Elite Dating Apps Threaten to Make America’s Wealth Gap Worse

Their romance began on a server at a San Francisco startup. Anna Wood had submitted a profile to the League, a dating app aimed at young professionals. She was the perfect prospect: Degree from a top university? Check. Management-track job at a marquee company? Check. Carefully selected profile pictures and a winning smile? Check and check.

The League’s algorithm quickly matched Wood, who’d been working in sales at Google and had just been admitted to Stanford University’s business school, with Tracy Thomas, an employee at a Bay Area startup with a wardrobe straight out of preppy clothier Vineyard Vines. Within a week, they’d arranged to meet at a tennis tournament. Sushi, drinks, and frozen yogurt followed. Three years later, they’re engaged and living in Los Angeles while Thomas wraps up his own business degree. “It was important to me that someone I was going on a date with was well-educated and driven, and had a lot of the same goals I did,” says Wood, who now runs a lifestyle blog and coaching service called Brains Over Blonde. “I have big career ambitions, and that had, in the past, intimidated—scared away—people I’d dated.”