Justin McLeod, founder and CEO of Hinge, explains how the company used its remaining capital to overcome the cold-start problem when pivoting to mobile.
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“We took our last 25,000 dollars and we threw a 2500 person launch party in D.C.”
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More from Justin McLeod
AssertionPartly supported
McLeod: Screen time replaced 70% of time spent with friends
“If you look at the loneliness epidemic, and you actually look over the last 20 years at the amount of time people spend on their screens, we've almost completely displaced in real life time spent with our friends with time spent looking at screens. About 70% o…”
Justin McLeodJul 17, 2025▶ 1:59Advice Line with Justin McLeod of Hinge
PredictionNot checkable as stated
McLeod: AI will replace swiping with natural language preference matching
“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 …”
Justin McLeodJul 17, 2025▶ 5:48Advice Line with Justin McLeod of Hinge
Insight
McLeod: Companies should win one market at a time over broad expansion
“Yeah, and we have this principle at Hinge of kind of depth over breadth, and we always
You know, it's hard to try to cover up for weakness by just like expanding more like, oh, like that market's not working.
Let's just launch more markets.
So thinking, thinki…”
Justin McLeodJul 17, 2025▶ 12:30Advice Line with Justin McLeod of Hinge
AssertionNot checkable as stated
McLeod: Breakout dating startups were all incubated inside corporate holding companies
“And then there's a reason, I think, you know, you see that The startups that have really taken off and grown in the dating space were all started in-house.”
McLeod: Frictionless sign-on removed online dating stigma and unlocked millennials
“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.”
McLeod: IAC owning Tinder made Hinge the only viable dating startup investment
“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.”
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