Hinge: Justin McLeod

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From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how the one that got away led Justin McLeod to build the dating app Hinge and how Hinge led him to the love of his life.

In 2019, a very distinguished peer-reviewed academic journal published a paper about human courtship. The study led by Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld concluded that most romantic relationships now begin online. Now, if you are under 35, this may not come as a huge surprise. Pretty much everyone you know either uses or has used or has at least downloaded some kind of dating app. But to anyone older, say people over 40, this study may come as a shock because most of them met their partners at churches or workplaces or school or a party or through a mutual friend or at a bar. And sure, you can still meet your future life partner in any of those ways, but the bottom line, online dating now seems like the default, the norm, the path of least resistance. And today, dating apps alone are a $3 billion a year global business. There is an endless array of them. So how does one app stick out from another? Well, when it comes to one particular app, Hinge, the company's tagline is 'Designed to be deleted,' which at first glance sounds like an unpromising business model. But when you think about it, what Hinge is basically trying to tell you is we're going to help you find the one and then you won't need us anymore.

Now, like any successful business, Justin McLeod built Hinge on relationships, relationships with users and investors and employees. But I think of all the founders we've had on the show, Justin's personal relationships and one relationship in particular were inextricably linked to the launch and very identity of his brand. I don't want to give too much away here because you have to hear his story to believe it, but in a sense, Justin's own romantic life became a kind of litmus test for the way he hoped Hinge users would approach dating, not just as a frenetic swipe left, swipe right kind of game, but a serious, thoughtful, intentional first step towards something lasting and long-term. And the story of how Justin essentially turned his life experience into a brand is in some ways so dramatic, so implausible that you'd half expect to see it on a TV show or in a movie. But we'll get there.

Anyway, Justin grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He was an only child who attended Catholic school.

Yeah. Did that continue into high school? Like you're kind of hanging out mostly with girls, or did that start to change?

I mean, and let's be honest, seventh grade, you're not at your most sophisticated in life yet. I mean, this is still puppy love.

How so?

Huh. I mean, you must have been good enough at school, right? Because you went to college. You got into college.

All right. So you go to college, you went to Colgate University, which is a pretty small place in rural upstate New York. And I guess from what I understand, you continued your kind of approach to life, I guess is fair to say, right? Like a lot of partying there.

Wow. It sounds like you were a kid exposed to this early on and you just a combination of maybe you had a predisposition to addiction plus you were young and you didn't quite know how to handle it or how to moderate your behavior. And so a combination of that and addiction really kind of took over.

Were your parents aware of it? And if they were, I'm assuming they were worried.

But I guess shortly before you graduated from college, you and Kate split. Was that your decision or was that her decision?

All right. So 2006 you graduated college. You guys are split and that's the end of your relationship. And you obviously had to deal with sobriety. How did you do it? How were you able to give up drugs and alcohol?

Where did that idea come from, by the way?

I mean, it's in some ways you're really lucky that this happened early in your life and you were able to deal with it early in your life.

All right. So you graduate and you move to Washington DC and you work in management consulting for a few years and then you went to business school, right? To Harvard Business School.

And your previous experience in a college environment was super partier and drinker, and I imagine that drinking helped you meet people. But now you're in this new environment where you're no longer drinking. What was that like?

So you are at Harvard Business School and one of the advantages of going to business school is it creates a network. A lot of people go to business school with that intention in mind, finding their future co-founder, like Andy Dunn of Bonobos did when he went to Stanford, or Jen Hyman of Rent the Runway found her co-founder at Harvard Business School. Was that your intention, to find your co-founder and start a business when you got there?

How did you start to think about something connected to relationships or dating while you were at business school? What was the story?

Wow. By the way, were you in touch with Kate?

But did you know where she was?

That's all I knew. But this is now four years after you split up and you're still, she's still on your mind.

What did you say?

Wait, it was a Facebook like a web app, right? Was it pre- this is

And the idea was that people would sign up for this and then it would match them with other people in the app that they knew.

Was the fact that the dance was cancelled, did that have anything to do with you launching it, or was that just kind of coincidental?

Wow. So this was basically this idea kind of replaced the dance because the dance was designed to do the same thing.

And but how was this idea connected to anything in your personal life? I mean I know you were heartbroken because Kate didn't want to meet you and you kind of didn't have a whole lot of success dating, but how was this in a sense a way to solve your own problem or was it just an idea that came about and seemed fun?

All right. So you put this up and you're at Harvard Business School, so presumably it wasn't that hard to get people to notice it because you just told people, 'Hey, check this out,' right?

I mean, this is still like you're still in Boston at business school and this is your last semester there and you have a job lined up at McKinsey, but what happened to make you start to think that maybe this is something you should pursue after you graduate? Like were friends at business school finding success? Were people saying, 'Hey, this is awesome. I love this.' Was that happening?

So you graduated in May and you decide to pursue this. And did you need money? I mean, I have to assume you needed some money to try and get this off the ground.

Yeah, exactly. And so I followed her out to San Francisco where she was gonna take her job at Google but sort of halftime work with me on Hinge.

Yeah. $24,000. That was it. And so that's what we used to pay these developers and started to develop a prototype. I was sort of the product person imagining what the interface was going to look like and she would help talk to the engineers because she also coded. And so I follow her out to Mountain View. I'm sleeping on her floor in Mountain View. And eventually she's like, 'This has been fun, Justin, but I'm going to stay at Google. This isn't really my thing.' So I left her apartment in Mountain View. I bounced around for a little bit around SF and then Berkeley. And then I was like, 'This is not my place. I don't know anyone out here.' And so I drove cross country back to DC where I had worked before and knew people and had a network. And I decided to start it there on my own.

And the idea was to build a website, a dating website initially.

And was it still called, 'cause originally you called it Secret Agent Cupid. Was that what you still were calling it at that point in 2011?

That's interesting. I did not know that. So, so that's why, 'cause a hinge connects the door to the door frame. I was, 'cause when I first heard the name Hinge, I was like, 'Huh, it's sort of a, it's like the, you know, the door swinging out back and forth like you're coming in and out of the door like one date, two dates, three dates, four dates, five dates.' Like the door on the hinge keeps swinging open and closed. But that's wrong. That is not where Hinge comes from.

Yeah. So, you, uh, are you got a little bit of money, you're in Washington DC, and did you have an office or were you working out of the accelerator in Washington DC?

Got it.

And what was the, I mean like, I'm trying to think in 2011 when you started to look for potential investors and I think it would be a little while before you got real money. I would say to you, what differentiates you from Match.com? Why would somebody use or or OkCupid or JDate or whatever was out there? I don't even know if Tinder was out there yet. What makes you different? And you would say what? We're going to be stigma-free.

But how would you match people? I mean, when you were pitching this to investors in 2011 or 2012, like why would somebody, why would people use Hinge when they ask you that question, you would say, okay, it's easier, but then you would say, I would say, well, but how do you match people if it's if you're just one click?

So it wasn't filling out a bunch of forms. It was just answering questions like a quiz you would get.

So what kind of feedback were you getting? I mean it was still you still had didn't have a whole lot of people using it. But was the feedback at least good?

When we come back in just a moment, how Justin decides to simplify Hinge and winds up building an app that a few years later he'll decide to pretty much rebuild from scratch. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So, it's 2012 and Justin is trying to take the friction out of dating by building a site that's meant to help people meet friends of friends. But in order to do that, he's got to raise some cash.

Right? And I guess you didn't have a whole lot of success with them.

But they were saying, 'No, no, match. Match.com is owned by IAC, right?'

I mean, did that in any way discourage you? I mean, did you ever feel like, God, they really maybe they're right?

You're a year in now and it's really not getting much traction and you're burning through cash. What kept you, you know, from not just getting depressed or or anxious about the possibility that this would just collapse?

And that was because by 2012, you yourself presumably and all your friends were using iPhones? It was starting, you know, the App Store was starting to become more popular. There were more companies starting to develop things for the App Store. So it just felt like if we're the dating company of the future, the dating company of the future is probably on mobile. And I think again the simplification, it dovetailed with the simplification of the interface, which is that we'll just make this thing really simple. And if it's really simple, it should fit on mobile. It's almost like a good forcing function to make it simple because you can't fit that much on a 3 and a half inch screen.

So, all right. So, the idea here was to just do a pivot and focus on building a mobile app. I'm trying to figure out how you did that though because in 2012 building a mobile app was a lot more expensive than it is today. How did you guys do that?

What was your strategy in terms of getting it out into the world?

All right. So, so this party that you're talking about, you working on the app and I guess you decide we're going to relaunch the company with a party. We're going to throw a big party, invite everybody we know and hopefully people would download the app. That was the idea.

This is in February of 2013. Where was the party?

And I mean, how did you entice 2,500 people to come to the party?

All right. So that night to get into the door, you had to download the app, which meant that's 2,500 downloads guaranteed, which is pretty good. How much of an impact did that have? I mean, did those 2,500 people presumably not all of them, but did a percentage of them start to use it?

And I know this would eventually change, but initially, let's be honest, I mean, if you want to increase your chances of making money, there are a few places that will do that: sex, maybe alcohol. A few others. Was that proposition in your mind like or that you guys were kind of selling to potential customers, users was like, hey, this is a way to hook up. Was that initially part of the value proposition because I would think that that would make sense? I mean, that's what people want.

It sounds like you didn't really change your approach or your strategy too much. I mean you went to mobile but the value proposition was the same like this is a friends of friends relationship app. What explains, I mean, is it that launch party alone that explains how you really start to acquire users?

And presumably now you've got to raise money. Was it now easier for investors, now more open to giving you money?

All of a sudden like there's Tinder, there's Hinge and there's some others, but you were very different from Tinder because Tinder was swipe left, swipe right.

There was an article that came out in Vanity Fair I think in 2015. It's called like the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse or something. Yes. And it's mostly about Tinder, but there's quite a bit in there about Hinge. There's a paragraph in there, and I'll read it to you. It says, 'Marty, who prefers Hinge to Tinder, he says, 'Hinge is my thing, is no slouch at racking up girls. He says he's slept with 30 to 40 women in the last year.' And he says, 'I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy in order to win them over, but then they start wanting me to care more, and I just don't.' Now, forgive me. I don't want to sound judgmental, but like this guy just sounds horrible, right? I mean, when you hear that and you saw what you created, did a part of you just, I don't know. I mean, yeah, you built this amazing app and people were using it, but I don't know. Did a part of you kind of feel like, 'This is not what I wanted to do?'

Yeah. I mean, again, it had a little bit, it just wasn't well designed for what we wanted it to be for, which is long-term. I mean, I started this because I wanted a girlfriend. I started this because I wanted that real connection and it was not designed for that.

Yeah. I, you know, and I thought it was a numbers game, too. I had a different objective in mind, but I also believed when I created that version of Hinge that, you know, you just go through enough people and then when you find the perfect one, everything's easy from there. And so that is the kind of ethos that I had built Hinge around.

And I guess it makes sense for a reporter to ask the guy behind Hinge like how's your love life? Exactly. And you were not dating anybody at the time?

I mean, wow. I mean, it's, I have so many feelings and thoughts about it because obviously this was meant to be the two of you, but like wow. I mean, that's a lot, right? I mean, she both of you guys were making a lot of big decisions.

The decision to that was going to be really hurtful and painful to somebody, but clearly this person she was going to marry was not the right match for her. But still, like she was a month away from getting married and I'm assuming that when she decided to call off the wedding, she also kind of implicitly decided that she was going to move to New York to be with you.

But you were kind of pushed into that direction just because of the forces of the economy and of what people wanted and what investors wanted you to do and what you thought was going to work.

When we come back in just a moment. How the effort to relaunch the app would lead to a dramatic drop in users and how an 11th hour investment from a one-time competitor would help revive the brand. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So, it's the fall of 2015 and inspired by his rekindled relationship with Kate, Justin decides once again to completely rebuild Hinge. We're going to rip down this whole thing. Bigger deal now. We're not four people anymore. We're 30. And we don't have 25,000 in the bank. We've got like 10 million. And I called up my COO, Sam. I talked to Katie. You know, I got them rallied around this idea that what we built is not going to succeed and we have to rip it down. Start over from scratch. And by the way, there's a market opportunity. So now it had been what 3 or 4 years since the dating apps had launched. A lot of those people who were like 22, 23 when they came out are now like 26, 27, 28 and they're looking for something more serious. So, let's start over and let's build the app that's going to be accessible to young people and have a cool brand, but is really designed to get people into relationships and off the app.

Right?

How are you guys going to make money? How are you, you know, I mean, presumably charging a fee to join, a monthly fee, a per dating fee. Like, how did it work?

Interesting with the big sites like eHarmony and Match.com and stuff like that.

And that gave you like basically unlimited.

Gotcha. Okay. I mean, you know, you couldn't even like we're just like we're the intention platform. If you're not willing to pay 10 bucks a month, then like you know, go on go somewhere else.

And the other apps were free. Yeah. But we had we were very idealistic and we're like people will pay like that'll be the model that was a totally wrong thesis. So people were not willing to pay and then we had to like give people free trials and then we had to and then by the it was like it was such a mess because the market for dating apps it's like sort of like podcasts like people are used to free dating apps. All of a sudden you're coming out and saying you got to pay for it. People are like no I'll just go on this other dating app.

And you figured this out because it was like crickets. Like no one was paying for this.

But now you needed to make money. You had real investors and real money behind you.

So what did you how did you salvage it? I mean given that you this sounds like it was kind of a disastrous relaunch in that sense. Even if the other features were great, people weren't buying it. What did you do?

What? Tell me more about that.

And I I have to assume it's a tough business, right? I mean, there are lots and lots of options, right? And so a big part of differentiating yourself is through the branding, like what you represent. And now you guys were kind of really focused on being the relationship app. Like, okay, Tinder's the hookup app and Bumble's, you know, women initiate, but we're the relationship app. Is that fair to say?

Your tagline now is hey download us but really we want you to delete us because if you succeed on Hinge you won't need us anymore.

Okay. So when you did go ahead and do the relaunch of Hinge in 2016, how was it received?

Even your existing investors were getting cold feet.

I mean, it's amazing because you had already had a record of success. You had launched this thing. who defied the skeptics by even putting this out into the world. You had achieved quite a bit of success with it. You you know millions of people had used it and then and still you had a hard time raising more money.

Where were you putting the effort in?

I got you. And while you were developing that, you weren't even updating the app at all.

Yeah. You know, on the old version of Hinge, the biggest thing, just to give you a sense, you had to send a thousand likes in order to get to a date. And on the new version of Hinge, it was 50. So a thousand to 50, 20 times more effective at getting people out on a date. Hm. So, I mean, I think finally in 2018, you guys did get an investment, but a pretty big one. Which was a majority stake in the company from Match Group, which is Match.com owns Tinder. So, former competitors, and then in 2019, they fully acquired Hinge.

Yeah, they were all I mean Tinder was started within IEA, right? And and Match was owned by IA and they had huge resources and marketing dollars and it's not surprising that they exploded in growth.

And so it sounds like the calculation you made was these guys have a lot of resource. It's like it's like Proctor and Gamble. like you have a product and and Proctor and Gamble comes and says, 'Look, we want to acquire you and we have this all this research money and marketing dollars and could be a really attractive idea to go and work for them and scary at the same time, right? I mean for us like t you know Tinder was the enemy and so like you know it was like it was kind of a lot to get your head around that and at this point I had friends who'd sold their companies and had agreements and it like almost never works out. Either the the the company goes sideways or the company goes up but then they the relationship doesn't work with the founder and they leave. And so I was really conscious of that obviously. So, it was scary, but ultimately I just thought I wanted to do what's best for Hinge, the company, and I think this is it.

That was 2019 and I think the relationship with Match really enabled you guys to grow and to scale more and then comes 2020 which I imagine at the beginning of the pandemic you must have thought we're in big trouble nobody's going to be going out on dates. Is that initially did you see a steep decline in users?

Yeah. And also just less risky, right? You're just on a video call with somebody and if it's weird or you're just not connecting then you know that's it. You didn't have to leave your room.

Yeah. Um, this may be a hard question for you to answer, but I'll ask anyway. Um, you're still pretty young. You're in your 30s. I think you're mid to late 30s. And, um, you started this app, which is a pretty big deal. It's a major dating app and now fully acquired by Match and you work for Match. Um you're an employee. Um so you're the CEO, but but presumably, you know, like any employee, if if if they wanted to find a new one, they could. And if you want to move on, you could and probably eventually you will um and maybe start something new. Can you is that what you imagine doing? Like do you do you feel like you've got another business in you?

When you think about your story and everything that's happened and all the ups and downs and where you've come to, how much do you attribute to your hard work and your skill and talent and how much do you attribute to luck?

That's Justin McLeod, founder and CEO of Hinge. And if you were wondering, yes, he and Kate are actually married. And back in the fall of 2019, they had a baby, a boy named Oliver. And by the way, if you think their story sounds like a movie, well, it kind of is because it became the inspiration for an episode of the Amazon Prime series Modern Love, which Justin found out was being made literally on the last day of filming. And so I call Kate and I'm like, 'So, never going to believe this, but someone's filming a show about our lives like down the street.' And so Kate and I like hop in the car and we go to the location and we get out. There's like 150 people there and they're filming the 2013 Hinge launch party and Dev Patel is up on stage and they put Kate and me in as extras. So, you're hanging out with like Dev and Katherine Keener now like we have a photo with them from from Okay, but Dev doesn't call me that often.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you are not a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is hibtn npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're @howibuiltthis or @megiraz. And on Instagram, I'mg. Or at how I built this NPR. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Rumine Arabie. Thanks also to Liz Mezer, Farah Safari, Darth Gales, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujang Lee. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.