"Last Wednesday we seated 6 strangers over 45 into one table": NiceToMeet's business is on the web, the app is just the front door

NiceToMeet only launched on iOS in September, then charted on social rankings in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in early November. But it isn't an app that rose from the store: behind it is a small Slovenian company that began heavy Facebook and Instagram ad spending at the start of 2026, selling Timeleft's "have dinner with strangers" format only to people over 45, with monthly fees charged on the web. Below: what it sells, where its users come from, how it collects money, and whether you can build something along the same lines.

An Apr 13 Facebook video

On the evening of Apr 13 2026, the Facebook page "Nice To Meet" posted a 41-second video titled "If you're 45+ we want you!" The caption read:

"Last Wednesday we arranged dinner for 6 strangers over 45. None of them knew each other, and every one of them stayed two hours longer than the reservation. ... Take a short quiz, we'll organize the group, book the restaurant and handle everything; all you have to do is show up. No app, no swiping, no awkward socializing. Over 5,000 people have already met through us."

The same page had a set of videos in the same style: "If you are 45+ this is for you!" "Men 45+, this is for you" "Who should be at your table." The page had 14.8k followers and 14.6k people "talking about this," nearly identical numbers, suggesting the engagement was almost entirely from ads.

At about the same time, someone posted on Reddit's r/DatingOverSixty titled "Facebook (presumed dating) event advertiser 'nicetomeet.com'": another "dating event" advertising on Facebook, a scam? Later, a post on r/datingoverfifty, "Has anyone tried nicetomeet.com?", collected 234 comments. These people don't scroll TikTok or Product Hunt. They ran into it in their Facebook feed.

Note the line "No app." In April it really didn't have one.

What it actually sells

The flow on the nicetomeet.com homepage: take a personality quiz → pick a date (mostly Wednesday evenings, with some weekend walks) → receive the restaurant address the night before → dine with 4 to 8 people at one table, everyone paying their own bill → after the meal, privately tick who you'd like to see again, and contact details are exchanged only if both sides tick.

Payment is a monthly web fee. One Reddit user said "about $30 a month, charged until you cancel"; another on r/AskWomenOver60 said $20 a month, so the price may vary by city or period. The app sells nothing. The last line of the store description reads "Membership is available on our website": members subscribe on the site, and Apple takes a 30% cut of nothing.

It describes itself as "helping people over 45 make friends." But the Reddit take is blunter: "Nice to Meet is for singles looking for a partner, Timeleft is mainly friendship," and another says "I went twice, everyone at the table was single." Packaging it as "making friends" lets singles over 45 show up without awkwardness, and that is probably why many people keep renewing (inferred).

How fast it's growing

Numbers on the App Store (11-06):

The 5 storefronts together have about 535 ratings, with only about 4 written reviews. This is the typical in-app rating prompt: old members are nudged to install the app and tap a star when the pop-up appears. The US is the main market (over 70% of ratings), but the US social chart is so crowded that it rarely breaks into the top 200, so from the charts it looks like it's only popular in small countries.

The real scale is on the web:

• Trustpilot: reviews grew from about 1,787 (mid-August) to about 2,773 (late September), then to 3,409 (11-06), rated 4.8. Since August it has consistently added over 20 more a day, as if invitations were sent automatically after each dinner (inferred). The business profile was created in January 2026.
• The official site claims 30,000+ members, 60+ cities, 1,000+ dinners a month, and 15,000+ seats. The April ads and advertorials still said "5,000+ people." That's five or six times growth in half a year, all self-reported.
• Rough revenue estimate (inferred, unverified): 15,000 seats a month. If members attend one or two times a month on average, that's roughly 8,000 to 15,000 paying members, at $30 a month, or about $250k to $450k monthly revenue.

Where users come from

Meta ads are the main engine. Besides the videos above, a UK user said "I've been seeing tons of Nice To Meet ads lately," and others said they saw them on Instagram. In Oct 26 the page also posted a video tagged #over65 ("The hardest part is walking in alone, after that it's just dinner"), apparently testing creative for an older age bracket (inferred).

Advertorial-style landing pages. Ad clicks don't always go to the homepage. They go to nicetomeet.com/hottest-thing, headlined "NiceToMeet Just Became the Most Talked-About App of 2026," written like a press article. There are also /listicle-america-apps ("7 reasons Americans are ditching dating apps for NiceToMeet," with "limited seats this week") and /listicle-app-test ("We spent 3 months testing every way to meet people after 45"). This is the direct-response playbook that supplement and online-course sellers have used for years.

Quiz funnel. The main button on the homepage is "Take a Matching Quiz," and the first question asks your gender, then you go straight to sign-up.

Using good reviews to dispel "is this a scam?" People over 45 who see a Facebook ad have a first reaction of suspicion. So the thousands of Trustpilot reviews get quoted repeatedly across the advertorial pages. A comment-moderation vendor also published a case study saying it helped the brand clean up impostor and scam comments, handling 5,820 comments in 7 days (the vendor's own marketing; treat the numbers as reference only).

Reddit discussion was driven by the ads. r/datingoverfifty, r/FriendsOver50, and r/AskWomenOver60 all have threads, nearly all of the form "saw the ad, has anyone been?"

Almost no organic traffic. Nobody has mentioned it on X in nearly 90 days; on TikTok, searching "nicetomeet" turns up only one personal video with 676 views.

Who is behind it

Two co-founders. Spela Repovs previously ran online summits and courses: Strategic Parenting for parents of children with ADHD and autism, Althea Academy, and a salsa dance festival that she says "brought together over 500k people, mostly online." That line of work runs on Facebook ads, long sales letters, and email funnels. The other, Matic Jesenovec, is based in London and previously worked at WeCreateCourses, a course-marketing firm. The team works out of Ljubljana, and their job posting reads "Agility > Perfection."

So this is a direct-response marketing team that knows how to buy ads pivoting into offline social events, not an app-building team. That is what determines whether you can follow the same path.

They're already copying themselves: parent company MeetMinded reused the same website and copy structure to launch Mingleo (for gay men, live around February, about 725 Trustpilot reviews) and ComeBelong (for Christians, around August), and the site still shows a "Coming Soon" banner.

Who it's competing with

The real threat is Timeleft: adding a "peers only" age filter would cut NiceToMeet's differentiation in half.

Why it made the charts

1. The category has already been taught to people. Timeleft spent two years getting people comfortable with "dinner with strangers." NiceToMeet added no new mechanics: quiz, Wednesday dinners, address sent the night before, post-event mutual picks. Mostly a copy.
2. They picked the most profitable audience to buy. People 45+ use Facebook the most, are ignored by dating apps, and have money and time. Copy like "If you are 45+ this is for you" targets ads and clicks very precisely.
3. Money is collected on the web. Monthly fees avoid Apple's cut, diners pay for their own meals, the platform takes no restaurant costs, gross margins are high, and ad spend pays back.
4. The team was already in performance marketing. Advertorial pages, quizzes, review requests, and comment moderation are the playbook they knew from selling online courses; they just swapped the product.

Complaints and risks

• Gender imbalance, often 5 women to 3 men; only on Wednesdays; restaurants far from home; address only sent the night before (Reddit and App Store low-star reviews).
• Hard to cancel, surprise charges. On r/FriendsOver50, someone says "charged for membership again." Refund and chargeback risk is always there for subscription businesses built on paid acquisition.
• The name is too generic and nearly collides with a site called NiceToMeetYou.ai, making it hard to own search and store keywords.

If it were you

One-line verdict: "Proven offline social format × an overlooked audience × web subscriptions × Meta ads" is a workable path, and NiceToMeet is already using the same template to launch the third and fourth brands. But the hard parts are offline operations and paid acquisition, not the app.

Who it suits: people who run Meta ads and can calculate acquisition cost; small teams with on-the-ground operations in a specific city or language; people who already have a community around a particular group (a faith, a profession, an immigrant community, a language).

Who it doesn't suit: indie developers who only code and hope for organic store traffic. This business gets no store traffic; the app only serves existing members. Each city must fill its tables first, and gender balance, restaurants, and last-minute no-shows all need hands-on management.

How to do it:

• Don't head-on copy the 45+ English market; NiceToMeet and Timeleft are already there. Change language or audience: 45+ in German-speaking, French-speaking, Japanese, or Korean markets; or groups NiceToMeet hasn't targeted yet, like single parents after divorce, people just retired, or immigrant communities from a specific country.
• Start with one city. A web quiz plus paid subscription is enough; spreadsheets and manual table assignment work fine at first. No app needed up front.
• Negotiate fixed table bookings with restaurants; diners pay for their own meals, and you only charge the membership fee.

How to acquire users: copy its funnel: Facebook / Instagram video ads (copy that names the audience directly, like "If you're over 45, this is for you") → advertorial or "we tested every method" listicle pages → quiz → payment. Ask for reviews right after the first few dozen dinners; those first good reviews are your answer to "is this a scam?"

When the window closes: before Timeleft adds a same-age filter, or before MeetMinded translates this template into the language you're targeting. They're copying one audience at a time, so the window is measured in quarters, not years (inference).

Signs you're wrong: after running one city for 1 to 2 months, your cost to acquire a paying member exceeds two months of fees, or renewals after the first month fall below half; or gender imbalance keeps recurring at dinners and negative reviews start appearing. That means the audience can't fill tables in your city. Change city or audience.