Two 20-year-old students' "political Tinder": not earning a cent, yet ranked above Le Monde

presid is a voter-matching app for France's 2027 presidential election: swipe policy cards, and only after swiping do you see who proposed each one, and it finally ranks which candidate you're closest to. Two weeks after launch it reached #1 in the French App Store News free chart, and the team says it had 70k downloads in under two months. Its mechanic is easy for anyone to copy, and about a dozen people have. What's worth watching is how it got picked out from a pile of identical apps, and why this business barely makes any money.

Sep 16, #1 in News

In Sep 2026 16, a news app that had been live for only three weeks hit #1 in the France App Store's Top Free News chart, ahead of X, Le Monde and franceinfo. Its developer is Louis Coudière, 20 years old, a student at emlyon Business School in Lyon (per a team press release, as relayed by Planète Grandes Écoles 09-22).

The day before, the local Tribune de Lyon had profiled him: from Saint-Genis-Laval, and 2027 was the first year he could vote in a presidential election. He noticed his classmates all knew "who they'd never vote for" but couldn't say what each candidate actually proposed. So he and his friend Victor Parcollet built presid. He told the reporter by phone: "There's no server behind presid. We have no database at all." Downloads were at 9,000, and he said he hoped to reach 100k by year end.

What it actually is

Open it and you get a card with a single claim, like "raise teacher salaries," "use drones to monitor wildfires," or "hold a referendum on retirement reform." No names, photos, or parties are shown. Swipe right to agree, left to disagree, or pick "love it" or "hate it." Only afterward does it reveal who supports and who opposes, with the source and date attached: campaign platforms, public statements, or National Assembly voting records.

After twenty-odd cards, you see a top-three podium, from Mélenchon to Le Pen, plus some lesser-known candidates, and below that, where you'd sit in the parliamentary hemicycle. The store page says it covers 22 issues, 389 cards, and 326 sourced claims (App Store, 11-06).

Completely free, no ads, no account, and the legal notice says it "generates no revenue." This is deliberate, as explained below.

Why this one and not the dozen others

这个玩法一点都不新。2022 年上一次大选,一个波尔多人做的 Elyze 就是这么滑的,下载超过 200 万(France Inter)。这一轮,比 presid 早上线的就有 Votons(6 月)、Politeo(7 月,看结果要 3.99 欧),同期还有 Néogora,后面又冒出 Swipe Your President、ARÈNE。20 Minutes 10-18 的稿子说,商店里这类 App 已经「一小打」。

Only presid has real traction on the App Store: 420 ratings in the French store. Second place, Citoyen, has 2027 ratings with 194, and it takes a different approach (you read the positions, you don't swipe cards). Votons has 13 ratings, and Politeo has 3 (App Store, 11-06). Three things separate them.

One: the spot was empty. Elyze's last update was in November 2022. It didn't return this cycle, and today it's still at #63 in the News free chart on old reputation alone (11-06). In autumn 2026, candidates were announcing one after another, and Minutes 20 reported 30 people were hunting for endorsement signatures, with more and more people "not knowing who to vote for." Reporters needed a "2027 political Tinder," and presid got the name.

Second, it does the opposite of Elyze's failures. Elyze was called out by Le Monde in 2022 for collecting user data, being fed fake proposals, and showing bias. presid turned each of those around: no accounts, no servers, scoring runs on the phone; no candidate gets a stance without a source; candidates with fewer than 5 sourced positions are kept out of the ranking; ties are broken randomly on each phone so no single lean goes out nationwide; no photos on the cards; sharing is switched off automatically the day before and on election day, per election law article L49. Write that into a press release and you have a ready-made headline: "An app that tells you who you're closest to, with no stance of its own." 20 Minutes sets it against Néogora, whose founder is a Republican city councillor, and calls presid the clean one.

3. Pitch the press. Victor says he handles media and political outreach; Louis used to run a small agency doing app promo (Oise Hebdo 09-22). They built a proper press kit, then went outlet by outlet: Tribune de Lyon (09-15) → Planète Grandes Écoles, Oise Hebdo (09-22) → Europe 1 (early October) → 20 Minutes national piece (10-18) → Le Progrès, two articles (10-26, 10-27) → Radio SCOOP in Lyon (11-02). "20-year-old, first vote, no investors, no subsidies" is a story local papers love. Votons also ran in La Dépêche and 20 Minutes, but there was no follow-up, and it stalled there.

Where users come from

Where it stands now

Declining, but not collapsed. News free chart 10-28, 10-29 2,10-30 onward 3,11-03 onward 4,11-06 6. Ratings grew from 10-28 ratings at 325 to 422 at 11-06, with 78 added in the last 7 days, running at 1 to 20 a day (App Store). Team-reported numbers: 9,000 in two weeks, under 27k in three weeks, 600 to 1,000 times a day during September, and over 70k on the App Store in under two months (Victor's LinkedIn, late October). All self-reported and unverifiable, but the ratio matches the rating count. The Android version only launched in late October, showing 500+ on Google Play.

What people in the reviews are asking for is consistent:

• "I found out I don't always agree with the person I thought I agreed with." (5 stars, 10-20). This is the category's best selling point.
• "If education matters more to me than Europe, the result should reflect that." (5 stars, 10-24). They want issues weighted.
• "Grouping similar claims together so we can pick our favorite, like minimum wage." (3 stars, 10-27; another 9-25 review with 4 stars says the same)
• "Questions repeat, the same topic comes back worded differently." (4 stars, 11-02). "Once you've answered them all there are no new questions" (3 stars, 10-19).
• "No matter how you answer, the same few candidates come out on top." "8B euros in savings, agree or disagree? How would you save it? No explanation." (1 stars, 10-23)
• "AI-generated content gets only 4 stars from me." (4 star, 9-17). The team did use Claude to write code, and also used it to check daily whether cards were out of date (Tribune de Lyon).

Where the money comes from: none

presid makes no money, and its credibility rests on that: no data collection, no ads, no ties to any party. An app that tells people who to vote for loses its neutrality the moment it starts selling something. Politeo locks its results behind a €3.99 in-app purchase, with 3 ratings.

The category's life cycle is also fixed: the first round of French voting is in April 2027, and after the second round demand drops to zero and stays there for five years. Elyze went through the same arc: 2M downloads, then it stopped updating, and its co-founder joined the government spokesperson's office (Le Point 2022-06). For the people who build it, what you get is reputation, a résumé line and contacts, not income.

Can you ride it?

Copying it in France: too late. presid already holds the "2027 political Tinder" spot. Swipe Your President launched mid-October and even copied the selling point of dated, sourced claims for every position, with 7 ratings. Media won't write about a second one.

Run it in another country. The window is real and it follows a pattern: 'I don't know who to vote for' demand spikes 6 to 9 months before each election. Whoever catches the 'XX version of Tinder' label gets the press bump. Counting from fixed terms, 2027 parliamentary elections in Spain, Italy and Poland, plus Argentina's presidential vote, fall in this range (dates not checked one by one). But first check whether each country already has an official tool: Germany has the Federal Agency for Civic Education's Wahl-O-Mat, the Netherlands has StemWijzer, Switzerland has smartvote, and newcomers barely have room in those markets.

Do the parts it got wrong. The reviews already list the gaps: weight issues by importance, compare similar positions side by side, explain how a policy would actually be carried out, and keep things to play after the quiz is finished. But those are upgrades inside one app, not a different business.

What you can take away is the playbook, not the product. In categories where people need to trust you, make 'neutral, zero data, sourced' both a product feature and the press release headline. Push for charts in low-barrier categories, then announce 'ranked above a major outlet' as news. Write a founder story and a press kit, and let local papers run it one after another.

If it were you

Verdict: C. The playbook is worth learning, but copying the business isn't. It proves a two-person student team with zero budget can use PR and a niche category chart to break into a national election in a big country. But the business itself has no revenue, runs once every five years, and drops to zero after April.

Who it suits: students and young teams who want a portfolio piece they can cite in a CV or a funding pitch, like 'featured in national media, hit #1 in the chart'; civic tech people, media folks, and project teams with grant money; people who can already write press releases and work with journalists.

Who it doesn't suit: indie devs who want to make money from it; people who won't call journalists personally and are waiting for organic store traffic; anyone in a country that already has an official matching tool.

How to build it: pick a country with an election in 2027 years, weak official tools, and a previous 'political Tinder' that stopped updating. Content comes first: every position links to its original source and date, with a hard threshold (only positions backed by several sourced statements make the ranking), no data collection, local computation, and sharing switched off automatically during the pre-election blackout. Build the policy weighting and side-by-side comparison the reviews asked for into version one. Use AI to help organize the platforms and to check daily whether positions have changed, but state on the page which parts were human-verified, since 'AI-written' alone loses points.

How to get users: write the press kit first (who the founder is, why they built it, neutrality rules listed one by one, launch numbers). Start with local papers in the founder's city and keep going one article at a time, then pitch election columns at national papers. In the store listing, claim the 'election year + election' keywords and file under News. Once you're in the top five, post the ranking screenshot as news again.

When to launch: go live 6 to 7 months before voting day. presid went on the store 7 and a half months before the first round and reached #1 two weeks later. Anyone launching 4 months before voting day or later is too late, because the media has already picked its people.

What would mean you read it wrong: ① presid rose back into the news chart's top 3 during the 2027 1 March candidate debates, with ratings adding dozens a day. So the peak before the election was far bigger than the autumn one, French demand hasn't been used up, and late arrivals can still get a slice; ② after the election the team found ways to make money (media licensing, embeds for newspapers, institutional buyers), so this category isn't just a one-off piece; ③ on the flip side, if the country you picked had nobody building in it 5 months before the vote and no journalist had written about it, it may not be an empty spot. There may simply be no demand there.