Updated posts 2026
Assisting individuals in finding love can be a highly profitable venture. Hinge, the dating app renowned for its “designed to be deleted” approach, has experienced a substantial increase in revenue over the past six years. Discover how Hinge’s unique approach to online dating has contributed to its financial success.
In 2017, the company generated less than $1 million in revenue, as stated by CEO Justin McLeod. Fast forward to 2023, and the company is projected to surpass $400 million in revenue, according to McLeod in an interview with Fortune Executive Exchange. The app now facilitates a date every two seconds and ranks as the third most popular dating app globally.
The CEO credits the company’s growth to the power of word-of-mouth marketing and a strong commitment to authenticity. While there wasn’t a single groundbreaking moment that transformed the company’s fortune, McLeod emphasizes the investment in technology to enhance the overall product. In the past, users had to send 1,000 likes to secure a date on the old Hinge, before 2017. With the redesigned app, it takes around 50 likes, making it twenty times more effective.
According to McLeod, this is particularly important as it challenges the notion that Hinge reserves the best matches for its paid members and assigns an “attractiveness score” to each user. This aspect is vital for Hinge’s expansion and advertising strategy, making it a crucial factor to consider.
The tension he is addressing is structural rather than reputational. A dating app earns money from subscriptions, which means a user who finds a partner and deletes the app stops paying, while a user who never quite succeeds keeps paying indefinitely. “Designed to be deleted” is a direct answer to that suspicion, and the argument behind it is that satisfied departures generate the recommendations that bring in replacements more cheaply than advertising does. Whether the incentive genuinely resolves that way is difficult to verify from outside, since the relevant data sits with the company.
According to McLeod, helping people increase their dating opportunities leads to faster growth and more word-of-mouth referrals. The focus, he says, is on providing a strong user experience rather than simply driving revenue, an approach he considers crucial to long-term success.
Similar to many technology CEOs, he envisions AI as a progressively disruptive yet beneficial force for the company, particularly in enhancing efficiency in dating.
“It opens up numerous opportunities, enhancing effectiveness and acting as a knowledgeable matchmaker that truly understands you and others, resulting in more customized and targeted matches,” McLeod explains. “While efficiency may sound impersonal in the context of dating, our ultimate goal is to minimize your effort and interactions, helping you find your perfect match more quickly and transition away from the app faster.”
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Key Learning Points:
- Hinge has experienced a significant increase in revenue, from less than $1 million to over $400 million in just six years.
- The success of Hinge can be attributed to its distinct approach to online dating and commitment to authenticity.
- Investment in technology has enhanced the user experience and increased the efficiency of finding matches.
- AI is playing a growing role in the dating landscape, offering more personalized and targeted matches for users.
- Hinge’s stated goal is to make finding a partner more efficient, allowing users to move away from the app faster.
