Cerca Dating to Unveil Gen Z’s Real Dating Habits at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

By leaning strongly on people’s current social circles rather than strangers, a new dating app hopes to transform Gen Z’s connections. Named Cerca, the app is positioning itself as an antidote to the fatigue and mistrust many younger users express toward conventional dating platforms.

Cerca, founded by Myles Slayton with co-founders Willy Conzelman and Carter Munk, is meant to surface matches among friends and friends-of-friends rather than to open the floodgates to entire strangers. The program restricts exposure to far-off strangers and instead establishes relationships in common networks. Users on Cerca sync their contact lists and view only profiles of individuals with whom they already have a degree of social proximity. 

The software provides only four swipes per day, a calculated design choice to raise intent above infinite browsing; all likes are anonymous. Newly revealed at night are mutual matches, but without disclosing who first showed curiosity. Baked in safety features let users via the app limit how many and which contacts they share, block particular individuals, and filter out trigger words from profile visibility (e.g., ‘doctor,’ ‘dentist’). 

Additionally prohibited on the platform is screen recording and screen capture, a measure the team says is critical to safeguarding users from abuse of their images. Launched only months ago, Cerca Dating is already gaining notice. With around 60,000 users, mostly on university campuses and in New York City, it generated $1.6 million in seed funding and built an initial foundation. Scheduled to display its vision at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, the startup has a chance to demonstrate how its strategy could transform the future of app-based dating.

Slayton claims that conventional dating applications run counter to how Gen Z connects and bonds, through mutual friends, trusted social paths, and deliberate introductions rather than mindless swiping. He claims, “There is no world where you should see 100 profiles in a minute.” Rather, he sees a more intentional, curated experience based on social context and shared connections.

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