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Today we are talking about Hinge, one of the most popular dating app in the US. How did the platform started out back in the days? Below Justin’s interesting story👇
Founder story
Hinge was founded by Justin McLeod in 2012, the same year Tinder, the biggest rival, was launched. In 2010, Justin was in business school trying to get over bad breakup which happened a few years before. His college sweetheart, the woman he thought was the love of his life, had split up with him because of his drink problem. He had subsequently gone to rehab and successfully sobered up, but he had not been able to move on romantically. Not comfortable going into bars because of his addiction issue, he started work on Hinge in 2011 to help him find a new partner. At the time he was 27, and doing an MBA (master of business administration) at Harvard Business School in Boston.
Determined to solve his own problem and fully convinced that the best way to meet people was through friends of friends, he built a platform trying to replicate that experience.
Hinge Founder and CEO (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Inc)
Gradually, Hinge grew into a swiping platform that yielded conflicting results: bag hookups, good dates, mismatched swipes and missed opportunities. Disappointed with this outcome and inspired by a sudden twist in his own love life, Justin redesigned the platform as an app for finding long-lasting relationships, marketing it as “the app designed to be deleted”
How did the app take off?
At the beginning, the app had no traction and popularity. As said before, the very first hinge product was web-based and the mobile-first pivot occurred later on, when he realized that product was not getting any traction. After months spent learning from the first users, Justin decided to pivot and change the interface to focus on mobile.
Once the app was ready to be deployed, Justin had $25,000 left on the bank account and decide to throw it all on a lunch party in Washington DC, helped by one of his friends who was active and popular in the social scene. The idea was to throw an open-bar party with a 2,500 attendees, who could walk in only after downloading the app on their phones. The event was a success and it made the platform take off.
The next day, Hinge had 500 people logging in and the day after the app registered 800 Daily Active Users. It was the beginning of one of the most popular dating app in the US.
Today Hinge has about 5.5 million users around the world, and reported annual revenues of $5.2m. In June 2018, Match Group acquired 51% ownership in dating app. The acquisition was intended to help diversify Match's portfolio and appeal to a wider array of singles. In February 2019, Match Group fully bought out the company
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