of what we're doing and have talked about publicly (and the HowAboutWe founders have been on our app's beta waiting list for quite some time now, so they know of us).

But, we welcome the competition ... lots of couples out there. Nice to have someone help validate the market for us. :)

Fascinating.

I thought this was going to be a site about couples dating couples, like how Lily and Marshall in HIMYM were always trying to find married couples to hang out with.

I suspect this is also an interesting idea to a lot of people and might look very similar to Howaboutwe -- 1. couple dating ideas, 2. monetize by freeing couples up with babysitting.

Howaboutwe is "keep your love life fresh"

Coupledating helps married couples find similar people to hang out with. The site can help introduce couples (match.com), or keep feeding them ideas for things that 4 people can do (Howbouatwe).

I assumed this would be a swinging website when I first saw the headline.

I'd be interested to know how they solve the babysitting problem. I know there is no way in the world I would ever allow a random person set up from a company into my house and then leave them alone with my children. That is a level of trust far beyond what I would have of any company. Now... if they opened a "daycare" agency with a physical local you can take your kids to, that might be a possibility.

There's a ton of babysitting services that do work the way you'd never be willing to accept, so clearly not nearly all parents are as concerned about it...

Just as an opposing data point, I have two small kids and would have no qualms about that at all.

Make it social! Tie it into Facebook or get list of friends who are couples. "Your friends Bob & Jim used this babysitter, would you like us to contact them?"

Usually nobody will recomment a good babysitter, because they'd want to keep it for themselves.

Does this exist? Seems like it should.

Sort of like how you can use linked in to figure out who people have worked with.

People with kids often have friends with kids and you can figure out all the babysitters that have one degree of separation from you.

Let the users recruit their babysitters into the service, then select from among them when arranging dates.

Interesting! My last startup was actually about the exact same problem and we had pretty much similar ideas and monetization plans. Unfortunately it didn't work out well or we gave up pretty much soon. But I am glad that someone is taking up this problem, hence confirming that what we were solving, actually was a problem and facebook isn't the answer for anything related to social.

Good luck to the team.

We tried this about a year and a half ago, and it has been fairly popular:

http://www.makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com

The idea could be taken much further, lack of time on my part really. Feedback welcome.

I know a couple who uses Groupon in this way. They get to try a new restaurant or experience, and they feel like they got a deal too!

They're making marriage better by understanding and then changing the process by which it evolves -- fantastic!

For a second I figured it was going to be called SwingWithUs, a VC-backed site where wife-swapping becomes fashionable.

I'm finding a problem with the idea that when a dating site is very successful, they lose because the participants immediately become non customers.

The same is true (kind of) with car salesman and real estate salesman, if they are successful at selling the customer a car or house and they do a terrific job, they won't see that same customer again for 8 to 30 years. However, if the customer is delighted, word of mouth spreads, and you get a flood of the customer's friends.

True, but people rarely brag that they met their partner online. Relatively little word of mouth.

As for car sales -- this is a field notorious for how salespeople con the customer, probably for the reasons you specify. People pick the type of car they want, and then endure the shenanigans at the dealers of that brand in their area.

Obviously it's anecdotal, but a large portion of my friend circle have met their partners online, and there's been a strong word of mouth component there. For instance, I met my girlfriend on OkCupid, which she was only on because a few of her friends had just found boyfriends/girlfriends on the site and she figured she'd give it a shot.

All that's true, but if you can then sell that customer a car every month or a date every month, bonus.

Great idea. Interesting (and obvious in retrospect) note about the main flaw in paid dating sites: the more successful you are, the faster you lose your clients.