How Hinge went from making less than $1 million in revenue in 2017 to about $400 million in 2023

Let's talk Hinge itself. What led you to launch it? Did you see it as a viable business opportunity? Right. From the outset. Uh I was in business school at the time. So I think I was thinking like this is, and I actually, at the time I was imagining a bunch of different start up ideas because I was trying to enter a business plan competition. And then the idea for hinge through a sort of random series of events just kind of hit me and walk us through that give us some specifics and color. Yeah, I was so I was in my second year of business school and uh and I think that the I'll say like overall, I feel like the search for connection has kind of been like the a theme in my life and um and romantic connection and like, there's been like a very big piece of it and I had been dating on and off someone in college and uh and she and I didn't work out in the end and I, and also during college, um I was actually a very heavy like drinker and drug user and having a pretty intense addiction problem. And so those two are very related. And on the day that I graduated, I stopped drinking, I like, got sober. And then when I went back to business school, I just, I had always relied on drinking and drugs in order to like, you know, have the courage to go out and meet people. And it was my, it was the way that I socialized and I was just stuck. I didn't really know how to do that without that crutch. And I just had trouble meeting people. And I actually reached out to my college girlfriend and tried to actually like get her back and, and she turned me down and I was heartbroken. And uh and I really just needed to, I was like, really looking for a way to be able to find people and connect with people outside of like going out to bars or going to parties. And that's, that's kind of like when the, that's when the idea came. One thing I do want to talk about is, you know, hinge has this subscription tier. You also say that your mission at the end of the day is to get people to go on more dates. How do you balance the two, getting people to pay for a subscription? But also saying that at your core, you know, you're just looking to simply get people to go out and states are they mutually exclusive? No, we have a principle that like the free product is sacred and we really only charge for what we say we can't give away for free. So the things that by their nature have to be scarce like roses. Like if everyone had unlimited roses, then the rose wouldn't mean anything anymore. Or if everyone had unlimited boost and a boost, if everyone boos it all the time, then no one would be boosted. Or there are things that harm the ecosystem. Like we think that a lot of uh some of like the preferences that people set actually limit them and they're not actually good for them. But if someone has like a real intention, they really want to set a preference, then they can upgrade to do that. But overall, what we're trying to do is we think the free product is great at getting people on dates. If you do, you want a leg up by using things that are that by their nature have to be scarce, then you can pay for those that have a better experience. Given that hinge is a business at the end of the day, they have to be a business proposition. Do you? Or does the algorithm try to steer people towards a paid subscription? Uh No, the algorithm does not try to look like we uh like how I describe it. Like there's not like the algorithm changes once you um uh I'm trying to think of how to answer the question. Doesn't there's no, like designing of the algorithm to get you to pay. Yeah, I think no. Is that the end goal for you as a CEO to get people to pay? I mean, as a business, I mean, genuinely like the, what we found as a business is that when we help people get on to more dates, we grow faster and people tell their friends more. And so that kind of like overall user growth is the lifeblood of our company. And so if we were to trade that off by like limiting your experience by getting you to like pay more money, that wouldn't be good for our overall long term trajectory and long term growth. Talk to me about who you are as a CEO, what is your leadership style? What have you learned over the last decade of running a tech company, a tech platform? I don't do I even begin. I have changed so much. I mean, I think one of the, I think one of the things that people say about me who work with me is that like I'm on just in version like 12.0 I think that I've like, I've one thing that I'm is like very true. I mean, is I take feedback very seriously. I'm like constantly in a, in a state of like self reflection and continuous self improvement. I was so bad at being a CEO so bad at product and I'm marketing and pretty much everything when I started hinge and uh I think over time through a lot of incremental improvement and self reflection and feedback. Uh I and persistence, which I'd say is like my probably number one quality, I think that is the, the main key to success. Any growth numbers you can share whether it's revenue valuation, anything of that nature, any financial metrics. Yes, we went from um less than a million dollars in revenue in 2017 to we're projecting to do about 400 million this year. Uh which is like, I think in the fourth quarter. Uh Yeah, we're, we're expecting to do um well, over 40 almost 50% revenue growth. We are setting up a date every two seconds, about every two seconds now for the number three dating app globally.