 Today, we're excited to welcome someone who is one of the most innovative technology experts of his generation. Justin McLeod joins us to talk about switching gears and founding Hinge, the relationship app that's changing the way millennials are dating. This is School of Hustle, the show where we find advice and inspiration from people who are making their own way. I'm Shannon, the VP of Social Hierarch Oh Daddy, and I live and breathe the hustle of business. Today, we're filming from the hustle of it all at the WeWork Time Square in New York City. Everybody, let's give a big welcome to Justin. It's so fantastic to have you here. Thanks for having me. Well, you're welcome. What inspired you to found Hinge? Are you just a hopeless romantic? Well, sort of actually. I started Hinge when I was at business school, and I've been dating a girl Kate in college, and we'd broken up. And four years later, I reached out to try to get back together with her. And she said, no. And I was totally heartbroken. I was convinced we were going to end up together. And so I started Hinge the next week. I was like, I'm never going to find someone as great as her. And I'm going to build a dating app to do it. What does the name Hinge mean? Well, originally it was all about, I wanted to create something like lightweight and simple for this generation to connect. This was 2011. So no dating apps, no Tinder, no Bumble, anything like that. And so the idea was that we would make it a friends of friends experience. You'd meet that person you were eventually going to meet at that wedding or that house party. And so Hinge was just a term for what connects two people. It's always that friend in common. And so Hinge is sourcing people in front of you on the app who are somehow related to your network. That's how we started. We've learned over time that that is not always the best way to connect people. But that's at our roots. And what's always been at our roots is the sort of authenticity that comes with meeting people in an environment like a house party or a wedding versus like a club or out in the street. Because there's context there. Exactly. You see people as real human beings. You interact with them like they're real human beings. We have photos, which you can add captions to. And then we also have on our profiles, we have these things called prompts, which are short questions that lead to great conversations. We've optimized those over time to really help people be a little bit more vulnerable and lead to much better conversations that will lead to a date. Well Hinge is referred to as a relationship app, not a dating app. So is this some of the reason why you call it a relationship app instead? These days we really just say we're the app that's designed to be deleted. We're the app that if you don't want to be using dating apps anymore and you're really looking for someone to get off the app way, this is the app for you. So how do you stay in business if everyone ends up leaving eventually? Well what we've really found is that as every time we've made the app more effective we grow faster and it's because we're putting more and more people into the world who then tell their friends that they met someone on Hinge. When you set out to launch Hinge there were other competitors in the space that were trying to put people together as well. Now what did you do to stay out ahead? So we went through a big reboot in 2016 and up until that time I think we'd really been focusing a lot on the competition and what were they doing and what were we doing and how do we differentiate ourselves and the big shift that we made in 2016 was to start just thinking about the customer and stop, start ignoring the competition and we changed our metrics really to be about how many dates are we setting people on, how are those dates good dates. We actually just launched a feature called we met where people can after you exchange phone numbers with someone we ask how the date went a few days later because we're really trying to make sure that the dates are great and not that you're just matching with people. Yeah, I was going to ask you how you go about getting feedback. Yeah, that's one of the ways. So one of the ways is we ask your feedback after every single day. We want to know how it went, how it could have gone better. And that's a primary way but we're always listening to a whole member services team that's relaying feedback to our product team. You know, I'm wondering if you might tell us about your path to get funding and to make Hinge like what it became. It started very slowly. When I started in 2011, again, there were no other dating apps out there and people, a lot of VCs thought I was crazy. They're like match.com owns this market. You could never disrupt them. And yeah, I know it sounds kind of funny in retrospect now. And then when Tinder started to take off, then it was like we couldn't turn away money fast enough. I mean, it was really like the market clearly showed that it was there and it was at that point a lot easier to raise money. And you mentioned match because Hinge was acquired by match. You were. Right? So what does it mean? Is acquisition like a paramount of success in what you do? And also what does that mean for you now in your role at the company? And when I think about success for Hinge and for me, it's about having the biggest impact possible. And I don't know if the match acquisition was what I set out to do from the beginning but what it became clear is that they had the knowledge and the resources to really help us take this company and scale it in a global way. And they really bought into our mission and they've been incredible partners. And really my day to day hasn't changed that much at all. Instead of reporting to a board of VC investors, I report to the board at Edmash Group. Did you end up finding your wife on Hinge? Well, actually that person that we talked about in the very beginning. Another four years later, I ended up flying over. She was living in Switzerland at the time and I flew over right before a wedding and asked her to haul off her wedding and move back to America with me. And she did and we were, I know, it's a long story. Oh my gosh, that's not the way that I thought you were going to answer that question. You develop Hinge to get over Kate. Yes. And Hinge is thriving and up and running, but you decide to go all the way to Switzerland. Well, it actually saw the bottom indirectly because someone met on Hinge, a reporter, who then came to me and wanted to interview me. Okay. At the interview she asked, have you ever been in love? And I said, a long time ago, but I didn't realize it until it was too late. And she then had this very parallel story where she found her person 20 years later and she's like, you cannot make the same mistake I did. Like, you have to do something about this. You have to like fly over there and stop her if she has not married yet. And long story short, I did and she did. And then what happened to your Hinge profile at this point? Yeah. Well, then now I'm still, I still am on Hinge with clear wedding photos. And I'm always on there looking for feedback from people. And that's another way that I actually get feedback from people. It is probably very helpful to use your product and see how people are using it. Yeah, you got it. Well, I'm so happy that you found love. You are a hopeless romantic. This is insane. Yeah, it is a wild ride. You should have seen it from this side. What are three words that you would use to describe yourself? The way that I would describe myself is the way that I describe our core values of the company, which are authentic, courageous and empathetic. Those are the things that really drive us as a company and that drive all our product decisions. I really enjoyed that conversation. Yeah, it was great. Now we're going to switch gears and we're going to play my favorite game called Hustle Time. We set a clock for 60 seconds and we see how many questions you can get through in that amount of time. Okay. Yep. Most powerful emotion anger or love? Love. Which would you rather add to your lifetime or value? Time. Meatballs or fish? Fish. Snapchat has a long life or lost cause? Lost cause. Do you floss every day? Yes. First celebrity crush? Oh, Rachel McAdams. Chocolate, milk or dark? Dark. Which Hogwarts house would you be sorted into? Oh, I don't know the Hogwarts houses. First concert you ever saw? Not Slytherton. Pearl Jam. Apple or Android? Apple. No cheese ever again or sugar ever again? No sugar ever again. Go to cocktail? A old fashioned. Drive, stick shift or automatic? Automatic. Number of times it took you to pass your driver's test? Just once. Last person you texted? My wife. If a genie grants you three wishes, what would they wait? Oh my god. That's not fair. That's three questions. I know, I know. Three wishes. Invisibility, flying and walk through walls. Time it takes to get ready in the morning. Like three and a half hours. Peanut butter, cups from an M's. Gubs. OK, we'll count that one. We'll count that one. I got a genie one. There's also another one. Someone got two of them. It was the genie one for the three and three things in your closet. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Didn't even make the podium. We ask every entrepreneur these same questions to see how people from different points of view and verticals and experiences answer the same set of questions. Right. Favorite part of your day? Good morning. Best piece of advice you've ever gotten? Companies fail because founders give up. And don't give up, I guess, would be the corollary advice behind that. So worst piece of advice? Take the job in the Kinsey. Yeah, because it's safer, right? OK, how do you use your career to inspire others? What I'm trying to do is build a team that people feel like really, really inspired to work there every day. And so I think it's about creating a mission-driven company that's about serving other people. And that inspires others to show up. Ever felt like walking away? Oh, yeah, in any sense. One thing you still need to learn? How to let go of control. What do you want people to learn from you? I think how to think about really deeply what you choose to measure as a company. It's been such a huge difference between measuring what our customers want versus what we want. Measuring people going out on great dates versus measuring engagement, growth, retention, those kinds of things. What's next for you? Fatherhood, actually. For real? For real. Yeah, due in August. Oh, congratulations. Little boy. It inspires you. Really, the answer to that is my team. My team shows up in a way, and they've taken this company so much farther than I could have imagined. And they really inspire me to show up every day like they show up. Who challenges you? My wife, Kate. She's actually the most courageous person I know, whether it's dragging me down double black diamonds when we're skiing, or which we were just were doing a few weeks ago, even while she was pregnant. She's crazy. Or yeah, she's so brave when she steps into these new life phases, becoming a parent, that kind of thing. And it's inspiring. You know what? I think she was pretty brave to get back on the plane with you in Switzerland. Yeah, that too. Because that takes a lot. Well, I hope to have the pleasure and privilege of meeting her someday. She sounds amazing. She has her own company, so maybe you can have her as another guest. I would love that. There are two questions that we got from our social audience. The first is from Joala, who met her boyfriend on Hinge, I have to say. She wants to know, how do you choose the prompt questions for Hinge? We started with just an assortment of random guesses of what we thought people would respond to and lead to good conversations. And then over time, we've actually we sort of plot them on this two by two graph of which ones are people willing to answer and which ones actually lead to phone numbers, exchange, and dates. And then we find this vulnerability frontier almost of the balance of what people are willing to answer, but what will also lead to great dates and really. And so we optimize those over time and try to make sure we're getting people to answer questions that lead to dates. Now the second question we actually already covered because the question is, do you have a Hinge profile? So is there one more from the crowd, from the live studio audience? We have a couple, let's take a couple. Karen, thank you so much for that. I'm Karen's in our live studio audience today. And what Karen is wondering is, how do you keep people safe on your platform? Because today there is a lot of concerns around privacy and the creepy people out there. So how do you ensure that people are safe? I really think Hinge is one of the safest ways for you to date because you have a whole community of people vetting people for you. And so we have a report feature on the app which we have a zero tolerance policy for anyone that gets reported. We also have the we met feature. So we're actually following up after every single date to see how it went and also find out if anything happened that you want to report this person for. And if so, then we remove them from the community. I would be shocked if the other competitors out there can say the same thing. That's outrageous. I did not know you did all that. Yes, and I believe we're the only app out there that is following up after people's long days to find out. Because we care about obviously not just what happens on the app, but what happens off the app as a result. I think we had one more question from the crowd. That was awesome, Karen. Thank you. Hailey, what is your question? The classic favorite that actually is one of the most effective questions is the two truths and a lie question. And what really works on those are when you answer a question that beckons other people to really respond and interact with you. So when you do two truths and a lie, there's an obvious next thing to say in response to that, which is to guess which one the lie is. And so that I think is one of our first guesses and is standard the test of time as we optimize. Would you be comfortable doing your two truths and a lie? Sure. Okay. I totaled a car at the age of five. I sank a sailboat at the age of 33. I just like tacos. You sank a sailboat's a lie. No, I actually sank the sailboat and crashed the car. No, I don't talk. I know. I had a crazy childhood. I thought that was an easy... I thought that was like, oh my gosh, that's so funny. Well, you are just full of stories and advice. I hate to bring this to a close, but we're down to our last question. What you got? The question is from our resident pug noodle. Oh, right. Oh. Yeah, so noodle has been single for quite some time. And noodle's considering getting back out there. His friends are on all the dating apps, but he's skeptical. And what advice would you have for someone like noodle who wants to get back out there is nervous about meeting new people in apps, you know? But, you know, he wants to date. What do you tell him? Well, I think I'd say that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And that, yeah. And hinge is the best place, I think, really, because we're the ones who are really for people who want to get off dating apps. Now, maybe noodle just wants to, you know, get out there and play the field a little bit, which hinge wouldn't be the place. But if not, then hinge is definitely the place if noodle's looking to find a relationship and get off dating apps. I wonder what is in his little head. Playing the field, he's looking for something serious. Gosh, if we could only... There's apps for that, too, though. Yeah, if only we could know. Well, I always like to end School of Hustle with a final thought, like a great fortune cookie at the end of a meal. So what I'm going to do is read three quotes and ask you to listen to those quotes and tell me which one resonates the most and why. Okay? Number one, if you believe it will work out, you'll see opportunities. If you believe it won't, you'll see obstacles. Number two, a year from now, you may wish you had started today. Number three, a goal without a plan is just a wish. Definitely the first one. Everything is about perception. And like when I, the times when I'm feeling expansive or the times when I'm feeling like really contracted or like, I mean, it's just your perception totally defines your reality. And I think that that really captures it, that first one you read. Thank you for that. Yeah. Well, I hope everybody enjoyed watching School of Hustle with Justin. I know I really enjoyed our time today. And if you did enjoy, please follow GoDaddy because we are bringing School of Hustle to you every single Wednesday. Full episodes on Instagram TV, YouTube, teasers across LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram. So keep watching and follow and we'll see you soon.