Building Hinge with Justin McLeod: Intentional Design for Meaningful Dating

0:00LinkedIn News.

0:05Innovation ultimately is solving problems. It came back to my own personal pain point. It just takes a while to build that trust. The problem that I was trying to solve, it was all I was thinking about. You have to be obsessed with the human condition. I'm Tomer Coyne, Chief Product Officer of LinkedIn. And this is Building One. We lose 20 % of the people plus during the onboarding process. You know, if you're talking to a VC, you'd be like, well, that's crazy. That's Justin McLeod, the founder of Hinge. He's talking to me about how Hinge designs its onboarding for new users to make sure they're right for the app.

0:39We're going to get into that and so much more, so stick around.

0:55Starting a new company is hard, really hard. But what might be even harder is restarting one. Imagine putting years of work into building something, seeing it grow, and then realizing it's not exactly right. That's the moment where most founders freeze. Do you push forward? Do you pivot? Or do you take the truly radical step of tearing it all down and starting all over again? My guest today faced the exact same moment with his own company. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Justin McLeod, the founder of Hinge, currently the fastest growing dating app in the US. Hinge initially launched in 2012, but Hinge as we know it today didn't really start until 2015 when Justin decided to reboot the company and build it around a few core product principles.

1:46As the dating app designed to be deleted, Hinge is built as a product for intentional daters and one that has the ultimate goal of getting them into relationships and off the app. Justin's focus and discipline in product building really stands out. In my conversation with him, we learned about things like how placing limits on user actions can create better interactions overall, why Justin is proud to lose more than 20 % of new users during the onboarding process, how Hinge combats feature and scope creep, and the role Justin sees for AI in improving our dating lives. That and a lot more, so let's just jump in.

2:28Justin, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So I thought we'll start kind of early with your journey. And like many of our guests, you built Hinge out of a deeply felt need. You wanted to find a girlfriend, as far as I understand. Now, most people, 99.9 % of them, would just try whatever is out there. But you decided to build something. So I'm curious why. What drew you to go and build a solution versus just use what's out there for you? Yeah, it's a long story. And then there's the reboot 2015, 2016 refounding of Hinge. So we're talking about 2011.

3:08Originally, like, why did I get into this in the first place? And this was the Facebook app Hinge. Yeah, Facebook app. And then it was a mobile app, but it was a friends of friends kind of swiping experience. But this is 2011. So this is pre-dating apps. right? There's dating websites like Match and eHarmony and things like that. The day I graduated from college, I'd gotten sober. I worked for a few years and I went to business school. And business school was like this very like social environment, but I was struggling really to meet people because I just didn't, it was like a totally foreign world to me being able to go out to parties and like not drink and everyone else is drinking.

3:45And I'd actually reached out to my college girlfriend, Kate, to try to win her back. And she told me in so many words to shove it. I was heartbroken and looked at the services that were out there and just felt like, gosh, this isn't really something that I would use. It's not something that my friends use. We all use, at the time, Facebook. I think that there's an opportunity to create something that would be accessible and fun and kind of easy and approachable for people my age, people in their 20s to use. So that really was the original thought and insight. I wanted it for me, but I also was like, gosh, almost none of us use Match Reharmony.

4:29If we do, we're not talking about it. And why is that? And started to really get underneath, like, what was the reason that people didn't use these services? Well, they were expensive. People use kind of screen names, which was very passe at the time, because now we had Facebook, people were used to using their real names. You had to fill out like very long, detailed, revealing, vulnerable profiles that were like essay questions. It just wasn't the way that people kind of interacted in my age. And so I felt like, what if you built a new service that really appealed to younger people that was, I would say, like lower lift, more fun, more easy, got you in the door and just made it approachable.

5:09If it wasn't so expensive and it wasn't so hard, then I think people would feel more comfortable using it, saying they used it. And I also just always kind of been a romantic at heart. And I've always loved like systems and math and algorithms, like always been kind of what I gravitated to is always my strong point in school. And I don't know, it all just kind of converged as like a hit of, I just know I'm meant to do this. I had been working on in business school, a number of different projects that I was going to enter into a business plan competition. But all of it kind of felt like homework.

5:45It all felt like I have to work on my thing now. And then as soon as this idea hit me, it was like this thing is coming through me. It's like all I could think about. It's all I wanted to work on. I just felt like I just had to make it a reality. Yeah, we hear this quite often from founders that deeply felt need resonates with them on the level where they cannot not build it. Yeah, that's how I felt. I feel like I couldn't not build it. I just, it was coming out of me one way or another. You talked about the second incarnation of Hage in 2015, what you called a reboot. So it sounds like in many ways, a starting point was, you know, Web 1.0 was kind of dominant and then came really the social networking web with a lot more thinking around friends, authentic identities, also mobile.

6:33So then, you know, you're after the races, because externally it looks like Hinge is doing really well, you decided to reboot. What triggered that? It was a couple things. The real moment was there had just been an article written that was very popular in Vanity Fair called The Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse, and it was about how all of these apps had just become a place for hookups, and they were superficial, and they were ruining romance and love and dating. and Hinge was heavily featured in that article. Also, a couple other dating apps had come out since then that were becoming even more popular than Hinge, specifically Tinder.

7:17They beat us at the game of making it easy and approachable. Swipe left and right. Like, really, the market was ready for just like a let's make this really simple and really approachable and it caught fire. we were trying to keep up with the competition and you know looking at what features they were releasing and we were releasing them and then we were just becoming you know if you're going to copy someone don't copy the people that are already bigger than you i don't think it's a winning strategy we were just less and less differentiated and so i had less and less of a place to be in the market but more importantly than that it just didn't resonate with me where it was going like i really did as we talked about start this company because i like wanted to find my person.

7:59I wasn't trying to create like a casual encounters type experience. And I actually went and even like met with the Nancy Jo sales, the person who wrote that article and sat down with her and wanted to get like what she'd heard. And I remember sitting down with my chief brand officer, Katie Hunt, and we were about to go home for Thanksgiving. It was 2015. And I'm like, gosh, this isn't the company that I want to build. I kind of just want to like tear the whole thing down and start over again. And she's like, well, what's stopping you? Like you're the CEO. If that's what you want to do, then let's do it.

8:32And I went home over Thanksgiving break and I thought about it and I'm like, yeah, that's what we're going to do. And I came back and I got my executive team together and we decided to let go of half the company, reboot, throw out the old code base and start over from scratch and build something because a new opportunity had emerged. Like Originally, the opportunity was make this thing simple, easy, approachable. And that was obviously like a winning strategy in many ways. And at the same time, for people who were like really looking for their person, it was less effective, we'll say, at that.

9:06Because you didn't know a lot about these people. We didn't know a lot about you. It's hard to make really smart, intelligent matches. And now that people are socialized to the idea of using dating apps, can we create something that really is about less winning because it's so simple and easy? but more because it really strikes that right balance of remaining approachable to the next generation, but also really asks more of them, put in more effort and get more out of it and really help you zero in on your person and be the dating app that's designed to be deleted. So I love that. And it sounds like part of it was like the market pushing you.

9:41Part of it was like you internally felt like you wanted to build something different. I'm curious when you think right now on the target audience that, you know, you're building for your ideal kind of, you know, when you look at two people and you're saying, hey, you should be on Hinge. You should not. Like Hinge is not for you. You're looking for casual connections. There's so many apps for that. You should go there. How do you think about bringing that to the product? So obviously there's branding. I love the design to be deleted thing. It goes really well. When you think about onboarding, do you think about how do you attract the right people around it?

10:14And actually, also, how do you tell the folks who should not be on the platform that there's other apps for them? We have an extensive onboarding process, and we lose 20 % of the people plus during the onboarding process. You know, if you're talking to a VC, you'd be like, well, that's crazy. Like, you shouldn't lose 20 % of people during onboarding. But for us, in a sense, it's a feature because it's a filtering mechanism for people who, like, really want to put in the right amount of effort and are intentional. And our target audience, we use the word intentional daters, people who want to put in thoughtful effort because they're looking for a real result.

10:47They're here because they want to get off dating apps. That's who we think about as we're building things. So we ask our daters to do more, to fill out three prompts, to add six photos, to give us lots of demographic information, to take thoughtful actions. Once you're in the product, it's not just the onboarding. instead of using the swipe feature, you actually have to, if you like someone, like something about them and you can add a comment, which makes people way more thoughtful and selective in their liking. You don't have to like someone to see if they liked you back. So there's no kind of gamifying the experience.

11:19If someone likes you, we just deliver it right to you. We tell you, this person liked you. Would you like to match with them? It does ask people to put themselves out a little bit more and put in a little bit more effort, but it allows us to learn their tastes much, much better. It creates a pool of people who are all on the same page and have similar intentions and goals. And that creates for those people a really incredible experience, which is why I think we've grown so fast through word of mouth, why we're the fastest growing major dating app now. And was there tension there, Justin, in terms of, you know, the holy grail of consumers, just like let them in and like walk them kind of progressively for their product, but don't add so much friction at the beginning.

12:03Was there tension for you there from the team or because you actually had the reboot, it was like, I actually know what I want to build right now. So let's move away from the quick, you know, Tinder-like interactions that we had in the past. Yeah, this is a huge tension, right? We're trying to find the right balance between simple, fun, and easy. And like, we didn't want to go as far as like asking people to fill out long essays and things like that. There's like almost like an efficiency frontier of vulnerability, right? It's like, what are people willing to do? But that also puts them out there enough and asks enough of them that we can really help them get the result that they want.

12:37You know, a good analogy would be food. You can either make fast food that's horrible for you, but tastes great, but burns people out. Or you could have food that's so nutritious, it's kind of gross. Like, how do you make it sweet green, right? Like, how do you make it kind of fun and add enough little dressing and the right combination of flavors so it's nutritious, but you want to eat it. We're always trying to figure out what is the right balance of getting people to do what is good for them in the long run. Like some of the earlier explorations, we swung it too far to the other side. We were like, well, everyone's going to have to pay $7 a month to be on our platform.

13:13If you like someone, you have to send a comment with your like. And we tested these things and it was too far. It was asking too much of people and people didn't want to engage and the thing collapsed. So it's definitely this like constant honing of trying to push people and push out that frontier of like, how do you make people a little bit more authentic and put in a little bit more without turning them off and discouraging them? I love that idea of efficiency, frontier, vulnerability. What would be the excess? So one would be vulnerability and one would be effort or? One is like what people are willing to do and then what's effective, right?

13:51Like there's kind of a natural linear relationship. This whole concept started when we started optimizing prompts. So prompts are those short little questions that we ask that people will... Those are voice prompts, right? Do you want to hear the voice as well? Yeah, yeah. Voice is another actual manifestation of that. Video, too far. Like reveals a lot about you, but most people aren't willing to do it. Simple text, too easy. People are definitely willing to do it, but it doesn't give you a lot of the, and voices, there's this amazing sweet spot with voice. And I think that voice is going to become a bigger and bigger part of dating.

14:24You get enough to like understand someone's personality, but people are willing to do it. But specifically what I was talking about with prompts is when we started doing this, we would measure how effective is this at getting a conversation going and are people willing to answer this prompt? So there are prompts like my go-to karaoke song, which is no longer a prompt because everyone was willing to answer my go-to karaoke song and no one cared what your go-to karaoke song was, right? Very few good conversations start because of like your named go-to karaoke song. And at the other end of the spectrum, very deep, vulnerable questions.

14:58If people were willing to answer these questions, they would lead to great conversations, but no one was willing to answer them. It was like pushing people too far to put that on their dating profile. So it's just like, again, that sweet spot of like, what I'm looking for in a plus one wedding date, which is like something that people are willing to answer, but reveals enough to get a good conversation going and signals to you what kind of values that you share. So there's that real art to it. Love that. When you do a reboot like that, when you think about True North, right? You have your vision, your mission, the app to be deleted talks volume about what you're trying to do.

15:35You're trying to help people actually find great relationships, not just go on dates. When you try to put a metric on that, that feels like really hard. I'm curious how you think about capturing that quantitatively so you can tell the team we're in the right direction versus a notion of like before when you're concerned that like, hey, the wrong metric can actually put us on the wrong path. Our North Star metric is, I mean, ultimately, ultimately, it's getting people off the app and into relationships. but it's hard to measure a feature based on that right because there's a long lead time between releasing a new prompt and saying like gosh did this get more people off our app and into relationships but what we do use is getting people out on dates are people exchanging contact information and moving out on a date and that really is our north star and so a product feature is good if it moves that up and it's bad if it moves that down.

16:31So that really helps clarify things for us. And you know that through the app or this is something you do after the fact? We do have something called We Met in the app. So if people do exchange contact information, the app will follow up to ask if they went on a date and if this is the type of person they want to see again. But feature by feature, if we're really determining like, is this a winner or not, we're looking at, do people exchange phone numbers or contact information? And we want to move that number up. And it's hard to move, right? I'm sure you all have your own kind of user funnels, right?

17:04You push in one place and it goes down there, but then it pops it up in another place, right? So you can get people more matches, but then the match to conversation rate goes down and then it nets out. And when you're designing product teams and everything else, you're not having one team that's pushing on one part of the funnel, but only to watch it hurt another team's metric at another part of the funnel. How do you think click end-to-end and cohesively about that. That's hard for us as well. So, you know, our true north is economic opportunity for people. And sometimes we see it in the app because people actually find a job.

17:35So you can see them coming in or you can see them building a business, but that's also becoming a proxy. And when I think about Hinge, obviously relationships, a proxy for that is dating, has to be there. And then a proxy for dating is exchanging information. But then I assume people are trying to find all the ways to, you know, put guard bills around the metric. And then what I found in the past that, you know, sometimes it becomes very complex and then you run the risk of the metric is no longer as simple as it was before. And then, you know, it's a hunklier if you're potentially like making a dent or not.

18:08You do something which is really interesting. You actually follow up with members after. You might not be sampling everybody because that's very hard. But I'm assuming you have, you know, a strong qualitative measure of like, are we pacing in the right direction towards our vision? Yeah, I would say that the WeMet data and also the exit survey data, so if someone leaves Hinge, we say, you know, did you find someone? If you found them, were there on Hinge? You're leaving because you're just done with dating apps, you're done with Hinge. So we can use those to kind of make sure we're steering in the right direction generally.

18:39And when we make improvements in, you know, dates per user, it's actually good dates and good dates that are leading to relationships, which we generally do find. I think your metric of economic opportunity is probably quite hard to measure and comes in many different forms. For us, it actually is relatively simple. Like, we've got to get people out on good dates. Like, are these people chatting with people and exchanging information and planning dates, or are they not? And that is clarifying when it's that simple. Curious, do you also look at people who stay in the app for a long time and look at that as a sign of, okay, there's a cohort or a need we're not delivering yet?

19:16Yeah. So something that was kind of interesting that happened over the last like three years or four years is that Gen Z became our fastest growing segment. Like people 18 to 24 like started just growing really, really fast, which was surprising to us, honestly, because we think we're just like this super relationship intention, like find your person, get off the app. And most 21 year olds that you talk to probably aren't like trying to find their forever person. And yet what we found is that just the authenticity of the experience and the realness and the intentionality was more universal. Some people are in an earlier stage of their dating journey, but they still want to go on good dates with quality people.

20:01They don't want to just show up on a date and feel like this is a random stranger. And that's not bad for us in a sense, right? we actually use these different ideas like explorers and journeyers and destination people like are you here because you're like let's just do this i'm ready to find my person get off is it like i'm pretty ready to find my person but i'm still kind of figuring out what i want or is it like i'm just here to see what's out there and i think as long as people are approaching it with authenticity and vulnerability and willing to put in effort then hinge is definitely a place for them, which is why we've added things like relationship intentions on Hinge, which we avoided for a long time because we were like, well, everyone here should be looking for like their person.

20:42So why would we add relationship intentions? That'll dilute our brand. But we found it's like some people just want to have our same ethos when it comes to their dating lives, but even though they maybe are looking for a polyamorous relationship or they're just earlier in their dating journey. And that's okay too, as long as people are able to align expectations and make sure that they're finding people who have the same expectations they do. And in many ways, to your point, you maintain the core you care so much about right now. Yeah. Our North Star is still getting people out on dates. Like, that doesn't change.

21:13Like, even if you're 18, like, we still want to get you off our app and out on a good date with somebody. We're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, Justin is going to explain why even really good features may not make the cut. You have to consider how much complexity is this adding, how much maintenance, upkeep, interaction with other features is this going to have. it can really slow you down over time.

21:43We're back, and I'm speaking with Justin McLeod, the founder of Hinge, the dating app. So one of the things I loved studying more about Hinge and how you think about building was kind of the strong principles you bring into place. And in fact, people can go on the Hinge website. It's all there. You call them out pretty clearly, and I love that. a lot of the things we talk about in this show are principles people work by. I think it tells a lot about how you build and what kind of distinguishes your decision-making from others. One of them has been love the problem. I assume that if you love the problem, the expectation from Justin would be that you understand it deeply, you can create a better solution for it because you understand it.

22:21However, from my understanding, this principle emerged from an understanding that the old Hinge took on too many goals, and those goals didn't necessarily advance Hinge's mission. Can you share more about the connection between that principle to that kind of scenario that you had in the old Hinge? Yeah, there's sort of two evolutions of this principle. The first principle was like in the early, early days of Hinge, like Hinge V1. We really got lost in terms of like engagement, retention, monetization, like all these different social media type metrics or business metrics. and we were chasing many goals and not getting really clear on like, what are we ultimately here to serve?

23:02And we lost sight of actually getting people out on good dates. We were too focused on like, did they stay until week two? Are they staying from month one to month two? But what we realized, like if you're really solving the deep underlying user problem, then the scoreboard sort of takes care of itself. So that was one layer, I would call it, of love the problem. And that's kind of like, just get clear on the problem that you really are ultimately here to solve. and what's your number one priority problem. The second is getting a deeper understanding of a problem and also making sure you're always rooting in a problem.

23:34So what I often find is that someone will have an idea of a problem in their head, and then they'll come up with a feature, and then we get more wedded to the feature than the problem, and there's kind of like this drift that happens. And then pretty soon we forget why we're even building this feature in the first place. So people have different ideas about what it's supposed to be doing in their minds. This still happens. It happens everywhere. Yeah, it happens everywhere. But it's always like calling back. Sometimes it's like, well, actually, is it worth continuing to pursue this feature? Because originally it was supposed to be for this.