Leagues of Love

Carnegie Mellon University alumna Amanda Bradford understands her customers.

Amanda is the founder of The League, a dating app that uses an admissions-based model to connect singles with like-minded ambitions, standards and goals.

She launched The League in 2014 after failing to find a dating app for successful, driven singles like her. Since then, it has garnered more than 2 million unique applicants and has 200,000 active monthly users.

“People come up to me and tell me that they met their soulmate, they're bringing babies into the world and it's all because of the app,” says Amanda, a 2006 Dietrich College graduate with a bachelor’s degree in information systems.

“Those are my favorite stories.”

Brick-by-Brick

From its inception, The League was run by Amanda and a small, dedicated team.

“We did a lot of stuff very cheaply and scrappy,” Amanda says. “The DNA of the brand is that it was built by me and my early employees with a lot of sweat equity.”

As a solo founder, she handled everything from coding and development to marketing and branding.

“Everyone has these glamorized notions of what consumer apps are like,” she says. “But it was just like anything else. I had to put one foot ahead of the other, brick-by-brick, building the team, building the product and listening to the customers. It took a lot.”

Her efforts paid off. In 2023, she sold The League to Match Group for $30 million.

“I always joke that selling the company was like sending The League to a really good university,” Amanda says. “I feel like a proud mom watching it get the education it deserves, the marketing talent it deserves and great people in place who are better than me at many of the things I've been doing.”

Entrepreneurial Education

Amanda grew up in a “tech-obsessed” family. Her dad loved computers and worked at IBM, so she always had access to the latest technology.

“We were the kids on the block with the internet connection,” Amanda says. “We were the first ones on the Prodigy computer. We had Palm Pilots. It was always like that.”

When applying for college, she looked for schools with a strong technology curriculum and a competitive volleyball program. Carnegie Mellon offered both.

When she wasn’t on the court, she was in the classroom learning valuable technical skills.

“CMU had a really good mix of theoretical foundation and pragmatic, practical skills, which  I still use today,” Amanda says. “They did a good job of teaching us about new, cutting-edge technology and also skills like HTML and CSS.”

Amanda used many of those lessons when building her app.

“Half our app was built in HTML and CSS,” she says. “Without the tactical education and being taught how to do that stuff, I would not have felt comfortable doing so much of the development myself.”

As part of her major, Amanda also took lots of business courses.

“A lot of the classes and group projects emulated what it's like to be a founding team at a startup,” she says. “The curriculum was really spot on for preparing me for entrepreneurship.”

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, she attended business school at Stanford University, where the idea for The League was born. She received her MBA from Stanford in 2014, and The League was incorporated later that year.

Seeking Serendipity

Since selling the company, Amanda has taken a step back from day-to-day operations and moved into a more forward-thinking, strategic role.

“I've always wanted The League to be a lot more than a dating app,” she says. “What I'm excited about now is that we can actually start thinking big-picture.”

For Amanda, the big picture includes connecting users in new ways. Do they need a nanny? Are they looking for an event to attend? Did they move and want a tour of their new city? The League could make it happen.

And if they find love along the way? That’s even better.

“Instead of dating being a separate chore that you have to add onto your daily life, I want dating to be naturally incorporated into what a fulfilling, meaningful life looks like,” Amanda says. “I call it tech-enabled serendipity. Go about your daily life, keep setting and achieving goals, and meet some amazing people along the way. We can help you do that in a better way.”

A Focus on Founders

As The League enters a new chapter, Amanda is entering one, too.

“A lot of people have asked why I sold, why I didn't keep it independent,” she says. “Part of why I wanted a new chapter is to start giving back and mentoring founders, especially female founders.”

She is setting up a small fund to invest in solo women entrepreneurs.

“It's a very lonely journey,” Amanda says. “There is something special about people that do it solo, and I think you need a different kind of support.”

For Amanda, that support came 10 years ago in a $25,000 check.

“That first check was really important for me,” Amanda says. “That was the difference between me doing this or not. I want to give these women their first $25,000 check that can make or break their plunge into entrepreneurship. I want to return the favor that I received when people believed in me.”