Proudly Portland 🌹

Soon after meeting Ladan Radafshar for what was a very brief interaction, she began appearing everywhere in my life. It first happened when I mentioned her to my best friend, who remembered meeting her years ago at a party. Within days, her face popped up on the Instagram feed of one of my college classmates. Weeks later, during a haircut, I quickly discovered the two of us see the same stylist and frequent the same bars.   Read More

There are a few things you can do yourself to increase your chances of getting noticed and getting better dates online, which of course leads to true love and happily ever after.Follow these steps to become your own dating guru.

1. Find the right dating platform for your dating style.
Do you want to spend more time finding the perfect date or more time actually going on dates? For some people, they want to know as much as they can about potential matches before they ever meet IRL.   Read More

Ladan Radafshar and Anne McDonald are speaking in tongues. They talk about super likes, swiping left, swiping right, Tinder traveling and other cultural codes.

“There are a lot of bad profiles out there right now,” said Radafshar, founder of the Portland-based startup Fern, a personal branding service for dating profiles. “Like the classic bathroom selfie without a shirt. There are a lot of photos of snakes around the neck these days. Men with baby tigers, too. Men with kittens.”   Read More

Too tender for Tinder? Fern helps singles of all ages put their best digital face forward. But don’t call Ladan Radafshar a matchmaker. “That’s such an old-fashioned term,” she bristles. As founder of the startup, Radafshar won’t necessarily find your lifelong mate, but she will make navigating and succeeding in the online dating world easier. “Our mission is ‘No bad dates.’”   Read More

Branding is a word most often associated with business, but Ferndate is applying it to dating profiles. “Oftentimes people will come in and say ‘I feel like I am a pretty normal guy, why aren’t I meeting the right person?’ We help people put their best image forward and best photos online”   Read More