While many legal regimes have undergone fundamental shifts to account for the online economy, one lags behind: industry-specific mandatory contract rules. These rules, frequently buried in decades-old, nonintuitive statutes, are often overly prescriptive and come with draconian penalties, hampering the goals of entrepreneurship and impeding startup growth. 

Much has been written about the intersection of regulation and entrepreneurship. But sparse attention has been paid to the unintended consequences on early-stage companies of more subtle regulatory interventions like contract rules — especially those with inconsistent or conflicting requirements among the states. This Article begins to fill that gap and uses as a case study a set of contract laws passed long ago to govern traditional matchmaking services, but now equally apply to Tinder and its brethren. 

Just like many other legal regimes, contract laws for industries that have space-shifted from offline to online need a second, thoughtful look from policymakers. There are many possible solutions, but all share the same goal: harmonization and flexibility to support evolving industries while still providing benefits to consumers. Regardless, easing regulatory burdens that are ill-suited for the online economy would free up resources to invest in more substantive issues on which platforms should compete.