Hinge: Justin McLeod (2021)

29:18It was a terrible name. I can't talk about it. But But it was the beginning of this whole dynamic of this, what's called like the double opt-in of, you know, you list someone and they don't find out unless they list you too or they like you too. 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 it? Was this in a sense a way to kind of solve your own problem or was just an idea that kind of came about and seemed fun? No, it was totally to solve my own problem.

29:50I mean, it was very practical. It was very like, there's a girl in this class that I have a crush on that I wanted to find a girlfriend. I mean, I'd always wanted to find her. I don't know why, but I've always just been this romantic who just really wanted to find my person and had this belief that when I found my person, everything would just be amazing forever. So I built this very practically for me. All right, so you put this up there, 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?

30:20Yeah, it's a small class and a bunch of people hopped on and did it and led to a few matches. It didn't lead to much, but it got me thinking. I just thought, why doesn't this exist in the real world? Because at the time, the culture was you'd sort of like creep on your friends' photos on Facebook. You know, you get on Facebook and you go through your friend's photos and you'd see someone kind of like cute in one of their photos that maybe you didn't know. It was like a friend of a friend. And so this idea sparked of like, if there was a dating app that was connected to Facebook, people would use it because it would be so simple.

30:58You already have your profile. It's already done. You already have your photos set up. You have social verification. If you just connected something that was really simple and connected to Facebook, I'll bet young people would use it. As opposed to at the time, all dating websites used screen names and you had to sign up and fill out these long profiles and do all this stuff. And it was a lot of friction. And so that excited me. I was like, there's really, there's something here. I mean, this is still like you're still in Boston and at business school. And this is like your last semester there.

31:31And 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 like finding success? Were people saying, hey, this is awesome. I love this. Like was that happening? I was obsessed with this idea. I don't know how to say it. It was like, I mean, the closest analogy I can imagine is like being, you're like pregnant with this idea and it is like coming out of you one way or another. and that's what it felt like. It was like I couldn't stop. I couldn't sleep. I just was like thinking about it all the time about how the algorithm would work and about how you would get people to sign up to it and I just, it was like being possessed.

32:15And then I found out that other schools and other people had had this idea and what happens is a lot of people join, people list their crushes and then you find out whether you match or not and then everyone goes away. And then that's when the insight came to me. You know, people mainly just like cruise their friends' photos and like what if this were actually not about people you already knew but it was about your friends of friends it was and that's another piece that i think made it really accessible to the next generation it's like these aren't random strangers that you're going to see on this app you're going to see friends of friends it's the same idea of like listing a crush except now it's just people that you have a mutual connection with and you can see some of their photos and then so you list them as a crush that was like the idea that really got me to be like I'm not going to take the job at McKinsey, or at least I'm going to push back the start date and see where this goes.

33:08So you graduate in May and you decide to pursue this. And did you need money? I mean, I have to assume you need some money to try and get this off the ground, right? So I got together with a friend. Her name was Frances at business school. She worked at Google and we each put in$12 ,000, which was obviously like a lot of money for us both. but it's what I had. And so we put in this money and we hired a team of engineers down in Argentina to start building a prototype. Argentina, because I'm assuming that was a lot cheaper than doing it in San Francisco. Yeah, exactly. And so I followed her out to San Francisco where she was going to take her job at Google, but sort of halftime work with me on Hinge.

33:54And that was all the money you had? $24 ,000? Yeah,$24 ,000. That was it. And so that's what we used to pay these developers and started to develop prototype. And 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 you know i'm gonna 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 just was like this is not my place i don't know anyone out here and so i i drove cost 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.

34:48And the idea was to build like a website, a dating website initially? Yeah, initially it was a dating website. Initially it was this Facebook Canvas app and it was still, I think that was primarily the idea. And it was initially clunky and complex and it would like ask you like questions about your friends and it had all these bells and whistles features and it was way over complicated but I I was able to you know I ran around and I was able to raise a little bit of money I got into this little incubator in DC called Fortify raised like a little bit from my little friends and family round of maybe like 100 150 000 you know most VCs of course wouldn't pay attention to us at all we I mean right the we I was trying to you know you come out of Harvard Business School and you think the way that you start a business is you write a business plan and you go to gray lock and then they give you 50 million dollars and then you right like right and that is not it's not how it works so we you know i'd go to these vcs and i'd be like you know we're gonna create a dating app it's gonna be you know young people are gonna use it and vcs would be like match.com like owns this market you know you'll never be able to beat them and but i you know i got a few believers and yeah we just started building this website.

36:06And was it still called, because originally you called it Secret Agent Cupid, was that what you still were calling it at that point in 2011? No, no, no. That was like pretty early on. We moved away from like, it went through a few iterations in the early days. It went from like 00 Cupid to Secret Agent Cupid to 2 degrees to 3 degrees. And each of these names had like trademark issues. And I just needed like a placeholder name. And that's where Hinge came from. I was like, I just, it was a friends of friends app. And I was like, I just need a name for something that connects two things. Like it's the thing in the middle.

36:40And I was staring at a door and I was like, I'm going to call it hinge. And so I just called it hinge. 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 and 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. That is not where hinge comes from.

37:08It was just, it was like a placeholder name. I honestly don't love the name. I mean, it's kind of stuck now, but it was just, it was a placeholder. I was like, I needed something that connected to things that wasn't already trademarked. And anyone, any founder who's probably tried to name something before and spent lots of time on USPTO.gov trying to find a name that hasn't been trademarked, especially in like the love and dating space is no joke. Yeah. So you 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?

37:40We worked out of the accelerator. I mean, first I was just working out of my apartment. And then when we got into the accelerator, I started working out of the accelerator. Got it. You know, we were there like four of us. And what was the, I mean, And 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 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?

38:19We're going to be stigma free. there was a lot of stigma around dating websites at the time i think a lot of times vcs think by analogy and they're like that dating website has stigma so like dating websites have stigma like that's just how that goes but you have to look at like the principles underneath that like why do dating websites have a stigma and the stigma was because it was difficult the stigma was because you would have to spend a lot of time setting up a profile answering long questions paying a lot of money. So no one would do that unless they were really struggling in their dating lives and had to resort to that.

38:53And no one wants to admit that. Like no one wants to admit to themselves or certainly to other people that they like struggle in their dating lives and can't meet people. And so the idea was people still want to be able to meet new people. You just have to make it frictionless. You just have to make it easy. If you make it easy and you make a one-click sign-on, it won't have stigma. And if it doesn't have stigma, you're going to unlock the biggest single market, which is people who are 20 to 35, when those people didn't use dating websites. So that was the pitch. But how would you match people?

39:25I mean, when you were pitching this to investors in 2011 or 2012, like why would somebody, why would people use Hinge when they asked 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 that is where the complexity of the original idea came from we would ask you questions about your friends that we would use for the algorithm so we'd show you suzy and we'd say would you describe her as more athletic or more book smart or more uh something like and and you would you'd answer that and we'd like build up these sort of like personality profiles based on quizzes that we would give you about your friends.

40:08And so we would show you someone and then let's say someone liked your friend Susie, tell her to join Hinge. And then you tell Susie and then she would join Hinge and then she would start answering questions about her friends and would unlock more people for us to have access to. And it was, it was complicated and people were a little confused because they were like, well, I'm joining us to find new people. Why are you asking me questions about my friends? But that is how it worked in the early days. But basically, originally you were saying there's going to be no friction, nothing to answer. But ultimately, you did have to have a way to gather information about people, right?

40:43Yeah, but it was these fun personality quizzes about your friends as opposed to these long intimate... So it wasn't filling out a bunch of forms. It was just answering questions like a quiz you would get. Exactly. So what kind of feedback were you getting? I mean, you still didn't have a whole lot of people using it, but was the feedback at least good? No, not really. It was. People were weirded out by it. People weren't used to it. Like, people didn't understand why you had to answer these questions about your friends. They, you know, people were nice, and they'd sort of nod their heads. But, you know, you could tell, like, they didn't really get it.

41:22And there's just no way that we're going to be able to sell one. Maybe at the end of an hour-long focus group, we would have sold someone on how it works and why it's great. But we weren't going to be able to do that with thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people. 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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46:14Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. 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. I was mainly talking to investors in Washington, D.C. You know, there are a few VC firms there. And the amount of money we were looking for wasn't like Sand Hill Road money. It was just a few hundred thousand dollars. Right. And I guess you didn't have a whole lot of success with them. No. The wisdom at the time was that there was a saturated market. You know, Match.com and eHarmony owned it and it would be impossible to break into.

47:04Which, you know, I looked at and I'm like, I am in my mid-20s. None of my friends use dating websites. It is not saturated. It's just, it's very clear. But they were saying, no, no Match. Match.com is owned by IAC, right? Yeah, and even if you get big, they'll copy you, etc., etc. I mean, did that in any way discourage you? I mean, did you ever feel like, God, they're really, maybe they're right? It frustrated me, but it did not discourage me because I had a strong thesis that they were not dismantling. They were just drawing these other irrelevant analogies. And so a big part of being a great entrepreneur is being hopelessly idealistic but ruthlessly practical at the same time.

47:50You really have to balance these things. And I was being ruthlessly practical. I was like, no, no, no, there isn't a clear market opportunity here. And so I wasn't discouraged because they weren't dismantling the argument. 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 anxious about the possibility that this would just collapse well i mean i was definitely depressed and anxious i okay i i you know i was worried and i i was concerned with the feedback that we were getting and at a certain point it became pretty clear that like iterations weren't going to get us there and around thanksgiving this is 2012 we have like 25 000 left in the bank at this point and we probably raised like 150 or something like that.

48:41It's pretty clear this isn't going to go anywhere. So I had this kind of crisis moment over Thanksgiving and I called the team and I'm like, let's start over from scratch. This needs to be simple. We got to get rid of all these questions. And by the way, it's 2012. So the world's going mobile and this needs to be a mobile application. And that was because by 2012, you yourself, presumably, and all your friends were using iPhones? Yeah, 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.

49:28And 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 three and a half inch screen. And so let's just distill it down to like a photo, age, location, a few interests, and just like, yes or no, do you like this person? Move to the next person. And if it's a match, we'll let you know. So, all right. So the idea here was to just do a pivot and focus on building a mobile app.

50:05I'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? And we used, at the time, there were these, I don't want to get too technical, but there was a way to essentially build a website that looked like a mobile app and behaved like a mobile app that you could package as a mobile app. So that is essentially what we did. What was your strategy in terms of getting it out into the world? So my, one of my really good friends from Colgate had moved down to DC with me. His name was Bennett Richardson.

50:42and he and I were original roommates when we first moved to DC. And he was just very plugged into the social scene. And so we just used his email lists and we were just like hustling to get people on and telling them to tell their friends. And we started with just iOS and we just burned. I mean, we just worked all day and all night because it had to be when we were gonna run out of money, which was February 7th, 2013-ish. and we took our last$25 ,000 and we threw a 2 ,500 person launch party in DC. We set the date and we just worked backwards from that. All right, 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.

51:34We're going to throw a big party, invite everybody we know and hopefully people would download the app. That was the idea? Well, yeah, because the other issue was the cold start problem. And when you get one or two or three people coming in at a time, you know, in the early days, I would sit and look at the logs. And I would watch. Someone would log on to the site. And I would be like, oh my gosh. And I would watch them. You know, they would like someone and then pass on someone and then like someone and then they'd leave. And it's like, oh. I mean, that's the trickle that was happening. And we were just like, we've got to get everyone on at once.

52:08Like no one's going to stick around if there's not a lot of people on this thing. So we've got to just like throw this Hail Mary. We've only got 25 ,000 left. We're going to pivot to mobile and we're just going to like get 2 ,500 people in here. They're going to be like the coolest, trendiest people in D.C. And they're all going to see each other downloading the app. And so they're going to think it's cool and they're going to keep using it. This is in February of 2013. Where was the party? It was on a floor of an office building that was about to be built out as a new incubator that we were moving into.

52:40And they hadn't touched it yet, so it was just this big empty floor, and so we just used that. And, I mean, how did you entice 2 ,500 people to come to the party? Open bar. We had a liquor sponsor who just, I think Tito's Vodka just, like, shipped us a bunch of alcohol for free. We had, like, a DJ. We had an art exhibition. We had photo booths. and a dance party, and everyone had to download the app to get in the door. Now, mind you, we actually didn't have an app almost because we had submitted the app to the App Store for approval, and they were not giving approval. And we submitted like two weeks early, and it is the day before the launch party, and we still have not gotten approval for the app.

53:30So we're about to throw this launch party, and we have no app for people to download. I was just like, I was trying to get in contact with people at Apple. I mean, who cares? Like, we were like nobody, but I'm like trying to reach out to the head of the app store and reaching out to any VC I've ever met and seeing if they have contacts there and just like begging and writing emails, trying to get this thing approved. And I remember like the night before the launch party, I just was like curled up in a ball in the floor of our little office at this incubator crying. The last two years have been for nothing because we're going to launch this and we're going to have no app.

54:10And we skirted. We had days of cash left at that point. So what happened? I went to bed and I woke up in the morning and the app had been approved. Wow. Yeah. It was nuts. No explanation. Never got an email back. Never know why. But it was approved that morning. 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? Yeah. The next day, we had like 500 people log in to use the app who didn't have to.

54:54They just came of their own volition and used the app. And then the next day, like 600 people came. And the next day, like 800 people came. And we were off to the races. 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, you know, will do that. sex, maybe alcohol, a few others. Was the proposition in your mind like, or that you guys were kind of, let's say selling to potential customers, users, was like, hey, this is a way to hook up. Was that, I mean, initially part of the value proposition?

55:34Because I would think that that would make sense. I mean, that's what people want. No, we were such a wholesome brand. We were friends of friends, right? So people would equate it to a house party or a wedding, and that was the kind of crowd and the vibe that you'd feel on Hinge, whereas maybe on the other ones it was a little bit more just like people nearby and random, and so it just felt a little bit more like a club. And so we sort of gained this reputation as the more wholesome, more relationship-oriented app, and that was our niche. It sounds like you didn't really change your approach or your strategy too much.

56:15I mean, you went to mobile, but the value proposition was the same. Like this is a, you know, friends of friends relationship app. What explains, I mean, is it that launch party alone that explains how you really start to acquire users? Well, I mean, the details make the difference for sure. And those are pretty big details. Mobile only, simplified interface, everyone's on it. It's very different than clunky interface, no one's on it. So yeah, I mean, those details definitely made a big difference. So we started in Washington, D.C., and then a waitlist built up in New York City, and then we opened up New York City and threw a launch party there, and then a waitlist built up in San Francisco, and then, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

56:57And presumably, now you've got to raise money. um was it now easier were investors now more open to to giving you money oh my well one we had traction yeah and two we had tinder tinder was exploding and no one could invest in tinder because it was owned by iac and so the only place that people could put their money as a competitor to Tinder at the time was basically us. And so we were, we raised like a few million dollars towards the end of 2013. And then we raised a big round of like 14 or 15 million dollars at the end of 2014. And I was turning away millions. I was like, I don't even know what, like, I can't, I can't take any more.

57:46Like we have to close the round. Like, I don't even know what I would do with all this money. So we're going to stop here. all of a sudden like there's t 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 not that different the the apps really converged over time they became similar yeah you know we were very focused on our competition and our competition release a feature and we release a feature and yeah they became very very similar in their appearance and we were still friends of friends and so we had This different vibe, but practically speaking, the apps were very similar in how they operated.

58:26There was an article that came out in Vanity Fair, I think in 2015. It's called like The Dawn of Apocalypse Dating or something like that. Yeah, The Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse. Right. Yes. And it's mostly about Tinder, but there's quite a bit in there about Hinge. And 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, quote, racking up girls. He says he 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.

59:02Now, 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 that and you saw what you created, did a part of you just like, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it was amazing. You built this amazing app and people were using it. But I don't know. Did a part of you kind of feel like, oh, this is not what I wanted to do? A huge part of me felt like that. That article was by Nancy Jo Sales. I mean, I went to go meet with Nancy Jo Sales in New York, and I was like, I want to hear your experience as you put together this article. It was a really big...

59:44yeah it was a pretty big gut punch and that wasn't it I mean there were some other things going on in 2015 where our growth was starting to slow a little bit. But I do think more importantly, it was like, this just isn't the company that I wanted to build. It doesn't have the values that I want it to have. It doesn't have, it's not having the impact that I wanted it to have. We're kind of just this copycat app that has the same interface with like a small twist. We're just friends of friends. But it was still a, let's just say, quote unquote, like a meat market. yeah i mean again it was 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 got 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 and and again like i i have to be really careful because like i'm older than a lot of people who use use these apps or We're using these apps in this article.

1:00:48And so it's like anything that is not familiar, you sort of see it differently. And it's hard for me to talk about it without sounding judgmental. But like, you know, you read these stories like in that article in Vanity Fair and it's like just stories of young people just talking about, yeah, I've slept with eight people in the last like 10 days. And it's so easy because I think one quote in the article is like, yeah, it's just a numbers game. Dating is a numbers game. If I went to a bar, I'd have to talk to 100 different girls. With this, I could just swipe all night from my apartment and do better.

1:01:19Yeah. You know, 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 built Hinge around. Let's go back to something we talked about earlier in this interview about Kate, this woman that you dated in college that you loved and wrote to her and almost was a seer in 2010. And then she said no. And now it's 2015. And there was a New York Times reporter who was a writer who was writing for the modern love.

1:02:01She was writing an article for the New York Times about Hinge named Deborah Copakin. And so she meets with you in 2015. And you're like, you know, this young hotshot running Hinge and it's raised all this money and doing really well. So she wants to do a story about you and what happens during the interview. Yeah. So rewinding a little bit further, it was like end of 2014. And Debra writes me this email. I didn't know who she was. She had downloaded Hinge and the very first person that came up for her, she had matched with and started dating and fallen in love with. and she was like, I have to know how your algorithm works.

1:02:43Like, how the heck did I just download this app, hit a button, someone comes up, and I match, and now we're dating. You know, I want to write a story about you. So she reaches out to me, and we go for this, like, pretty standard founder interview about whatever I was talking about at the time. I could tell it was just kind of like, it was an okay interview. And we were about to finish up, you know, as we were, like, packing, she said, have you ever been in love? I was like, well, once a long time ago, but I didn't realize it until it was too late. And she's like, well, tell me the story. And so we sat down.

1:03:18I told her the story of Kate and me and this magical connection we'd had and the sort of twists and turns and the breakup and the drug addiction and alcoholism and me reaching back out. And how, in a way, she'd sort of, I realized, especially at that time, she'd inspired Hinge. And I guess, I mean, 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? No. Again, there was someone that I was dating on and off during that period, my sort of usual pattern. But no, not really. And so she shuts off the tape recorder and she says, I've got to tell you a story.

1:04:00and she tells me the story of how she had this like amazing romance when she was younger and really felt this person was the one she was a war reporter or a photographer actually in afghanistan and they were supposed to rendezvous in paris it's like this very romantic transcontinental story and he lost her number and so they didn't meet up and then they lost you know this is like the 80s and 90s so they didn't really pre-email pre-cell phones yeah pre-email pre-cell phones and so they didn't connect and she ended up marrying the next person she dated and he ended up marrying the next person he dated and then 20 years later she's researching a story comes across his name and reaches out to him and it's like hey are you the same so-and-so that stood me up 20 years ago they ended up like coming together and they met and i think it just lit her up in a way that she was like i'm gonna leave my marriage because this guy that she had so was supposed to meet in Paris.

1:04:58He didn't stand her up. They just both, he lost her address and she didn't know she for 20 years. Exactly. And so she left and downloaded Hinge and then had met this guy. And if it sounds familiar to anybody, it's because it was written in a Modern Love article by Deborah Copacan. She wrote this part of this story in this article. But anyway, so she tells you this story. And she said, listen, don't get me wrong. I don't regret my life. I love my kids, but you still have a chance to be with the one. Wow. And I was like, lady, nice to meet you. You're a little nuts. It's been eight years since I've seen Kate at this point.

1:05:45She's engaged to be married as far as I know. She still lives on another continent. It's too late. And she's like, you won't know until you try. and early February we were going to be throwing a launch party in London and so about a week before the launch party I happened to run into Kate's best friend from Wellesley and we're chatting and she's like I think you should reach out to Kate you know at this point by the way I had written Kate an email every year on her birthday after she told me no and some of these emails would be like, you know, I'm over it. I hope we can be friends. No response.

1:06:25I think my last one in like 2013 had been something like, I'll come over with an engagement ring, please. It was, you know, it like ranged depending upon the year and how I was feeling. And after that one, you know, she had like defriended me on Facebook and, you know, it was like pretty clear that like that had sent her. That was it. So after that, I'd let it go. And I was headed over to London, and I'm like, you know what? Whatever. I'm just going to send one last email. And so I composed a really short note. It just said, hey, going to be over in London. Weird to think I'm never going to see you again.

1:07:04Would love 15 minutes just to say hi and goodbye. And I woke up the next morning to a response. Saying, sure, I'll see you in London. No. Saying, you're a terrible stalker. I don't live in London anymore. I live in Switzerland. My fiance is not a huge fan of yours, but I'm willing to chat. So he'll be away this weekend if you want to just like hop on the phone. I said, great. And then I went to the airport and I bought a ticket to Switzerland and I flew to Zurich. And the next morning, which was a Friday, she thought she was in another time zone and she was like, I'm awake. Whenever you want to chat, we can chat.

1:07:50And I said, great, because I'm going through customs in Zurich right now. Wow. You know, I flew over there, definitely having Deborah, having inspired me to do something big. her. But I have to admit that it had been eight years. I had changed a lot. I mean, I'd gotten sober. I'd been to HBS. I'd like started a company. You know, it was like a lot had happened since I'd seen her. I assumed a lot had happened for her. And, you know, a pretty big piece of me thought we would maybe see each other and then laugh this off and, you know, bring some closure to the whole thing and I could move on, she could move on.

1:08:28So we met in a cafe in Zurich and five minutes in, I was like I don't know what I am doing without this girl. The conversation started off and obviously there was a connection still there and she was like well obviously I'm not calling off my wedding, I'm getting married in a month. 400 people coming from five continents. She's getting married in a month. Yeah. Invitation sent, planes booked and she's like well obviously I'm not calling off the wedding. about, you know, we should stay in touch. And then, you know, halfway through the conversation, it was like, well, if I were going to call off a wedding, and we sat there for like eight hours straight, I don't even think we even got up to get a coffee.

1:09:07And then by the end of our like eight-hour chat, she was like, I think I'm going to call off the wedding. 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 were, but like, wow. I mean, that's a lot, right? I mean, both of you guys were making a huge decision 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.

1:09:57That's right. Yeah, I moved from a big chalet in the Alps to my 300 square foot studio apartment in Manhattan. so uh and this will lead us back to the discussion about hinge which is that you know here i am thinking like oh my god like i got the person the one the one i've been dreaming about all like all this time i you know and then i flew to london and we did the launch party and i flew back to the states and then she met me back in the states and she moved in and it was amazing for like two months and then you know we're two people living together in a 300 square foot apartment and we're like figuring each other out and it's not perfect all the stuff that i wanted to run from because i did i mean there's a piece of me like two or three months in uh that was like oh like should i have done that you know uh that yeah but there was like but she'd like she'd given up a whole life she'd come back and so i'm like yeah i'm gonna stick it out and we just worked it out together one step at a time and I realized that it's not a volume game.

1:11:04Love isn't about trying to go through enough people until you find your perfect puzzle piece and then everything's smooth sailing. Love is about the way you approach it. It's about vulnerability. It's about connection. You don't find the one. You create the one. That completely overhauled my approach to how I thought dating app should work. But this is the thing, like, again, like now, the thing that you had built was, let's say, lots of people were using it in ways that didn't lead to that. It was more like a hookup factory. And again, please, anybody listening, I am not judging you. I am not being judgmental.

1:11:48I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. That's perfectly fine if that's what you're looking for. But Justin, that's not what you wanted to build. You didn't want to build a hookup app. That's right. But you were kind of pushed into that direction just because of the forces of, you know, the economy and of what people wanted and what investors wanted you to do and what you thought was going to work. It was a lot of pressure running that company at that time. And we were really trying to keep up with the competition. And the natural thing to do is to, like, be obsessed with your competition and look at what they're releasing.

1:12:23And then they release a feature and be like oh we have to have that feature and our users be like why don't you have this feature and so then we would want to like copy what they were doing and we were always a step behind because we were not as well funded and not as experienced so I mean not only was it not a limit of values it just wasn't gonna succeed like it was just not that different or interesting of a product and so yeah on both fronts I was frustrated and I and I remember it was around Thanksgiving that year, it was around 2015, I was headed home for Thanksgiving. I was about to fly back home to Kentucky.

1:13:00And I had lunch right before I left with Katie Hunt, who was our chief brand officer. And she and I sat down and I was just like, Katie, like, I just want to tear this whole thing down, start over. Like, I'm just like done. And she looked at me and she was just like, what's stopping you? And I paused and I was like, nothing is stopping me. What is stopping me?

1:13:32When 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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1:16:22Hey, 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, talked to Katie. You know, I got them right 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, three or four years since the dating apps had launched.

1:17:12A lot of those people who are 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. And by the way, it's a great word of mouth. People always ask, how did you meet? And if we're the best at getting people who are in relationships, we're the best at that. And people will tell their friends. And as long as they're single people in the world, we'll do great. And like, we're not thinking about competitors anymore.

1:17:52I don't want to talk about it. I don't want anyone to have those apps on their phone for competitor research. That was the biggest decision we made. And we said, we're going to actually measure whether people are going out on great dates or not. We're still the only app that asks whether you went on a date and whether it was good. And that is our North Star metric period. 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? Well, that was one of the massive mistakes we made when we relaunched.

1:18:25So we had this thesis that the serious dating websites are all what are called hard paywall businesses, meaning that in order to engage pretty much at all, you have to pay a monthly fee. But it's usually pretty expensive. It's like$39.99 or$49.99 a month. And you're talking about the big sites like eHarmony and Match.com and stuff like that. Yes, that's right. So we were like, we're going to create a hard paywall app, but it's going to have a millennial-sized price of$9.99 a month. And that gave you basically unlimited? No, just access to the platform. Gotcha. I mean, you know, you couldn't even, like, we're just like, we're the intention platform.

1:19:08If you're not willing to pay$10 a month, then, like, you know, go somewhere else. Right. And the other apps, by the way, were free, right? And the other apps were free. Yeah. But 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 time, 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 have to pay for it.

1:19:41People are like, no, I'll just go on this other dating app. Yeah. And even more important than on podcasts, like there's network effects. So if there's not a lot of people on it, then people don't find it valuable to be, you know, loses its value anyway. And you figured this out because it was like crickets, like no one was paying for this? Yeah, we got like, you know, a few hundred thousand people to sign up, but then no one really would like when they hit the paywall, everyone was just kind of bouncing. So, so we started giving away free trials like, oh, if you've had a hinge account before, you can have the first three months free.

1:20:13We thought like if we could just get the engine going, then like the new people would come in and pay. Because before that it was free, totally free before you kind of relaunched it. Before that it was totally free. I would never made money up until that point. But now you needed to make money. You had real investors and real money behind you. Yes, that's right. So what did you salvage it? I mean, given that 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? Yeah, it was pretty rough relaunch. And that whole period of time was tough, by the way.

1:20:49I mean, I felt like Moses leading people around the desert. Like we didn't know where. like we were testing things and you know we're just like didn't know is like the best thing is the only thing to have the swipe feature is that the only way that that app can work is this like what are we going to do that's going to be really any different that's going to be better than that and we did figure that out by the way and we did come up with a very different way for people to interact that had very significant ramifications on how people behave on on the dating app what Tell me more about that. Well, one of the biggest changes that we made is we did get rid of the swipe feature.

1:21:28And we had people fill out longer profiles, still relatively simple, but you had to add six photos and you had to add three prompts, which are responses to short questions that are designed to help you get into a better conversation. But more importantly is when you like someone on Hinge, first of all, you like something about them. You have to choose something, like one of their prompts or one of their photos, and you can comment on it, and you send that like. And that seems subtle and maybe not that big a deal, but it has a pretty dramatic effect on people's behavior. They are way more selective and way more thoughtful because when you're not just throwing people to the left and to the right, you actually have to think about what you want to like about them, what you want to say.

1:22:12It just makes people way more thoughtful and selective. And when you're way more thoughtful and selective about who you like, our data is way better about learning your tastes. And if someone liked you, we would just notify you and tell you that someone so liked you and they liked this thing about you so that there wasn't a strategy of just liking people to see if they liked you back. A lot of people will use the swipe feature and they'll just like, like, like, like, like, and they'll just see who matches with them. And then they kind of figure it out from there, which creates a lot of engagement.

1:22:42But it's a lot of noise, and it frustrates people because a lot of those matches don't go anywhere. And so when you can actually, like, distill it down, and it's not as engaging, it's not as noisy, but it's a lot more substantive. There's a lot more signal there for people to latch on to. So that was a very fundamental change that we made. So you sort of offer up a free version, right, like a freemium model, which a lot of these sites have. and basically users can go back to using it for free, but if they want more features, there's like a tiered system. How does it work? Yeah, so now you pay for certain upgraded features like advanced preferences or unlimited likes.

1:23:27And 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? Yeah, that was actually, I think, our original tagline. But yes, it was very much branding around if you're looking to get off-dating apps, this is the place for you. Let's talk about this tagline that you guys eventually settled on because it's Hinge, designed to be deleted, which I love.

1:24:11Your 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. That's exactly right. And, I mean, that's how a dating app should be. And by the way, designed to be deleted has two dimensions to it. But one dimension is we are the experts in getting you into a relationship. We get this better than anyone. We research it. We spend all our time looking at how users behave and how do we get them on better dates. And our whole company is organized around that. But there's also an element of digital wellness to it as well, which is that we don't want you spending all day on our app.

1:24:54We don't want you stuck playing a game on Hinge. And this really grew out of my experience with addiction. And I don't use social media. I don't use Instagram. I don't really have an Instagram account or a Facebook account. I don't spend any time on it. Because I didn't escape drug and alcohol addiction just to become a slave to my phone. But do you think, I mean, given the fact that you relaunched a few times and your tagline is, you know, we want to be deleted. do you really think that Hinge is no longer the place or a place for someone who just wants a casual hookup? Like, how are you able to now change the behavior of people who went on the app if in 2015 in Vanity Fair, some guy was saying, yeah, I love Hinge.

1:25:40I've slept with 30 to 40 people in the last five months. Like, how do you change that person's behavior with the relaunch? It's just too difficult if you're looking for a hookup. It just requires too much effort. You asked about the, you know, how do you, aren't you going to still have people like that person in the Vanity Fair article using your app? And what we find is that when you have to answer all these prompts and have to send, you know, like a piece of content, like if all you're looking for is a hookup, like this is way too much effort to do that. And so that's, I think, the difference.

1:26:18You know, we lose more than 20 % of our users during the signup process. Yes. On those other apps, you hit one button and you're in and you're swiping and you're going. So again, if you were like talking to a Silicon Valley social media investor, they'd be like, oh my God, you can't lose 25 % of your 20 % of your signups. Like, are you crazy? And for us, it's a feature, not a bug. You know, it's like, yeah, you have to, finding a relationship is hard. If you're not willing to put in the effort to fill out this profile and answer some prompts, then, you know, you're probably not, it's not the right service for you.

1:26:52Like, we just want people who want meaningful relationships, full stop, period. Like, we just want to get amazing at that. Okay, so when you did go ahead and do the relaunch of Hinge in 2016, how was it received? Well, I mean, it was not a breakout success like when we did the relaunch in 2013. We got off to a rocky start, but the numbers started to look really interesting and really promising. And so, you know, my first instinct was obviously to like keep this thing going and go raise money. So I was back out in the fundraising game, flying all over the country, talking to every VC. And now I could get in the door of anywhere, right?

1:27:38I mean, any VC firm would at least take my meeting. But no one would give me money. So, I mean, it was, I mean, I was begging. I mean, I was offering valuations that are embarrassingly low. Even your existing investors were getting cold feet? My existing investors were willing to rally to put together a few million dollars. but a few million dollars is not going to get us to where we needed to go so i really wanted to raise a bigger round and and i i teased that you know i said you know our existing investors will put like three or four but i need five to ten more at least yeah and i just i mean i went everywhere trying to make this deal happen i talked to everyone i mean it's amazing because you had already had a record of success.

1:28:30You had launched this thing. You defied the skeptics by even putting this out into the world. You had achieved quite a bit of success with it. You know, millions of people had used it. And then, and still, you had a hard time raising more money. Well, we made a decision when we decided to do the reboot, that we were just gonna not touch the existing app. You know, this is a big debate. Like, do we keep the app like on the rails and keep adding updates and kind of just keep it going? Or do we just let it go completely and divert all of our focus to this new thing? And we decided to do the latter.

1:29:06And so meanwhile, the app had started to go down and the user numbers were going down because we just weren't putting any effort into it at all. Where were you putting the effort in? Into developing the new hinge. I got you. And while you were developing that, you weren't even updating the app at all. No. So it sat there stale for almost a year. Right. And I had this like one investor that was really holding out for and I really thought we were going to get across the line. And I remember the partner at the VC firm called me and she was like, you know, we just can't get our heads around. We've never seen a company that was cool and then went away and then was able to come back.

1:29:47and we just can't do it. And I was like, Timberlands? That's a great, actually, you're totally right. K-Swiss? Yeah, exactly. It's just like fashion brands are not the same as apps. And I said, fair point. But our numbers were actually starting to look really interesting. And if you had the right eye for it, you knew that there was something here with the new version of Hinge. 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.

1:30:36So, I mean, I think finally in 2018, you guys did get an investment, 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. There are lots of reasons to get acquired. I mean, obviously, you've worked on this for many years, and it's a chance to kind of get a payout and to take a breather and not to worry about having to raise money every year or every few months. And now you've got a bunch of resources behind you. Are all those reasons why you agreed to the acquisition? You know, funny enough, the way that the relationship with Match Group started is I tried to poach their head of business development to come run finance at Hinge.

1:31:30I mean, that's the level of audacity that I had. We had like three months of money in the bank and I'm trying to like steal their head of finance to come like run finance at Hinge. And he very quickly turned the conversation around and was like, have you thought about, you know, maybe we can partner with you. and that started a conversation and so the more time i spent around that team the more i realized that the combination i think of our different perspective on the hinge side with their wisdom financial backing it was going to be a really good success and there's a reason i think you know you see that the the startups that have really taken off and grown in the dating space were all started in-house.

1:32:15Yeah, they were all, I mean, Tinder was started within IAC, right? And Match was owned by IAC. And they had huge resources and marketing dollars. And it's not surprising that they exploded in growth. That's right. And so it sounds like the calculation you made was, these guys have a lot of resources. It's like Procter & Gamble. It's like you have a product and Procter & Gamble comes and says, look, we want to acquire you. And we have all this research money and marketing dollars and could be a really attractive idea to go in and work for them. And scary at the same time. Right. I mean, for us, like, you know, Tinder was the enemy.

1:32:54And right. 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. Yeah. Either the company goes sideways or the company goes up, but then 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. What did that allow you to do once you were acquired by Match? And then you sort of became more comfortable with this idea that you could still run the company the way you wanted it.

1:33:37Does it take some of the stress out of Hinge, knowing that the money is there, you don't have to worry about firing people or going out begging for money? Does it kind of de-stress you a little bit? Well, you're trading some stresses for new stresses. Right. But it's like a new relationship. It's just like with Kate and me, and you hop into, You know, you're now living together and you figure each other out. And just like that relationship, I was really, really committed to making this one work. And they were committed to making it work, too. And we and we figured each other out. And we have a pretty incredible relationship today.

1:34:16That 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, oof, we're in big trouble. Nobody's going to be going out on dates. Initially, did you see a steep decline in users? Yeah, it's been really volatile. We planned in 2019, our growth was really incredible. And we planned a very big 2020. We're going to grow the team. We're going to double the size of the team. We're going to do all this stuff. And the pandemic hit in, I think, initially. Everything went into lockdown.

1:35:03It was cold outside. And so we definitely saw some shakiness in the business, to say the least. But then as things started to stabilize and it started to warm up outside, it actually like completely turned the other direction. Yeah. Because now people can't meet at house parties and weddings and bars and yoga classes and gyms and all the other places that theoretically they would have met. Now we're the only game in town. Yeah. And I also think this period of time has been people have been rethinking their dating lives and rethinking their lives in general. and I think people have become more thoughtful and more serious during this time about their intent and what they're looking for.

1:35:46And so then when it started to warm up and the numbers stabilized, then it was a huge boon to the business. Were there things that you guys, features that you introduced during the pandemic that made it easier, like that, you know, made it easier for people to connect virtually? The biggest shift that we saw was a shift to people willing to try video dates because people wanted to like spend a little bit more time getting to know you and decide whether it's really worth you know risking getting COVID to meet up and so video dating like more than half of our users now have gone on a video date and so that was something that seemed like a pretty clear thing to build into the app 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 You know, that's it.

1:36:35You didn't have to leave your room. That's right. And that's why I think, you know, when we talk to our users who have tried it, most of them say that they want to continue to do it even after the pandemic, because it just makes a ton of sense. I mean, it really is like doing a quick 15 minute screen before you go spend an entire evening and spend money and energy to go meet up with someone. I think will actually make this a much, much better experience if that becomes part of it. Yeah. This may be a hard question for you to answer, but I'll ask anyway. You're still pretty young. You're in your 30s.

1:37:09I think you're mid to late 30s. And 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. You're an employee. So you're the CEO, but presumably, you know, like any employee, if they wanted to find a new one, they could. And if you want to move on, you could. And probably eventually you will and maybe start something new. Is that what you imagine doing? Do you feel like you've got another business in you? I don't know the answer to that question. And believe it or not, I actually don't think about it that much. I have so much on my plate at Hinge right now.

1:37:53I think the opportunity is so great. I'm actually very happy. And, you know, I worked so hard to build this culture and this company and this service and this brand. I mean, it is so difficult. I am so invested. I mean, this is still my baby. And so doing that over again sounds, now that I know how hard it is. You know, when I started Hinge, I just thought like, oh, yeah, this is a$2 billion company. this should take about a couple of years. We'll sell it. And you know, like if I had any idea how like many tears I would shed and how many nights I just like, I, I don't know if I would have started it.

1:38:33And so it's hard to imagine that again. And I think everyone finds their sweet spot. And I think some people are really good at the beginning and the starting and the ideation and pulling the resources together and getting something off the ground. And then some people are good at the scaling and some people are good at the operating and i've really enjoyed each part of the journey and i enjoy the challenge of the constant shift and so i'm still very much on that trajectory like i love this challenge of scaling from 50 to 150 employees remotely while still trying to innovate and grow internationally i mean that's that's a lot of intrigue for me and yeah i don't need more when you think about jesson when you think about your story and everything that's happened and all the ups and downs and where you've come to.

1:39:21How much do you do tribute to, you know, your hard work and your skill and talent? And how much do you attribute to luck? I feel pretty lucky. I mean, if you go through my story and going through it today has really reminded me of that. There are so many serendipitous twists and turns that had they not happened, it's hard to imagine I would be here. I would be somewhere. maybe. There are a lot of really lucky things that happened to me. There are a lot of really tough things that happened along the way. I mean, having the company fail multiple times, like drug addiction, alcoholism, there's all these really tough things.

1:39:59And when I look back, I think the hardest things, losing the girl, drug and alcohol addiction, the company failing, ended up being my biggest blessings. If those things hadn't happened, I certainly wouldn't be here today either. And if there is skill involved, I think it's how we roll with the bad things that happen. You know, do we resist it and fight it and judge it and get resentful about it? Or do we lean into it, learn from it and like keep showing up the next day? But that said, I feel unbelievably lucky. I choose to feel lucky. That's Justin McLeod. He's the founder and CEO of Hinge, which today has an estimated 6 million monthly users.

1:40:52And he and Kate are actually married. They had a baby, a boy named Oliver. And if you think their story sounds like a movie, it kind of is. It became the inspiration for an episode of the Amazon Prime series, Modern Love, which Justin found out was being filmed literally on the last day of production. 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 like 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 his extras.

1:41:37So you're hanging out with like Dev and Catherine Keener? No? Well, I have like a photo with them. Okay. But Dev doesn't call me that often.

1:41:50Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on whichever podcast app you're listening to so you don't miss a new episode of this show. And it's absolutely free. If you want to contact our team, our email address is hibt at id.wondery.com. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Ereblui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Derek Gales. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Kira Joachim, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez.

1:42:27I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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