The Exchanges

Q 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?

A Well, I mean, I was definitely depressed and anxious. I, I, I, I, you know, I was worried, and 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, we have, like, 25,000 dollars left in the bank at this point, and we probably raised, like, 150 or something like that, It's pretty clear this isn't gonna 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 gotta 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.

AI assessment note: “Well, I mean, I was definitely depressed and anxious.”

Q Um, during college, you met somebody who you started to date. Named Kate. And I guess you kind of, you guys dated basically throughout college, right?

A I met Kate her first day of her first year, and it was my first day of my second year, so I'd just gotten out of rehab, and Kate was like the polar opposite. Kate showed up to school, never had a drink, never kissed a boy, so, like, very different human being than me, and my roommate had gone out In search of, like, finding some girls, like, the very first day of school, right, so he's, like, going out, like, and he finds these couple girls out on the quad and invites them back to our place, and he's walking up the stairs with them, and there I am, passed out in the stairwell, like, literally on a landing in the stairwell. Kate, I think, was scared. She'd never seen a passed out person in her life. And an RA saw us, and Kate got her first. She was in trouble just for being around me. I wasn't even conscious. That was our first interaction. But later that year, she and I had a class together, and we would sit together sometimes, and she developed a little bit of a crush on me. And one night, she came over to my dorm room. We were chatting for a little bit, and she asked me to walk her home, and I walked her home. And we had our first kiss that night, and we were just inseparable after that.

AI assessment note: “we had our first kiss that night, and we were just inseparable after that.”

Q But how would you match people? I mean, when you were pitching this to investors in 2011 or 2012, like, why would somebody, why would people use Hinge? When they asked 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?

A 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 Susie 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 would 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. And so we would show you someone and then let's say you, 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 it 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.

AI assessment note: “We would ask you questions about your friends that we would use for the algorithm.”

Q And, I mean, how did you entice the 2500 people to come to the party?

A Open Bar , we, 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, we actually didn't have an app, almost, because we had submitted the app to the App Store for approval, and 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, so we're about to throw this, like, launch party, and we have no app, uh, 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're, 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 gonna launch this, and we're gonna have no app. And, you know, we skirted, we had, like, days of cash left at that point.

AI assessment note: “Open Bar , we, we had a liquor sponsor who just, I think Tito's Vodka”

Q shift in the way we are as humans, and I guess my, my big question, and who, who, who, I don't know if anyone has the answer, is with screens in our lives, right? With the access to screens and the addictive nature of them, Can we really break that? I mean, can we, do you think we have the capacity to go back to how we were as humans?

A I don't know that going back, I think it's a false dichotomy. I don't necessarily think we're going to go back to how we were, but I certainly don't think we can continue down this path. I think it's completely unsustainable for people's mental health and mental wellness. I analogize it to sort of the, what happened with the personal wellness industry. I think for a while we were headed in a direction as a country where like fast food, not a lot of exercise. Like I think people are starting to feel like, um, we had created an engineered food that was very easy to get. Drive-through restaurants, everything else, and then we started to wake up to what are the health consequences of this, and people started to design and create an industry around personal wellness, around health, and I think similarly we need to start thinking about social wellness and social health, and how do we think about the time we spent on social media as essentially like junk food for our brains, and how do we actually start designing healthier ways of relating to our friends that are much more Nutritious for our souls and, uh, much better for our mental health.

AI assessment note: “I don't necessarily think we're going to go back to how we were”

Q Um, you're an employee, um, so you're the CEO, but, but presumably, you know, like any employee, if, If they wanted to find a new one, they could, and if you wanted to move on, you could, and probably eventually you will, um, and maybe start something new. Can you, is that what you imagine doing? Like, or do you, do you feel like you've got another business in you?

A 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. I 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 two billion dollar 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. And so, it's hard to imagine that again. And I think everyone finds their sweet spot, and I think some people are, um, 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.…

AI assessment note: “I don't know the answer to that question, and believe it or not, I actually don't think about it that much.”

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

A 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. And 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 gonna see on this app. You're gonna 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 gonna take the…

AI assessment note: “That was, like, the idea that really got me to be like, I'm not”

Q And you were not dating anybody at the time?

A No. Again, there was someone that I was dating on and off during that period, uh, 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. And 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, a photographer, actually, in Afghanistan, and, They were supposed to rendezvous in Paris, it was 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 was like the eighties and nineties, so they didn't really.

AI assessment note: “No. Again, there was someone that I was dating on and off during that period”

Q And that was all the money you had? 24,000 dollars?

A Yeah, 24,000 dollars. That was it, and so that's what we used to pay these developers, and we 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, 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.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, 24,000 dollars. That was it”

Q think in 20 11, when you started to look for potential investors, and I think it would be a little while before you got real money. I would say to you, what differentiates you from Match.com? Why would somebody use, or, or OkCupid, or JDate, or whatever was out there, and I don't even know if Tinder was out there yet. What makes you different? And you would say, what?

A We're gonna 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 it 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. And 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.

AI assessment note: “We're gonna be stigma free. There was a lot of stigma around dating websites”

Q 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. I've slept with 30 to 40 people in the last five months. Like, how do you change that person's behavior with the relaunch?

A 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 and, 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. You know, we lose more than 20% of our users during the signup process. On, on other, those other apps, you hit one button, and you're in, and you're swiping, and you're going. So if you, 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, and then, you know, you're probably not the, it's not the right service for you. Like, we just want people who want meaningful relationships, full stop, period. Like, we just want to get amazing at that.

AI assessment note: “It's just too difficult if you're looking for a hookup. It just requires too much effort.”

Q 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?

A Yeah, it's a small class, and a bunch of people hopped on and did it, and it 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, You know, 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. You 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. Use it. As opposed to, at the time, all web dating websites used, you know, 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.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it's a small class, and a bunch of people hopped on and did it”

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

A Well, we had a, we'll say rocky relationship, as you could imagine, uh, trying to be with someone like me and someone like Kate, and we had this really strong personal connection and bond, and really loved each other. I mean, really, just, we're, we're really attracted to one another and, like, magnets to one another, but it was also tumultuous because I was always going out and getting into trouble, and so we broke up and got back together, like, six or seven times. During, during college, and at the end, we broke up. She actually transferred. She transferred to another school. She transferred to Wellesley, and we got back together one last time, and I just, like, I just couldn't do it. I don't know why. I just let her go, and then I, I almost immediately regretted it. I wanted to call her, like, two weeks later, and I just said, I have to stay out of her life, because I just kept Interrupting it and messing it up and then leaving again. So I just vowed to, like, not contact her anymore.

AI assessment note: “I just couldn't do it. I don't know why. I just let her go”

Q Where did that idea come from, by the way?

A I don't know, but I always had it. I, only child syndrome, perhaps, I'm not sure, but I, you know, I was looking at my life at that point, and I was like, God, like, I keep wanting to go in this direction, and yet every day I wake up and go this other direction, and I feel like I do not have control. And it scared me. You know, I hadn't gotten the job that I wanted. I was taking some other random job in DC that I didn't really want. Uh, I'd lost the girl. You know, just, it felt like, didn't seem like I was on track for success. And, and I just vowed that morning to, like, stop. And I did.

AI assessment note: “I don't know, but I always had it. I, only child syndrome, perhaps”

Q lot of young people, and I hear the same thing. It's so consistent. They're like, yeah, I'm on apps. It sucks, and it just sounds so soul-crushing, and I wonder what You're hearing. I mean, you are, and I've, and again, I've met, I also have Know people who met on Hinge, right, and are married and have great lives, but what are you hearing about dating culture right now?

A Yeah, I mean, one is that dating has always been hard. When people were, before people were complaining about dating apps, they were complaining about it was hard to just go out and meet people in bars, it's hard to meet anyone. Dating has always been challenging. It's always been something that, you know, most songs are about it, right? It's like one of the most emotional ups and downs, unpredictable things, um, and most important things to us as humans. And at the same time, I would say I sympathize with a lot of the critiques of dating apps. A lot of them are why I started Hinge in the first place is because I wanted something that actually felt much more thoughtful, much more intentional, didn't, uh, treat people as kind of like disposable shopping items. And I'm actually quite excited about the possibilities that we're now seeing because of AI, which I think will even further our ability to help people spend less time on our app and more time out on great dates. It will allow people Instead of communicating to us their preferences through kind of Morse code of likes and passes and going through lots and lots and lots of people, they can just tell us in their own words who they are, what they're looking for, what matters to them, and be able to make much, much more thoughtful matches.

AI assessment note: “I sympathize with a lot of the critiques... I'm actually quite excited about”