Hinge CEO Justin McLeod Hinge provided
Helping people find love can be a financially lucrative business.
Hinge, the dating app “designed to be deleted”, has seen a huge increase in revenue over the past six years.
CEO Justin McLeod said the company had less than $1 million in revenue in 2017. Fast forward to 2023. The company expects it to be “well over $400 million,” McLeod said. luck executive exchange. “Right now, we’re setting a date every two seconds. And we’re the third largest dating app in the world.”
The CEO attributes the company’s growth to word-of-mouth marketing and a focus on authenticity. McLeod said there was no “grand catalytic moment” that changed the company’s fortunes, but the company has invested in technology enhancements and produced better products across the board. “On the old hinge [pre-2017], You need to send 1000 likes to go on a date. And about the new hinge. It was about 50 times more effective, which means it’s 20 times more effective. ”
This is particularly important, McLeod says. Because this not only refutes the widespread theory that Hinge Gate maintains a top match for free tier members and gives each user a so-called “attractiveness score”, but also that This is because it is the lifeline of expansion efforts. advertising strategy.
“When we help people get more dates, we grow faster and people tell more friends,” McLeod says. “If you sacrifice it by limiting your experience, [or] Simply making us pay more money is not good for our overall long-term trajectory. ”
Like many tech company CEOs, he believes AI will become an increasingly disruptive yet positive force for companies, making dating more efficient.
“It opens up a lot of opportunities, both in terms of effectiveness and in terms of being a matchmaker who can deeply understand you and others to make more selective and targeted matches,” McLeod said. says. “Efficient is a cold word when it comes to dating, but ultimately what we’re aiming for is that you need to do less work and go through fewer people before you find and break up with someone. That’s it. [the app] Faster. “
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