Pre-seed brief · April 2026

Dating, redefined. For women who love women.

She & HER is a sapphic dating app for women who love women (wlw). We broadened what dating means. Three valid outcomes: romantic, self, or community. Find your human. Built by FAANG operators with 25+ combined years at Google, Microsoft, and Cambridge. Beta launches May 2026.

Stage  Pre-seed Round  $2M SAFE Cap  $10M post HQ  Houston, TX · Delaware C-corp
The Market

An underserved market of 686K+ households. A generational shift no incumbent has captured.

Sapphic dating apps treat women who love women like a niche of mainstream dating. The market is bigger than that. Different connection patterns. Different spending behavior. Outcomes that legacy apps don't serve: romantic, self, community. The data has caught up with what queer women always knew.

23.1%
of US Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. The share keeps climbing.
LGBT Capital, 2023
686K
female-female couple households in the US. A measurable, underserved base.
US Census ACS, 2023
2×
Sapphic women are 2× more likely than other women to use connection platforms. For intimacy and community.
Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2022
0.5%
of all 2020–2022 US startup capital went to LGBTQ+ founders. The funding gap is the arbitrage.
StartOut, 2023
The Product

A dating app, redefined. Romantic, self, or community. Find your human.

Existing sapphic dating apps assume dating equals romance, fast. We don't. Dating is finding your human, and that human can be a partner, a clearer sense of yourself, or a community you belong to. Wider outcomes. Higher retention.

Legacy sapphic dating apps

Built on the swipe assumption

  • Swipe loops tuned for engagement metrics
  • One outcome (romantic match), and the value ends there
  • Heteronormative defaults retrofitted for queer users
  • Safety as marketing copy
  • No connective tissue past the chat
She & HER

Built for finding your human

  • Intentional pacing. Alignment over volume.
  • Three valid outcomes: romantic, self, community
  • Queer-led product, with queer-built defaults
  • FAANG-grade trust and safety as core architecture
  • Bridge to IRL via confirmed Pride activations
The Moat

Three reinforcing moats. Technical, structural, and cultural.

i. Technical

FAANG-grade trust & safety, built in from day one.

Our CTO architected core systems at Google Safe Browsing and Android Privacy Sandbox. Our CEO holds an MS in Bioinformatics and 15+ years in ML at Google, Microsoft, and Cambridge. Behavioral-economics fluency and applied-AI personalization are how we compete. Retention is the metric we engineer for.

ii. Structural

Three reasons to come back.

Most dating apps optimize for one outcome (romance) and lose retention the second a match works, or doesn't. Our redefinition gives users three reasons to come back: romantic alignment, self-discovery, community. Retention goes up. CAC goes down. Network effects compound.

iii. Cultural

Queer-led, with a Pride pipeline competitors can't replicate.

Exclusive experiential partnership with Queer Aunties. NYC Pride 2026 confirmed. UK Pride and Amsterdam Pride confirmed for 2027. Pearl Bar Houston as anchor affiliate. Earned media on Fox 26 with a return slate booked. Distribution is hard to buy and easy for us to compound.

The Traction

Pre-launch demand, locked partnerships, earned media. Before beta.

We are not pitching a thesis without proof. We are pitching a product with a community already organized around it.

2K+
on the waitlist, growing weekly
43K/mo
monthly impressions across owned channels
May'26
beta launch. Public release follows Pride.

Partnership & Pride pipeline

  • Queer AuntiesExclusive · Experiential
  • NYC Pride 2026Activation · Confirmed
  • UK Pride 2027Activation · Confirmed
  • Amsterdam Pride 2027Activation · Confirmed
  • Pearl Bar HoustonAffiliate · Confirmed
  • Fox 26 Houston (Nightcap)Press · Return slate booked
  • No Homo ShowCo-record · In progress
The Team

Operators who've shipped at scale, and care about this community.

Desirée Yvonne Mayon, CEO and founder of She & HER
CEO & Founder
Desirée Yvonne Mayon

15+ years in ML and data science across Google, Microsoft / Xbox, Etsy, Nordstrom, and the University of Cambridge. MS in Bioinformatics (Texas A&M). Built recommendation, ranking, and behavioral systems at consumer scale. Spent two years researching how queer women actually want to connect online before writing a single line of product spec.

Ex-Google Ex-Microsoft Ex-Etsy Cambridge MS Bioinformatics
Mike Castner, CTO of She & HER
CTO
Mike Castner

Nine years at Google across Safe Browsing, Fuchsia, Spanner, and the Android Privacy Sandbox. Built the MPAC GenAI engine at Pelidum. 58 internal peer awards. He's already shipped the kind of trust and safety architecture queer women deserve.

Ex-Google · 9 yrs Safe Browsing Privacy Sandbox Spanner Applied GenAI

Plus a backend engineer onboard, a design partner of record (Opportune Design Co.), and an active community-and-partnerships team running the Pride 2026 calendar.

The Ask

Raising $2M pre-seed to scale to seed.

18 months of runway. Build the team. Ship the platform. Earn the traction data that prices the seed round.

Use of funds

Where the $2M goes.

Engineering and ML hires to scale the platform. Trust and safety tooling at the level we built at Google. Activations at Pride 2026 and 2027. Founder pay so the team stops running on a founder tax.

Engineering & ML team60%
Trust & safety + infrastructure18%
Pride 2026 + 2027 activations8%
Founder & ops compensation10%
Legal, compliance, buffer4%
Round size$2.0M
InstrumentSAFE (post-money)
Valuation cap$10M
Runway18 months
Use of proceedsTeam · Safety · Launch
Lead statusOpen
Close targetQ3 2026