The League was criticized as the dating app for elitists—'that was actually never the case,' founder says

When The League first entered the emerging dating app space in 2014, it was labeled "elitist." 

Anyone who wants to join must submit an application. You'll only be admitted if you meet certain criteria. If you are referred by a current user your application will be prioritized.

Paying for a membership allows you to jump the line — subscriptions start at $99/week.

All of this, of course, makes The League harder to join than other dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble. But The League set itself apart from its competitors, in perhaps an off-putting way, by making the type of person it wanted on the app very clear: ambitious, educated, high-achieving. For many daters, it was seen as an app for rich kids.

A year after the app's launch, Amanda Bradford, founder and CEO of The League, challenged that notion.

"Yes, we are selective — we believe in the research that correlates education and professional achievement with ambition, and weigh these data heavily in our screening algorithms," she wrote in a 2015 LinkedIn post.

Eight years since that post, and one year since the app was acquired by Match Group, Bradford maintains the app isn't elitist. But she also doesn't pretend that schooling and career don't matter. 

"If you think about it, education is a value system, right?" she tells CNBC Make It. "If you're going to spend the $200k to go to graduate school, you must really value education, and maybe you should be with someone else that also is willing to invest that much in their education." 

While the app is more explicit about it, Americans have been selecting partners based on education level for years. Eighty-one percent of people with a bachelor's degree or more education have a spouse or partner who also has a college degree, according to 2019 data from Pew Research Center. 

People in certain professions also tend to prefer dating within their industry. Of those who are married, 18.5% of physicians and surgeons marry someone with the same occupation, according to data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. 

That doesn't mean you need an MBA or a high-paying career to join The League, she says. You just need to be someone who has goals and aspirations. 

"People assumed you need to go to certain schools, you need to have certain titles, you need to have certain income, but that was actually never the case," she says. "It was always about people that want to be on that trajectory and less about where you are on the trajectory." 

We talked to Bradford about dating, ambition, and The League's recent "Be a Goal Digger" ad campaign. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

Aditi Shrikant, CNBC Make It: Post-pandemic, many people are moving away from "hustle culture" and want a more pronounced work-life balance. Where does The League fit into this? 

Amanda Bradford: People are defining success differently and want a job that they're passionate about. They also want to see their friends and family. Their ambition is the same, it's just less about the numbers in their bank account and more like, "Can I have passive income? Can I be able to leave work at 3 p.m. and go to a baseball game?" And if you can do that, that's freedom and success. People value autonomy and freedom.

[The League] got pigeonholed as this sort of 1%. Like, you're in top industries, you went to Ivy League schools, and we're like, no, it's goal-oriented people. You could be an Uber driver right now, but have big aspirations, and you're driving to support your future ambition. It's less about what your title is and what your salary is and more about your frame of mind. 

Shrikant: The League has a reputation as being for rich or affluent people. You would argue that it's not? 

Bradford: They aspire to have success and to have financial freedom and to have affluence, but it doesn't mean they need to have that to be part of the community. It's not a requirement for entry. It's less about what you've achieved and more about where you're going. 

Are you ambitious and goal-oriented? Those are the people we want to match.

Shrikant: So let's say you're an ambitious person, but you don't feel like that's what you're attracting while dating. How should those daters make it clear that they want an ambitious partner? 

Bradford: You want someone that's going to build with you. We have a new feature called GoalMates. You can put five different goals, and we match you with people that have the same goal, like climbing Machu Picchu or doing a triathlon.

The working theory is that it's a better way to match people, rather than height, age, education. If you can match people on mutual goals, then even if the relationship doesn't work out, you're at least making progress toward your goal and not wasting time.

Shrikant: I've interviewed other dating experts about the belief that opposites attract, and many say that's just very rarely the case. Do you feel your app proves that people are attracted to those who are similar to them? 

Bradford: It's crazy how people gravitate toward people that remind them of themselves. You want someone that understands you and understands that, whether it's working late, or having a million side hustles like Gen Z does, they are going to support that and relate to it.

All MBAs like the other MBAs, and I saw that when I was in business school. I wondered if they would like each other if we put them on the app and, lo and behold, they did. All the Wharton MBAs liked the Harvard MBAs. The lawyers like the other lawyers. 

Shrikant: I see you have a matchmaking service. Why did you decide to expand your product in that way? And how's it going?

Bradford: People are wanting more of a white glove service, more hand-holding. We are testing the concept that if you're over-swiping, but you still want to go on dates from The League, we can charge you a premium to set you up on in-person dates. We partnered with a matchmaker in San Francisco that specializes in matching highly educated, ambitious people that weren't finding success on the apps. We've done that with probably dozens of people so far.  

Shrikant: Your website says she's an Ivy League matchmaker. What does that mean? 

Bradford: She's a Harvard graduate and thinks people from those schools want someone that's going to match them from those communities. The matchmaker blends people from the app with people they know in their circles that aren't on apps, so they're getting people that might not be publicly listed. In real estate they're called pocket listings.

Her being part of that community allows people to feel more comfortable with who she's matching them up with.

Shrikant: So I have to ask you about the subway ad that says: "Date someone with a 5-year plan that makes you want to ovulate." What do you think of the negative attention it got when it went viral? 

Bradford: So, yeah. This is funny. The story of the ovulation ad is that it was actually supposed to be, "Date someone with a five-year plan that makes you want to goal-gasm." That got rejected from the MTA [New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority] because I guess "goal-gasm" was too erotic-sounding. I'm kind of annoyed about the whole thing because it was supposed to play on sexual innuendo. 

We worked with an agency that pitched us and that line was straight from them: "Date someone with a 5-year plan that makes you want to ovulate." And we all looked at it and thought, "we have never seen an ad with the word 'ovulate' in it." It made all our jaws drop. 

You could argue that the ad is very targeted to women that want kids, but the ad is a play on the fact that birth rates are declining. So, there's this idea that people aren't desiring to have kids unless they meet someone that's super impressive. They'd rather be single than settle.

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