According to Fortune, Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod is leaving the company he launched in 2011 to start a new AI dating app called Overtone. McLeod revealed that in the early days, he had to bribe Georgetown University students with KitKats to get them to sign up for Hinge, which now has over 30 million users and facilitated a date every two seconds. He financed the startup by collecting checks as small as $5,000 and famously turned down a McKinsey consulting job, using his $12,000 signing bonus to fund the app instead. The risk paid off massively; Match Group later bought Hinge for an undisclosed sum, and the app brought in an estimated $550 million in revenue last year, with McLeod buying a $12.75 million New York apartment post-acquisition.
The KitKat hustle
Here’s the thing about origin stories: they’re always messier than the polished version we hear later. McLeod running around a library with candy bars is the perfect, unglamorous snapshot of early-stage desperation. It’s a stark contrast to today’s landscape where dating apps are a default social utility. Back then, he wasn’t just selling an app; he was trying to convince people that mobile dating was even a concept worth their time. And he was doing it at a college, where meeting people is arguably at its easiest! That’s a tough sell. It shows that sometimes the biggest innovation isn’t the tech itself, but changing a deeply ingrained behavior. You can have the best “designed to be deleted” philosophy in the world, but if no one’s there to delete it, you’re sunk.
Turning down the golden ticket
This is the part that really gets me. Turning down a secure, high-prestige, six-figure career at McKinsey is the classic entrepreneur’s leap of faith. But McLeod didn’t just leap; he used the safety net to bounce higher. He “borrowed” that $12,000 signing bonus to fund his dream. That’s ruthlessly practical, exactly as he advises. It’s a masterclass in resourcefulness. He saw McKinsey not as a destination, but as a funding round. I mean, how many people get that offer and see it as startup capital? Most of us would take the job and let the app idea fade into a “what if.” His story underscores a brutal truth: traditional success and entrepreneurial success are often mutually exclusive paths, at least at the start. You really can’t have it both ways.
The $550 million reality
So, the KitKats and $5,000 checks eventually built a behemoth. Hinge’s estimated $550 million in revenue last year is a staggering figure, especially when you consider the broader market. For context, global dating app revenues topped $6 billion, so Hinge is claiming a serious chunk of that pie. The personal payoff was just as dramatic, with McLeod snagging that $12.75 million Chelsea pad post-acquisition. It’s the ultimate validation of his “hopelessly idealistic and ruthlessly practical” mantra. But it also highlights how winner-take-all this market feels. For every Hinge, there are a thousand other apps whose founders also maxed out credit cards and bribed their friends, but never made it out of the seed stage. Luck, timing, and relentless execution separate the KitKat story from the obscurity story.
Advice and the next AI bet
McLeod’s advice to stop overthinking and just start working on *something* is probably his most useful gem. He’s right. You figure out what you want by figuring out what you *don’t* want. That summer in healthcare that he hated was just as valuable as the idea that stuck. Now, he’s jumping back into the fray with Overtone, an AI dating app. That’s fascinating. Is he trying to disrupt his own creation? The dating app space is utterly saturated, but AI could be the next paradigm shift—or just another feature. It’s a risky move to leave a $550M-a-year business you built to start over. But then again, this is the guy who turned down McKinsey for a box of KitKats. Betting against that kind of relentless, practical idealism seems like a bad idea.
