Charly Lester first entered the dating industry when her blog “30 Dates” went viral. She was hired by The Guardian and Time Out Magazine, where she was the Global Head of Dating. Then Charly launched The Dating Awards, and the European Dating Awards, which she ran in the US and UK until 2018 when she co-founded Lumen, a dating app for people in their 50s. Lumen received a 3.5m investment from Andrey Andreev – the dating titan behind dating apps like Badoo, and Bumble. Then Lumen, Bumble, and Chappy were bought for $3 billion by the Blackstone Group at the end of 2019. Charly is a nationally recognized dating industry expert, and her journey and dating stories are epic!
Charly has worked with several companies within the dating space. She was Agony Aunt for eHarmony, and her dating advice appears on national television, radio, and magazines. She also was a guest judge on The Apprentice.
Charly is a sought-after advisor for start-ups. She teaches business classes at the Guardian and is the author of two books – The Female Entrepreneur and Modern Marketing for Start-Ups. Charly advocates for female entrepreneurship and is the Co-Founder of ‘A League of Her Own’ – an online training platform for entrepreneurs. Charly was named one of the 5 ‘Women of The Future” in entrepreneurship. She was profiled by Forbes the same year. In 2020 Charly was listed in the Women in Tech 100. After just four months with Lumen, she led the business to number 24 in the Start-Ups 100 List, and she was recently awarded a Stevie Award for entrepreneurship.
Kerry Brett and Charly Lester cover a lot of ground around online dating. Topics include:
How a Facebook post lead to Charly creating a blog “30 Dates” and how that catapulted her to start a dating app.
What Charly’s experience as the dating editor for The Guardian and Global Head of Dating for the Magazine Time Out taught her about dating.
What Charly learned about online dating when she created the Dating Awards in the UK and US as well as the European Dating Awards.
The struggles people have in the age 50 group with online dating.
Why people in their 50's are the fastest group onboarding on dating apps.
The biggest changes and shifts in the dating world during the pandemic.
Charly is also a dating expert for RealMe, so she shares the state and security of online dating.
Why people would feel more safe and secure if they used a company like RealMe and did background check before the date.
Charly shares her best dating tips.
Charly also discusses the top mistakes women make when online dating.
To find out more about Charly Lester go to https://charlylester.com, follow on Twitter or on Instagram @charly.lester