Forward is slow dating by mail:
an offline experiment in love and postage.
We send you one thoughtful match at a time.
You and your match write letters back and forth. We forward them to protect your address.
Checking the mailbox becomes your favorite daily ritual.
Why letters?
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Dating apps lay out an endless buffet of options, leaving you numb to your matches’ humanity. With Forward’s one-match-at-a-time policy, your matches get your full attention, and you get theirs.
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Letter writing is a creative ritual of self-discovery. Back when people wrote letters by candlelight, they penned feeling into their flirtation. What if your missives with your match helped you actually get to know them— and yourself? Forward encourages transparency, brass tacks, and, yes, forwardness.
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Dating apps designed their filters and algorithms to profile and pigeonhole you, which stifles organic connections and leaves everyone feeling rudely quantified. Forward tosses dealbreakers out the window and makes matches based mainly on your writing and our intuition.
The Forward ritual
1) Apply
You’ll submit some simple personal info and upload one photo (just one!). We’ll then prompt you to write a letter of introduction and mail it to us.
Our pilot is focused on NYC, but anyone is welcome to write in. If all goes well, we’ll expand to more areas.
2) Match
Starting in January 2026, our matchmaking team will carefully review your materials and choose a thoughtful match. Once we do, we’ll mail you your match’s intro letter and photo and prompt you to write back.
During our pilot period, your first match is free! You just cover postage.
3) Write
You and your match may write back and forth as many times as you want. We forward every letter to keep your address private.
To keep the conversation alive, we ask that you write back to your match within a week. When you’re both ready, you can take things (even more) offline.
4) Re-match (?)
Once you feel complete with a match, you can request another for $25.
We keep it one match at a time on purpose, and we price each new match as an investment: a reminder that every connection deserves to be taken seriously.
Dear reader,
💌
Dear reader,
📬
Dear reader,
✍️
Dear reader, 💌 Dear reader, 📬 Dear reader, ✍️
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My name is Josh, and I created Forward because I’m sick of dating apps. To be clear, I haven’t used them since a friend did me the rare and life-changing honor—the mercy, even—of setting me up with my current partner at a Crown Heights house party back in 2023. Yet, the apps flutter away in my peripheral vision, impossible to disregard for the cascade of horror stories, thinkpieces, rumors of corporate mergers. What other technology better reflects our collective social abdication?
It won’t be breaking news that a product with the gall to advertise itself as “designed to be deleted” has, in fact, been optimized with great care to hold your attention indefinitely. The apps keep us plugging away at the slot machine of manufactured non-intimacy, endlessly clearing the deck in search of a “better” match: our non-smoking special someone who reads novels (but only the right ones), finds fulfillment in their work (but not too much), and kisses with between .25 and .75 inches of tongue.
It feels risky to set up your friends. Once too many pairs of them refuse to be in the same room, you have to complete an LSAT logic puzzle every time you throw a party. Nobody has enough rizz for speed dating; those who do are very unlikely to read the right novels.
You want fewer filters and greater investment; less screen time, more creative fulfillment; slower dating and better loving. It’s a bit abstract to envision where you’ll be in five years, and you’re looking for someone who could be the answer to that question.
If this is you in NYC, write me a letter. I’ll find someone who will write you back.
With fondness and great admiration,
Josh
November, 2025