Hinge CEO Justin McLeod bribed kids with KitKat to get early adopters

But in 2011, the young entrepreneur in his 20s was so desperate for people to sign up for his app that he even bribed them with chocolate.

At the time, online dating was largely done on desktop computers and required real effort. The idea of ​​swiping to find the love of your life (or a one-night stand) on a mobile phone seemed alien.

So convincing other students (who have no shortage of opportunities to meet people in classes, dorms, and parties) to sign up for Hinge is a challenge, McLeod told Luck.

“I remember the days of running around the university library in Washington, DC, at this university, Georgetown, bribing kids with KitKat to come try my app,” he laughs. “We probably had dozens of users a day—maybe, if ever.”

Funding Hinge also required a lot of effort, with McLeod recalling that he had to “beg and borrow a lot” to get the app off the ground.

“I went out there and talked to as many people as I could and got money from whoever gave it to me. Sometimes that was all it took,” he said. “I collected—I literally collected, like, $5,000 checks and $10,000 checks to come in and start Hinge.”

Hinge CEO’s big opportunity comes from a job offer at McKinsey

It’s hard to land these days internship while studying—let alone going straight into a full-time job right after graduation. But for McLeod, that wasn’t the case: He hadn’t even finished his second year of business school when McKinsey offered him a spot in the firm’s coveted graduate program.

A consulting career would put McLeod on the path to a six-figure salary, with Glassdoor estimating that the average consultant makes between $173,000 and $233,000 a year. McLeod’s sign-on bonus alone was $12,000.

It turned out to be the big breakthrough he needed — to finally get Hinge up and running.

“I was able to delay my offer for a couple of years,” he recalled, adding that he “borrowed” money to build his app.

“When Hinge started to take off and they saw that I was the founder of it, they were like, ‘You’re probably not going to be an analyst here, are you?’ And of course, at that point I had to pay them back.”

Why did McLeod choose this risky business path when he could have a comfortable career at McKinsey?

“I turned down my offer and started working on Hinge, really because I was so passionate about the idea. Once I started thinking about it, I found it hard to stop. I really knew this was what I was meant to do.”

Of course, this paid off: By 2015, Hinge had raised $26.35 million and had an estimated valuation of $75.5 million, before Match Group acquired the company from McLeod for an undisclosed amount.

The founder treated himself and his family almost $13 million apartment in New York shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Hinge—which he still runs as CEO—has brought in $396 million on last year’s revenue.

Advice for Gen Z Graduates with an Entrepreneurial Spirit

Like McLeod, young people today don’t dream of landing a 9-to-5 job after college or climbing the corporate ladder. Study always show that they want to be their own master.

And they’re making those dreams come true: In fact, the second-fastest growing job title among recent Gen Z graduates today is “founder,” according to Linkedin.

What is his advice to young entrepreneurs? “You have to be hopelessly idealistic and brutally realistic at the same time—that’s how you create something great and successful.”

“Some people are hopelessly idealistic, dreaming but never making anything happen, and some are ruthless realists who do things but nothing big or game-changing,” McLeod explains.

Instead, he says successful founders like him balance both: essentially dreaming big, but “paying attention to the very practical day-to-day realities of making that dream a reality.”

Meanwhile, for those in Generation Z who don’t know what they want to do after graduating, his advice is to stop thinking too much – just get to work, whether it’s starting a business or getting into the swing of things.

“I think people who are so preoccupied with what their career is going to be like? What am I going to do? They miss out on the opportunity to develop a passion, an interest in something out there in the world,” he said.

“I would never have figured out what I wanted if I had just sat there and thought about it. It took me a summer working in healthcare and realizing that it wasn’t for me. I had worked on a few other startup ideas before Hinge came along, and it was a lot of figuring out what I didn’t like or what didn’t work for me. But each time, I got a little smarter and a little closer.”