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Justin McLeod

Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Hinge, Match Group

Search every verified Justin McLeod interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Justin McLeod, founder and CEO of Hinge, appeared on the "Advice Line" segment of the podcast "How I Built This" on June 1, 2025, where he answered questions from early-stage founders. During the episode, McLeod said he would have asked for more advice earlier in his career, stating that he "always just thought I could figure these things out" and learned over time that he could have benefited from more mentors. He also drew a comparison between the food industry's shift toward health and wellness and what he described as a need for a similar focus on "social wellness," suggesting that society had created "engineered" social experiences analogous to fast food. In earlier interviews, McLeod has discussed his philosophy on relationships and the design of Hinge. He has stated that "love isn't about trying to go through enough people until you find your perfect puzzle piece" and that "you don't find the one, you create the one." McLeod has also noted that Hinge intentionally loses more than 20% of users during the sign-up process, describing this as "a feature, not a bug" compared to other apps that prioritize quick onboarding. He has spoken about his personal habits, including removing Slack and email from his phone to avoid "reactive mode" and to create space for strategic thinking.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“Hinge almost failed so many times. We were down to like days of cash and... we were throwing the launch party in DC with our like last $25,000 in funding and we' only raised a few hundred thousand.”

“Certainly not. We are already in a crisis of loneliness. And I think Mark Zuckerberg was just quoted about this like most people don't have enough friends, but you know, we're going to give them AI chat bots.”

“One of our principles around AI is that it really should stand behind us and not between us — it can help support richer interactions and move people off the app faster, but it shouldn't be something people engage with as an end in itself; an AI chatbot should not be your boyfriend or girlfriend.”

“I mean, I see the same thing today. It's why I'm so such an advocate in thinking about digital addiction things like that because I think that we spend so much time on our phones uh getting like overstimulated that then the other things seem dull and then we go back to our phones.”

“We are the app that's designed to be deleted. We're not about engagement and retention and gamification. We're really about getting people who want to find their person off our app as quickly as possible.”

“That's hard. I offered every single person the same severance package that I offered the first group if they didn't want to come along on this journey, which one person took and the remaining 14 stayed.”

Other executives at Match Group

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →