Helping people find love can be a financially lucrative business.
Hinge, the dating app that’s “designed to be deleted,” has seen a sizable revenue jump in the last six years.
In 2017, the company raked in less than $1 million, according to CEO Justin McLeod. Fast forward to 2023. The company expects to hit “well over $400 million,” McLeod tells Fortune Executive Exchange. “We're setting up a date every two seconds now. And we're the number three dating app globally.”
The CEO attributes the company’s growth to word-of-mouth marketing and a focus on authenticity. While there wasn’t some “grand, catalytic moment” that changed the company’s fortune, McLeod says, the company has invested in enhancing its technology, creating an overall better product. “On the old hinge [pre-2017], you'd have to send 1000 likes in order to get to a date. And on the new hinge. It was like 50. So we're 20 times more effective.”
That’s of particular importance, McLeod says, because it not only refutes a widespread theory that Hinge gatekeeps top matches for members on its free tier—and gives each user a so-called “attractiveness score”—but is the lifeblood of its expansion efforts and advertising strategy.
“When we help people get on more dates, we grow faster, and people tell their friends more,” says McLeod. “If we were to trade that off by limiting your experience [or] by getting you to just pay more money, that wouldn't be good for our overall long-term trajectory.”
Like most tech CEOs, he sees AI becoming an increasingly disruptive yet positive force for the company—one that makes dating more efficient.
“It unlocks a lot of opportunity, both in terms of effectiveness and becoming that matchmaker that can really deeply understand you and other people and make much more curated, targeted matches,” McLeod says. “As cold as the word efficient is when it comes to dating, ultimately, we're trying to get you to have to do less work and go through fewer people to find your person and move off [the app] faster.”
Watch the full interview and subscribe to Fortune Executive Exchange, a new series in which influential business leaders discuss their rise to fame, fortune, and challenges along the way.
