The algorithm says we’re soulmates… Now what?
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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by Vanta.

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Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on. It's about keeping everything secure. What is a meet cute? Seriously, this sounds... I think that it's when you meet someone IRL in real life and have a romantic moment. What? Basically, it's what you and I would have thought of back in the day is like meeting someone. This is so sad. It's really sad, isn't it? That this is an actual term to describe...

What was once normal human interaction. I would say how you met your wife is a meet cute. We did have a meet cute on the plane, yeah. But you would never have called it a meet cute before, right? Because that's just how we met people. That's just, you know, life. No.

Hello and welcome back to the Times Tech Podcast with me, Katie Prescott. Katie in the city, the City of London. And me, Danny Fortson. Danny in the Valley. Well, look, we've talked in the past on the show a lot about things like robots, retail, data centres. But today we've got a very special episode for you. And it's all about something far more ethereal, which is finding love. What happens when the worlds of tech

And love collide. Some of the world's greatest love affairs began with a meet cute, didn't they, Danny? With a simple boy meets girl. Like we might all recognize from the movies. But in the world of tech, how effective, I want to know, is an algorithm at matchmaking? And have dating apps ruined the romance of bygone years? And will artificial intelligence be the final nail in that coffin?

Those questions feel loaded and I have thoughts on those. Are we rehearsing right now? Well, I only ask because these are some of the questions that I put to the boss of Hinge, Justin McLeod, the other day. It's the number one dating app in Australia, Canada, France and here in the UK. It's one of the Match.com group of companies that includes Tinder, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid. And in

In a moment, because we are too old and haggard to have much experience with this, we're going to go straight to a source and do some proper journalism. And we're going to invite one of those British users into our studio to give us the lowdown about what it's like.

to use Hinge. Now, because he is going to spill all his secrets and tell us everything, he wants to keep strictly anonymous, but we don't like to have anonymous sources doing journalism. So in the interest of transparency, he is the producer of this podcast. And his name is Young Callum. Well, actually his name is Callum, not Young Callum, but he is young.

But before we get to that, we got to talk quickly about crypto. So astute listeners of this very fine podcast will remember last week we promised to bring on a crypto guest on this pod this week to discuss the White House crypto summit from last week put on by Donald Trump.

But frankly, it was effectively a glorified photo op. So we thought this dating thing would be more useful and more interesting and more fun. We will bring on a crypto guest to talk about all things crypto because beyond the summit, of course, there's lots happening there and lots to talk about. So last week, listeners will have heard that Skype was integral to the formation of your relationship, Danny, your marriage. We know that tech and love

go hand in hand. Indeed they do. In some ways.

But I also wonder if tech can damage love in some ways as well. So if we look at what's happened to dating over the last 30 years, Match.com started in 1995. Can you believe it? Oh, my God. I know. Oh, my God. Wow. And then social media as well was kind of one of the ways that people started meeting each other. I remember when Facebook launched in my last year of university, Facebook.

That's pretty much what it was. People kind of checking each other out and it was all open then as well. So it's like a catalog. And then of course we had Hinge and Tinder in 2012 and it's accelerated since then. So it seems like now most people do meet their partner online. What's really interesting is that for people of a certain vintage background,

Like myself. And us, me, yeah. If you met someone online 20 years ago, you're like, oh. You know, there's like a real stigma around it. And all the, you know, and it has gradually over the years switched from this kind of fringe thing, like so often with so many technologies, starts with this like fringe thing. It's a bit like crypto. Starts with this fringe thing that you're like, hmm, like that's a bit funky, to over those decades has now become the default way.

And it's completely changed dynamics. It has, but in some ways that's quite sad because it means that people can't have their, I hate to use the word, meet cute story. You know, how did you meet is what you always ask people when they're together. And actually on Hinge,

isn't particularly fun. But it seems that despite people meeting online more than ever and it being normalized and all of that, actually, people might be falling out of love with apps. And maybe that's because they want to go back to the romance of bygone years and actually having a real life meeting.

I mean, just if you listen to some of these headlines, 79% of Gen Z report dating app burnout. Why Gen Z is ditching dating apps. Dating apps are in decline. I love this. Here's how to find love in real life. IRL. Good Lord. God forbid. Recently, the Times' story podcast had a great edition called The Decline of Dating Apps and What Could Replace Them? Hmm.

what could replace dating apps but what is clear from those headlines is that we need to be a little bit more creative with our headlines obviously you know the whole why people have fallen out of love with dating apps etc i feel like i see that with some regularity yeah and and and more importantly are they right so before we hear from justin mcleod of hinge um

we thought we should bring in our beloved multi-talented producer Callum who's very very bravely agreed to talk to us so brave candidly I hope as candidly as he was in the pub the other day about his experience with dating apps because also he is a big hinge user so welcome Callum to the podcast

I was going to say that was a kind introduction, but I think that last bit, a big hinge user, I don't think I want. Do you not describe yourself as a big hinge user? No, I don't describe myself as a big hinge user, no. But I, having heard you talk about it, I think objectively you are a, sorry, a

Okay, scrap the hinge user. Welcome, Callum, to the podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And what would you say the good things are about using it? I think there are good things. For a lot of people, it's a great way to essentially...

do it. It's like a meet cute replacement. So it's like that kind of like, okay, let's go, let's go for a drink, you know, where perhaps I'm struggling to meet someone. I think work seems like a less acceptable place to meet a partner nowadays. I think if you're going out a lot, that's somewhere to meet people. But if you're not, then I think that's quite tricky. So if you're going to clubs, great, you meet lots of people. If you're not,

you're not it's also become I think somewhat socially unacceptable I don't know whether this is for good or bad to maybe approach people do you feel like that as a guy yeah the kind of approaching someone you find attractive on the street feels kind of seedy nowadays and feels less acceptable so in some ways dating apps are perhaps one of the

only options for many people. Do you think also this whole idea that, you know, the next person is quite literally a swipe away and that this technology makes it

You talk about it, like how it's becoming almost seedy to like, just go up and speak to somebody. I feel like there's a, again, I'm sounding like an old man get off my lawn now, but like, I think that I feel like there's a value in actually putting yourself out there and plucking up the courage to go to speak to somebody. Totally. So I, I think, I think that brings on to my kind of the bad bits for me. So I think I like, I,

I've had a couple of nice relationships from Hinge dates. I've never really had any bad dates from Hinge. I've always had fun, even if it's not gone anywhere. So I don't really... The actual experience is great. But the kind of behaviours I think it produces in people...

are bad. I mean, the obvious ones like, you know, catfishing, but less so like that. It's more about... Explain catfishing? Well, catfishing is just you're kind of presenting yourself as a different person online to the person you really are. So you might use someone else's photos or maybe enhance it. So that's the extreme. But that's extreme. But then the kind of more subtle ones like ghosting. So for instance, you might be talking to someone for a week or two or three or four and then or even going on a date with them and then just not replying to them.

Bread crumbing, which is essentially you're kind of like, I'm somewhat interested, but I'm speaking to a few other people. So I'll kind of keep feeding in a message so that they're interested. Bread crumbing. What an amazing term. I kind of feel like this happened in...

happened in all sorts of datings? Do you think it's just been turbocharged? Yeah, I think when you've got essentially like a pool of people in your pocket that you can call on, then it makes it more, yeah, it amplifies it. So the reluctance to put yourself out there, I think that's a real point

that Danny made I think you if you're on a night out for instance or if you're meeting a new group of friends and you're like oh maybe I should go and ask that person out or maybe I should go and introduce myself there is this kind of feeling I've noticed it before where I'm like yeah I could do that or I could maybe just speak to the five people I'm speaking to on Hinge at any given time

Because it's safer, right? Well, it's kind of like... As well. Yeah, it makes you feel like you don't need to. It makes you feel like you don't need to. So in that sense, I think it's negative. And then the other negatives, I think... I mean, I talked to you about this in the pub the other day, which was, I think...

the sense that you can kind of always do better, which is, the grass is always greener. And it's like a horrible thing. And I've noticed it where you, you can kind of, you'll, you'll be speaking to someone, you're getting along with them. And then you, you, you carry on maybe sending likes or people send likes to you. And then you're like, Oh, they're, they're interesting. Maybe I should speak to them. Have you been on a date? And then your date goes to the bathroom or goes to the bar or something. And you're like, Oh,

Oh, maybe I'll just have a little quick look at Hinge and send a little message. No, I don't think I've ever done that. Be honest. I might have opened it. Oh my goodness. I wonder if there's a moment then when you start a relationship with someone and you've met on Hinge that you have to say, are we going to delete the app now?

Yeah, well, that's often you can look. Sometimes you can look at Hinge and see whether they have. Oh, yeah, and see if they're still out there. Or the worst thing that can happen is you check their Hinge profile and they've added a new photo, which means they're still looking. My thesis, just listening to all this and thinking about it, is I feel like these are just... These tools promote cowardice. I agree with you. Because I feel like not to get too...

like psychological here, but I feel like most men are cowards. Like we don't want to kind of, you know, have hard conversations or put ourselves out there. Face rejection. All of that stuff. And you're like, actually, you know, maybe I'll just ghost this person. Maybe I'll breadcrumb a few over here. And maybe there's, you know, like it's just, it's kind of like an easy out in a way. As you say, Callum. I agree. And it's the worst thing.

version of yourself in many ways. And it's quite interesting kind of seeing and I don't that's why I don't like it. I don't like that the kind of behavior I like I try not to ghost people. I try not to do these things. But you know, I would be lying if I said I hadn't. Yeah. And so it's cool. It's just like anything with technology, right? You're just reducing friction. And I feel like this is just so easy to just like discard people and swipe on to the next one. And it's just, it seems to promote some kind of flightiness.

that is not awesome long-term. I think these are all bad. I think people are more shallow. I think there's tiny things that put you off people. My thing is if there's a spelling error on their profile, I'm like, ugh, no. You're like, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all these things where if you'd met this person in real life, you'd have given them so much more rope, I suppose. PhD in physics or something. Exactly, totally, yeah.

So those are the bad things. But in defense of Hinge, it feels like the one app that takes seriously the idea of actually bringing people together. They have this phrase designed to be deleted. That's their kind of catchphrase. And they claim they want to get you on good dates and in good relationships where other apps I feel don't do that as much.

much. So I think that goes in its favor. And I also, you know, I've been on really great dates and met really nice people, really cool people on Hinge. So that would be my defense of it. Well, so with that brilliant contribution, thank you, Callum, for being our intrepid explorer out there in the wilds of the dating landscape. Shall we get to the interview now with Justin? Let's do it. And we started by going back to his meet cute moment, how he found love.

Well, I met Kate before dating apps, before apps, before phones, before Facebook. So it was quite a while ago. But yes, she was my college sweetheart. And then we had a break for eight years. And she actually moved here to London for four of those years. And then about four years into that break, I reached out to her to try to win her back and failed miserably. And about a month later, started Hinge.

And was it about you wanting to meet people yourself? Yeah, well, I was in business school at the time and thinking about startup ideas. And I've been playing with a bunch of different ideas, but nothing really like hit in terms of something that I felt really passionate about. At the time, I'd stopped drinking when I graduated college. So about three years before that. And that was my way of meeting people was like going out to bars and parties and things like that. And I didn't have that as a crutch anymore. And people in business school were like big partiers.

And it was hard for me to meet new people. And so I looked at the dating websites at the time, and it's not something that I would have wanted to use. They were very clunky, filled out very long, detailed, vulnerable profiles. You had screen names. It just felt very dated. And so I think there was a reason that my peers, I was 26 at the time, 27 at the time,

didn't use these kinds of services. But we were using Facebook at the time. And the idea was, well, what if you just create something that was like simple, lightweight, used your real names, was all about friends of friends and your friend connections. And so that's where the original concept came from and the idea of Hinge, the thing that connects two people through friends. And what sort of information were you asking people to put on Hinge at that time? So the original idea

concept was to make a dating app as like easy, simple, lightweight as possible, like make it really approachable so that you don't so that you invite this next generation in who would feel otherwise. At the time, I think people felt it was kind of desperate to join a dating service when you were in your 20s. We really relied mostly we collected some basic information like

where you worked and where you went to school and some very basic information about your age. And then we used originally was we used your friends of friends as a proxy. So we would people could sign up via Facebook. We'd look at your friend network and we would tell you if you had friends in common. And then that's the main that's the main way we connected people.

And what we found was that we didn't make it simple enough. And the dating app that really took off during that period was Tinder because it was really simple, like a photo and your location. And I just didn't anticipate that that was the winning formula. That doesn't feel like enough to me. That was my intuition as well. And so over the next few years –

Tinder grew incredibly fast across the world. And we were, honestly, we were pretty left in the dust. We were a bit popular in places like New York and LA and places like that. But frankly, the game of making it easy and approachable was won. It was clearly won by Tinder. And around 2015, this article came out in Vanity Fair called

called The Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse. It was about how these apps had ruined dating and they were all about hookups. And Hinge was heavily featured in that article. And it was a moment for me to step back on two fronts. The first front was the most shocking thing to me or the most pertinent was just that this company was no longer really my values. I started it because I wanted to find the one, because I was heartbroken and I wanted to find my person. And

and it just felt like we had been paying too much attention to our competitors, and they would release a feature, and we would copy it, and just over time we drifted closer and closer to them, which also resulted in us just losing business-wise. The monthly active users are starting to peter out. We only had probably like half a million users, and it just was clear that

we were going to have to take a different tack. And around that time, I decided to reboot the company. We let go of half the employees. We threw out the code base, and we decided to start from scratch and build something. Now that people were...

kind of socialized the idea of using a dating app. Could we create something where people put in more effort but got more out of it in return, like a very quality over quantity experience that was about depth and authenticity for people who are really looking for their person? Was that the designed to be deleted moment? That was the designed to be deleted moment. And in the meantime, your own love story had a happy ending, right? Yeah, and so just before that, I had...

This is a whole long winding story that we could honestly spend the whole podcast on and it's been written about and turned into TV series. That's romance. But yeah, on the previous version of Hinge, someone had downloaded it. It was a writer for The New York Times. And the very first person who showed up, she matched with and fell in love and she came to write an article about me.

And we were sitting and she asked that I've ever been in love. And I was like, once a long time ago, because at this point, it had been seven or eight years ago since Kate and I had broken up. And I said, I just didn't realize it until it was too late. And she shared with me this her love story, which had all these twists and turns where she almost ended up with her childhood love. And she was like, you can't, you just like you can't let this one go, you like have to do something. So I

A month later, I found myself flying over to Switzerland about a month before Kate was about to get married to someone else and asked her to call off the wedding. And she moved back to New York with me. And that was 10 years ago this month. Congratulations. Thanks. The power of journalism, hey? Yeah, right?

I think what people often want to know with dating apps is when you peel back the layers of what all of us see, what's going on with the algorithm underneath it. And I know that at Hinge you're incorporating AI now into that. I just wonder if you can explain how the algorithm works pre-AI, as it were, and what you're doing to change it. Well, we've been using AI since the reboot in 2015. It's just what level of sophistication are we using it?

So back in 2015 when we did it, it was without getting like too much into the secret sauce, we're looking at you in relationship to others in terms of like who you've liked, who's liked you, and can we use that information in the network to predict who's going to like who and then put some business rules on top of it to try to balance supply and demand and make sure that, you know, some people aren't getting overwhelmed with incoming likes and things like that. We...

I have since been refining to really use machine learning to look really at everything we know about you and other people and try to make really intelligent, thoughtful matches and optimize. Ultimately, the theme is the same. We're really trying to match you with someone that you're not just going to match with, but that you're also going to hit it off with and have a really good first date with.

And, you know, it's a very complicated thing. We're not, I think these days people expect their Hinge feeds to look like their TikTok feeds, which is like my TikTok gets me, why can't Hinge get me? But, but,

whether it's your Spotify playlists or your TikToks, you know, people aren't media files. They don't always show up the same. There's only one. There's only one of you, right? We can't copy you and distribute you to everyone. And songs on Spotify don't have to like you back in order to play. And so it's just a much more nuanced and complicated problem when you're matching people up. Yeah.

You don't get that much information about them on Hinge either. It strikes me. I know you described at the beginning how you wrote a very long form back in the day, in the original days of dating apps. Hinge, you don't get a huge amount of information. Relative to other apps, we get a fair amount. We get six photos, three prompts, and a lot of it like detailed kind of stats about you in terms like your religion, kids, drinking, all that.

But they're checkboxes really rather than people filling in a form with their specifications. And that's what's so interesting about where we're going in the future because while I don't think people are right now in a world where they're going to either write or read extremely long profiles,

people do have a lot to say about who they are and what they're looking for. So I think that's what's so interesting about AI and generative AI is because before we didn't, it was hard to take that unstructured data of you just talking to us for 10 minutes about who you are and what you're looking for and use that in a really useful way to match you up with someone.

And now I think we're entering a world where we can take that very unstructured information, interpret it, and use it to help match you up, both at the level of just hearing you out. And if there's things that are important to you, then we can make sure that we take that into account in matching you up. And then I think there's even another level where there's a fair amount of

research out there about what works and what doesn't when it comes to compatibility, whether it's conflict style or communication style, different elements of your personality, your attachment style.

And so being able to actually get a bit more information from users about those types of things and match people up in a way that we actually think you're not just going to have a good first date, but a good second date, third date and long term relationship. Are you starting to experiment with that already? Yes, we are. And how's that going?

We're still in early days, and I still think that there's even a major leap just to hear people out. And so that's the first priority is to just ask people a bit more about who they are and what they're looking for and use that information and feed it into machine learning algorithms that I think can help match people up way more intelligently. But I'm already starting with a very small team to think about how we use relationship science to add another layer to make sure that

We're not just on the surface listening to you, but also knowing deep things about your personality and whether that's going to jive with someone else's personality. This episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Let's talk about something that might be keeping you up at night, cybersecurity. According to Vanta's latest state of trust report, it's the number one concern for UK businesses. And that's where Vanta comes in.

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Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com.

How do you monitor success for your customers? Our North Star metric as we build features and determine whether they're good for our users or not is whether they are leading to more great first dates. So we're the only app to even ask whether users go on a date and if that date was good. And for our users, 75% of them say when they go on a date that it's the type of person they'd want to see again, which is a pretty good high hit rate. I'll give you an example.

year-turn limits, which came out pretty recently, which is a feature on Hinge where people have reported to us that often they find people aren't responsive on Hinge. I match with someone and then they don't chat with me or it never goes anywhere. And when we did some research into what was going on, it turns out that there were a small number of users who were accounting for a disproportionate number of those conversations that didn't go anywhere because they would match liberally and then not chat.

And so we built this feature called Your Turn Limits, which on Hinge you can have only so many open chats before you're prohibited from sending more likes or matching with more people. And that actually resulted in way fewer matches and less engagement on the app, but the

match to date conversion went up significantly to more than offset it. So I think matches went down by something like 20%, but responsiveness went up like 30%. And people ended up going on more dates as a result. And for us, that's a great feature, even though it hurts

quote-unquote engagement, which is something that we purposely do not optimize for. We want people spending less time on the app and more time out on great dates. That is the lifeblood of our company. So going on a date, that's the customer metric. It's like, have you matched with someone? Then do you go out together? But if the aim of the app is designed to be deleted...

So you want someone to be in a long-term relationship or relationship so they get rid of the app. Are you monitoring that? At a high level we do, but I will say that it's hard to, if you build a feature and you're kind of A-B testing, like is this a good feature, it would be a very long cycle time and very sparse data to say like, did this lead to more marriages or not? We'd have to wait. We'd have to run very long tests. The other thing is that our fastest growing demographic is like 18 to 24. And I think that this, which was a bit of a surprise for us because we're

We're so clear about designed to be deleted, looking for your person. But our ethos of authenticity and vulnerability and intentionality I think is really appealing to the next generation. And they're not necessarily looking to get married right now. They're just on a journey of self-discovery and figuring out who they are and what they're looking for. And so it's more that we just – our goal is to get you out on a really good date that you think was a great date and a type of person you'd want to see again. And then it's up to you beyond that.

Because it seems the design to be deleted mantra would go against the commercial aims of the company. Like it's very good for customers if they meet someone and, you know, that's it for them and they can delete Hinge forever. Yeah. But in terms of you and your subscription model. Yeah, but the marginal benefit of having someone on an extra two weeks or an extra month relative to someone finding a person and then going out and telling all their friends how effective Hinge was and how amazing it is, like we'd much rather have...

have that. Because I trust that there's going to be single people in the world, right? And so if we get to the problem where there's no more single people because we're so effective at matching people up, then we can come back and talk. But right now, I think that the market opportunity is huge and what people are craving is a really effective experience. And that has been our mantra and it's why I think Hinge has

continued to be successful. I know there was a recent like Ofcom report about, especially in the UK about dating apps in decline. The fact is hinges at an all time high in terms of monthly active users in the UK. Our revenue is growing overall globally, like 40% year over year. And, and,

we continue to have success even in the case of the kind of broader category headwinds. And that's because of that designed to be deleted ethos. I'd love to talk to you about dating apps and how it's changed dating as a whole shortly. But if we stick on the AI theme, you're also using generative AI to help your users, right? In terms of like optimizing their profile. Yeah, so I think there's kind of two ways

big categories of how AI can help people. One is the personalized matching, which is what we talked about before. The second piece is effectively coaching struggling users. So many of our users, their problem is, you know, I go on so many dates, I don't know really like

I'm confused about who to really focus on. That's where the personalized matching comes in. But for the people who, some people struggle to even get on that first date or even get that first match, and they often don't know why. And so what we want to do is help coach people, starting with, we'll say, like tips and tricks,

choosing the right photo, writing a good prompt, but eventually moving to a world where we're coaching users on kind of the ups and downs, helping them set their intentions and their goals. I think all of that is available to us now with AI. Because in the past, we've written, you know, we write reports, we have a what works guide in the app, we've done a lot of research to understand how users are successful on Hinge.

But we haven't had a great delivery mechanism. Like no one likes to read reports and apply them to their dating lives. It's not a very fun, interesting use of your time probably. But with AI, we can really provide the right guidance at the right time in a way that's really digestible and actionable. So one example of this is prompt feedback. We released pretty recently a...

When you fill out your answers to prompts on Hinge, we've trained a model that knows what kinds of answers are likely to get responses and lead to dates and which kinds are not. And we can nudge people in the right direction to help craft their responses so that they're

they're more likely to get to a date by revealing more about themselves. And that's been phenomenally successful at almost tripling the incidence of good answers and reducing by more than a third the incidence of bad.

We'll say poorly written answers. It's the danger that people end up going on a date with the AI, that you'd see something written by AI and it's really great and then you meet the person. But we don't... So we won't write for you. We'll only nudge and ask further questions. So let's say, for example, that...

You write, which many people do, just like a one-word response. My ideal Sunday is, and you say brunch. We're not going to write something for you, but we're going to let you know that that's unlikely to really give people an in to start a conversation with you or really learn a lot about you. Where do you like to go to brunch? What do you like to do? Do you like to cook or do you like to stay at home? Give us a little bit more of a flavor for who you are.

That's the kind of guidance and nudging that we're giving but we're not writing anything for you because of course you're gonna have to end up on a date with this person and so if the

If AI is creating any sense of inauthenticity, then that's not going to be a winning business model for us. Our goal is great first dates, and they won't be great first dates if you end up on a date with someone that you feel is completely misrepresented. A hinge bot. Yeah. So one of the big criticisms that often gets thrown at online dating, and I have to say I haven't been using it myself because I'm about the same age as you, so it kind of passed me by in my youth.

But it's very addictive and that you use a lot of algorithms from the gaming world to keep people on the sites. How much do you look at gaming when you're developers are creating the algorithm? Not at all. And we don't do that at all. Just flatly, I don't look to gaming stuff at all. Our algorithms are truly designed to get you on a great match and get off the platform. That really is, again, the lifeblood of our company and why I think we've been so successful so far.

We do not look at engagement, retention, time in app because none of that serves us. We don't have ads in our platform. We don't make more money for you spending more time in the app. And for me personally, as someone with like, we talked earlier about a history of addiction, I'm very sensitive and I really do believe digital addiction is a thing. But I think it's,

It's not any app. It's apps that are intentionally designed to maximize engagement and keep you on the app because they make more money the more time you spend on their apps. That, I think, is the real danger. But Hinge, we're trying to get you off our app and out in real life. We're not trying to keep you on our app.

It might be trying to be, but I think some people find them very addictive. I know Callum, our producer sitting over there, has told me he finds it very addictive. There's something about being able to meet a new person just like that, you know, that's constantly exciting and keeps you on the app, even if perhaps you've met someone you like. Yeah, I think that we all go through...

I think that we all go through a dating journey in our lives and we eventually learn, I eventually learned that, you know, always chasing the next thing doesn't really yield a long-term happiness and a result.

maybe for some people, but for most of us, we actually feel enriched by investing in a long-term relationship and really going deep with somebody. And the allure that you could always be with somebody else, always be with somebody else,

If you do that enough times, you realize that's a futile strategy. It's really interesting that you started the business when you did, but also met your wife in real life. Yeah. And I just wonder, reflecting back 20 years to how the dating scene was...

When you were dating, maybe. How do you think it's changed? And do you think it's changed for the better or changed for the worse? How do you see that period? Because it has definitely changed pretty dramatically. Yeah, I think it has changed. And I think it's changed for the better. That doesn't mean that there are no problems. And it doesn't mean we haven't changed some problems for other problems. But I will say that at the time, it's hard for people to remember back 20 years, but the chief complaint was...

It's so hard to meet anyone. Like there's no one out there. People would stay in bad relationships because they did. They feared they could never find anybody else. And I just think that.

Now, that is not the problem as much. People are able to go out and meet new people and confidently believe that they can go out and meet new people. They get much more opportunity to date and learn about themselves and learn what's important to them. As a result, there have been studies out of the University of Chicago and again replicated out of the University of Essex and I think

Vienna that showed that people who meet online are less likely to get divorced because they have more dating experience. They've learned more about what they like and what they don't like. I think that on the whole, people have been able to get out of their socioeconomic strata or we've also seen increases in, um,

interracial like coupling and marriage because of dating apps and getting people out of like who they necessarily would have met before. So I think there's like a tremendous amount of benefits that have come from online dating. And at the same time, there's this issue that you talk about, which is some people feel overwhelmed with choice or the paradox of choice. Yeah, it commoditizes it in a way.

I think that the answer is not to take away people's choice. I think the answer is to help guide people more confidently towards the right choice. That's why I created Hinge. I wanted to create a very quality over quantity, thoughtful experience that really humanized people where you actually had to like an individual piece of content and comment and start a conversation versus just toss people left and right.

And I think that AI is going to help fulfill that promise and take it to a whole other level of quality over quantity. Yeah, because it's a lovely idea that we all go through a phase of perhaps you date lots of people and then you realize that you invest in a relationship and it feels worth more. But because now people can meet someone else so easily, I'm not saying it's something we have to change. It's just...

a fact of societal change over the last 20 years, it really has changed how relationships form, but also I think how much value people put in relationships. And it means that I'm afraid things do get a bit more commoditized. It's easier, for example, for people to cheat on one another. I think what you get in, what you put in is what you get out. And I think that that's my lesson over time. And I think other people are in that over time is that you do have to really, you know, I've always said you don't,

find the one, you create the one. And I think the illusion that if I just go through enough people, I'll eventually find this perfect person and everything will be okay is a total illusion. And I will like sing that from the hilltops. It's really about finding a imperfect person who you want to partner with to create a very imperfect but beautiful relationship. And I had that personal experience even with Kate, who I idealized as perfect

The one right and I finally got her back and it was incredible for like two months and then you know I was like and I was like oh god what have I done you know this person just came back and moved in my apartment and you know there are flaws and sticking with it and through it and going through the ups and downs together has been like the most rewarding journey of my life.

I wanted to ask you about a lawsuit that was filed in California last year just because it's on the same subject. And it's a class action lawsuit that says Match and its companies, including Hinge, have altered social reality. It's

It says that you're purposefully manipulative and addictive platform design. No waking hour is safe from the allure of the platforms. It's underscored by users' incessant need to keep swiping. I mean, I invite you next time you're in New York to come to the Hinge office and meet the people who work on this product. There's only about 300 of us. It is a religion at our company to get people out on great dates and off the platform. It is absolutely the ethos of what we do. It's what product teams focus on.

I couldn't change it as the founder if I wanted to at this point because it's so deeply ingrained into our culture. You can read our culture book online from our website, which is the book we give to all new employees so that they understand how we prioritize that and why we prioritize that. But it really is, we have a deep, authentic commitment to that mission. And that is what we are focused on. There you go, Justin McLeod from Hinge.

Boss of Hinge and Relationship Guru. You don't find the one, you create the one. Yeah, that one was, I don't really know what to do with that. You create the one.

I thought he actually made some really lovely and very romantic points, though, didn't he? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's worth bringing Callum back in because he's on the skull face in a way that you and I are not. So, Callum, you're back. What did you think of that? I thought he was kind of refreshing. I mean, I kind of came out of it with a bit more...

hope that at least they their heart was in the right place his heart was in the right place I think that was my takeaway from meeting him there was one interesting moment after we I didn't actually leave it in the interview cut but I asked him about there's one that that element that they'd introduced to the app which is your turn limits which is essentially you can't go on matching other people if you've got a certain

a certain number of people. That certain number is eight. And I said, that still feels like quite a lot of people. That's a lot of people. So just because you're talking to eight people. Or it's your turn to speak to them. So either you have to essentially hide them and move them into another section on your matches or you have to respond to them. You have to send them a message. If you don't send them a message and you've got eight that are waiting for you to send a message, then you have to... You can't send more. Does that... Do you...

If you're ending that chat, do you say, I don't want to talk to you anymore? No, that's where ghosting comes in. Right, but Hinge is not letting you ghost because if the chat's open... No, it can. There are ways around it. And that was my point. My question to him was, are you going to reduce that number from eight to probably more like a reasonable number, maybe like three? Yeah. And he kind of, he signaled that they were looking at that. And the other thing I think they should do is maybe like have a bit more of an opt

opt-in perhaps tool where you can

choose whether you have to go on a date, you have to choose whether you're going on a date with someone you're chatting to or something like that. Or you lose them as a match entirely. Because I just think it needs to like, for me, it needs to, it needs to do a bit more to back up what he's saying. It's a bit it's a business at the end of the day, right? Now, I'm not saying he's Mark Zuckerberg. But Mark Zuckerberg, you know, for years, so we just want to connect people. And I was like, No, you just want to sell ads, you know, you're a business, you're a profit seeking entity matches a publicly listed company.

they've got to make money you know so i don't doubt what he's saying that he believes what he's saying but also i think they do have a you know they have a profit motive clearly they do but they've also seemed to have been as there is something less tangible than facebook about a dating app i think and there's definitely something in their interest to create a a warm fuzzy environment that people like callum want to be on yeah well thank you callum thanks so much for sharing your experiences very much appreciate it yes very enjoyable

Thank you for being so candid. So what's your takeaway, Katie? Not necessarily from Hinge, but like stepping back around kind of like technology and the business of that, the business of app-based dating.

I don't think they're going away anytime soon. I think it's going to be really, really interesting actually how generative AI changes them. You know, that point about getting help with your profile, but also knowing behind the scenes what people are looking for from a date. So what he was saying is actually in future apps, you'll be able to tell them things that maybe you wouldn't want to put on your public profile. I want kids or I'm looking for someone who's a bit like this or that or the other.

And so maybe it will become more personalised. It is interesting, though, that Gen Z are looking for other ways to meet, which...

Maybe more traditional ways. And just looking at the Match.com share price, that enormous, enormous company, the enormous group that owns all of those many dating sites. Big date, just like big oil, big date. Yeah, it is big date, that's right. And its share price is down, well, 10% since it floated, but it was obviously one of those pandemic darlings, one of the companies that did so well during COVID. And it was kind of just...

you know, absolutely booming and has really, really dropped off since. Yeah. And I think, you know, this idea of like an AI wingman is really interesting. So much of this is generational. And I think, as he was saying, like 18 to 24 year olds are, you know, the biggest part of their business. And I think certainly younger generations who grow up with AI as just kind of a thing, like we, you know, we have grown up with the internet or whatever, they're just going to rely on

these tools to help them in ways that for you or I would just find super foreign and weird. We've already seen people relying on AI for effectively for therapy and for things like this. Like, why wouldn't they really lean hard on these apps, which are, again, the way people meet people now, you know, the next phase is like, okay, where's my AI wingman? How do I kind of

Given everything you know about me, AI, how should I pitch myself? Well, I think the next stage is AI boyfriends and girlfriends. But anyway, that's another horrible story. I mean, that's real. That's happening today. That is a real thing today. But the good thing is, on the dating site, people are still meeting in real life. Yes, you find each other on the website, but you're still going on dates. Yes, indeed. You can still have your meet cute moment. Yeah, exactly. And it's easy to be cynical about this stuff, but if this ultimately...

facilitates you meeting people IRL, then that's a good thing. But it is just interesting going back to where we started of just like the kind of – it started as this thing over there and over the years has become the centerpiece of the whole mating ritual in modern life. It's now done. It's now facilitated by –

directly by technology. And very, very acceptable. Acceptable and accepted and it's kind of the way things happen now. It's really amazing. In terms of like a technology story and just that evolution, I think that's actually, if you step back, you're like, it's quite an amazing story. Yeah. Well, good to talk to you. Indeed. Hope to see you IRL soon. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by Vanta.

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