FORTUNE - Justin McLeod, founder of Hinge, started the dating app while at Harvard Business School. Initially struggling to attract users, he bribed students with KitKats and managed to attract only a few dozen sign-ups daily. To fund the app, McLeod collected checks of $5K to $10K from anyone willing to invest. He even deferred a job offer from McKinsey with a six-figure salary to focus on Hinge, eventually turning it into a success. By 2015, Hinge raised $26M before being acquired by Match Group. Today, McLeod remains Hinge's CEO, with the app earning $396M in 2023. He advises Gen Z entrepreneurs to balance idealism with practicality, encouraging them to take action rather than overthink their career paths.
55 posts categorized "Outlets - Fortune Magazine"
Hinge CEO Says He Bribed Students With KitKats
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Gen Z and Millennials Are Leaving Tinder for Hinge in Search of Serious Relationships
FORTUNE - Tinder is struggling as its user growth flatlines, while Hinge is gaining popularity, especially among Gen Z and millennials seeking serious relationships. Hinge's daily active users increased by 17% YOY, while Tinder saw a 10% decrease. Hinge's appeal comes from being perceived as a platform for meaningful connections, while Tinder struggles with its reputation as a hookup app. Match Group faces the challenge of revamping Tinder to attract more serious daters without overlapping too much with Hinge's audience. Tinder is offering new tools like AI wingmen, developed through a deal with OpenAI, to help Gen Z users with flirting and profile design. Hinge focuses on features like limiting active conversations to promote quality interactions and its "Designed to be deleted" strategy, encouraging serious relationships. Tinder also offers "Super Boosts" and more affordable paid features to attract users, though these have seen limited success.
by Sasha Rogelberg
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Grindr CEO Discusses AI's Impact on Workforce and Founder Mindset
FORTUNE - At Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference, Grindr CEO George Arison emphasized his lifelong drive to achieve the impossible. Arison, a veteran tech founder and former Google employee, joined Grindr after its 2022 IPO and is one of the few openly LGBTQ+ CEOs. He highlighted the essential qualities of arrogance and craziness for founders, echoing entrepreneur Steve Blank's view that founders are often seen as hallucinating visionaries driven to realize their ideas. Arison believes AI will drastically change the workforce, reducing the number of employees needed to build a successful company. Due to AI's capabilities, he envisions companies achieving significant revenue with fewer employees. However, he stressed that human employees will remain crucial, with each team member's contributions becoming more vital alongside synthetic workers.
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Tinder and Bumble are Tanking Because They Treat Men Badly, Grindr CEO Said
FORTUNE - Grindr CEO George Arison criticized Tinder and Bumble for neglecting their male users, who constitute 70% of their user base, at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. Despite men often paying for premium services, their experience remains frustrating, leading many to quit online dating. Connell Barrett, founder of Dating Transformation, echoed these sentiments, noting that only 20% of men receive most matches while the rest struggle. Both suggested improvements like AI-generated dating advice and in-app dating therapists. Arison also highlighted that dating apps focus more on women's experiences, which he finds offensive, and called for a more balanced approach to benefit all users.
by Eva Roytburg
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Elite Matchmaking Services Surge in Popularity Among Women Over 40
FORTUNE - Elite matchmaking, with fees reaching up to $300,000, is becoming increasingly popular, particularly for women over 40. Though it accounts for less than a quarter of a dating industry estimated to be worth $4B in 2024 in the U.S. alone, one-to-one matchmaking has made a pronounced comeback over the past two decades. "People have just gotten more and more comfortable with outsourcing their love life, like they would hire a personal trainer at the gym," says Rachel Greenwald, a U.S.-based matchmaker and Harvard Business School executive fellow, whose elite services command anywhere from $10K to $75K per month and a minimum three-month commitment. New York matchmaker Lisa Clampitt says that there are now ~5K matchmakers in the U.S. alone. "The industry is 100% growing," she says.
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Match Group CEO: "Dating Apps Are the Best Place to Find Love, no Matter What You See on TikTok"
FORTUNE - Today, dating apps are a common way to meet people, with surveys indicating that they lead to romantic, exclusive relationships for ~70% of users. Gen Z's transparency about bad dating experiences on TikTok has led to a distorted perception that more experiences are negative. However, data shows that dating apps are effective for many people. They offer a less intimidating way to meet new people and are particularly vital for the LGBTQ+ community, with ~60% of LGBTQ+ couples meeting online. Dating apps also facilitate more diverse relationships, with studies showing that couples who met online are more likely to be interracial, interreligious, and from different educational backgrounds. Despite the challenges, dating apps continue to strive for a more inclusive and effective experience for all users.
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Bumble's New CEO Reconsiders the App's Feature of Women Making the First Move
FORTUNE - Bumble's new CEO, Lidiane Jones, is rethinking the app's signature feature of women making the first move, considering it a burden for some users. The company is exploring new experiences to help women start conversations or delegate that responsibility, such as pre-composed opening lines and allowing men to send the first message. Bumble is testing these options in New Zealand and Australia and plans to relaunch in the Q2 of 2024. Jones has revamped the executive team, laid off 350 employees, and restructured the company to improve efficiency.
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Tinder's New CEO: 'We Have Dropped the Ball' on Women's Experiences
FORTUNE MAGAZINE - Faye Iosotaluno, the new CEO of Tinder, acknowledges the need for urgency and speed in addressing challenges facing the dating app. Tinder, responsible for over half of Match Group's $3.4B annual revenue, has seen a 5% drop in paid users YOY in 2023. The app faces competition for relevance, especially with Gen Z users seeking alternatives to the traditional "swipe" feature. Additionally, Tinder is dealing with a lawsuit accusing it of turning users into "addicts" for profit, which the company denies. Iosotaluno, who has been with Match since 2017 and served as Tinder's COO, aims to drive high-quality paying users and revenue in 2024. She acknowledges that Tinder has "dropped the ball" on women's experiences and envisions a product that prioritizes users' best interests.
by Emma Hinchliffe & Joseph Abrams
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Wealthy Gen Z and Millennials Pay up to $30K for The League, a LinkedIn-Based Dating App
FORTUNE - The League, a dating app founded by Amanda Bradford in 2014, aims to serve ambitious millennials and Gen Z users with an exclusive, high-cost membership model. Bradford describes the app as a platform for the "overly ambitious," offering memberships starting at $100 per week. Following its acquisition by Match Group for $29.9 million in 2022, The League has introduced features like speed dating and personalized dating advice. Bradford's vision for the app is to fill the gaps in information on dating profiles, saying, "You put in your LinkedIn profile as a means of admission," focusing on career and educational background. The VIP membership, costing up to $30,000 annually, targets career-driven individuals seeking like-minded partners, with Bradford emphasizing, "I built The League for myself, to essentially find my life partner." The League distinguishes itself in the dating app market by leveraging technology and strategic matchmaking to cater to a specific, motivated clientele.
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Hinge Is Projected to Rake in $400M in 2023
FORTUNE - In 2017, Hinge CEO Justin McLeod reported company earnings of less than $1M, but by 2023, anticipates revenues to exceed $400M. The surge in growth is attributed to word-of-mouth marketing, technological advancements, and a focus on authenticity, making the app 20 times more effective in arranging dates than before. McLeod emphasizes the importance of enhancing user experience to sustain growth and rejects theories of limiting matches for free-tier users. He envisions AI as a key driver for efficiency in dating, aiming to streamline the matchmaking process and help users find compatible partners quicker and with less effort.
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Video: Amanda Bradford's Journey: Creating 'The League' for Elite Singles
FORTUNE - How Amanda Bradford, The League founder, went from $200K in debt to making her first million with a dating app for the young, ambitious, and wealthy.
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Amanda Bradford's Vision for The League's Future With Match Group
FORTUNE - Amanda Bradford, the founder of the exclusive dating app The League, sold her startup to Match Group for $29.9M. Bradford, who raised $2.2 M in seed funding and was the solo founder, became more risk-averse over time, prompting her decision to sell. She chose Match Group, impressed by their track record with Hinge, to avoid the negative experiences she'd heard about from venture funding or private equity acquisitions. Now within Match's portfolio, The League remains relatively autonomous and aims to innovate as a hybrid online-offline platform. Post-pandemic, with a new marketing budget, Bradford plans to reintroduce the app, particularly to Gen Z users who are currently unfamiliar with The League.
by Emma Hinchliffe & Joseph Abrams
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Stigma of Dating a Chatbot Will Fade, Replika CEO Predicts
FORTUNE - Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Replika, a company that creates empathetic chatbots, predicts that the stigma around having romantic relationships with chatbots will fade. Replika recently launched a spinoff brand called Blush, specifically catering to users seeking romantic or sexual relationships with chatbots. Kuyda compares the current stigma to the early days of online dating and believes that romantic relationships with AI can serve as a stepping stone to human relationships. She sees people naturally forming romantic connections with companion chatbots.
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Bumble's Successful Growth Strategy
FORTUNE - Anu Subramanian, the CFO of Bumble, emphasizes that all employees must use the Bumble app to fully understand its operations, as it's the company's main product. Subramanian, who joined Bumble in 2020, has a career background at the intersection of media and technology. Bumble's Q1 2023 report shows a revenue growth of 25.9% to $194.3M and an increase in paying users by 31% to 2.3M. The company's focus is on optimizing the user journey to convert users to paying customers and adding new features like "compliments" to drive engagement. Subramanian believes that women making the first move is one of the app's unique features and notes that, despite economic challenges, people continue to invest in finding relationships.
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Mandy Ginsberg and Shar Dubey Were Match Group CEOs and Best Friends
FORTUNE - Ginsberg and Dubey worked as an inseparable unit across various jobs and corporations for two decades. They once tried to pitch Match Group's board, without success, on a co-CEO structure. Ginsberg and Dubey met at the software business i2 Technologies in Dallas in 2001. They became near-instant friends. In 2006, Ginsberg left i2 to join Match Group. Match was launching Chemistry, and wanted Ginsberg to run it. Two weeks in, she asked if Dubey knew anyone who could help with product. Dubey nominated herself - and got the job. In 2016, Ginsberg became CEO of Match Group, North America, and Dubey worked alongside her as president for the region. Each woman has the skills the other feels she lacks. Dubey has often grounded Ginsberg and helped her execute her vision, while Ginsberg serves as Dubey's personal hype-woman, prying her out of her shell. Dubey took over from Ginsberg in Mar 2020. She guided the company through its pivot to remote work and the changing norms of online dating. She became a vocal critic of Apple. Even though Ginsberg was no longer in the Match C-suite, Dubey still turned to her for guidance. "People complain that it's lonely at the top, but I never felt it," Dubey says. Frequent corporate restructuring makes it difficult to measure Match's growth and performance during Dubey and Ginsberg's tenures at the company. Their first team at the Match brand numbered ~200. Today, the company employs ~2,500 people. At the end of 2017, just before Ginsberg took over, Match was a $1.7B business; by the time Dubey left, it was earning $3B in annual revenue.
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