What's The Big Idea: Justin Mcleod: From Likes to Love - Overcoming Addiction and Creating Meaningful Connections in a Digital World.
“I wanted to tear down everything, let go of half the team and imagine what [Hinge] would look like if we were really designed around helping people who were looking for something meaningful.”
Today’s guest: Justin McLeod
His big idea: We're all addicts now, we just don't realize it (and that's what big tech wants).
Justin McLeod is Founder and CEO at Hinge, the immensely popular dating app that is “designed to be deleted.” He grew up in Louisville, KY and studied at Colgate University. After a few years in management consulting, he attended Harvard Business School and decided to follow his passion for connecting people. Justin founded Hinge in February 2011 with a mission to create real-life connections. As a romantic and the protagonist of a real-life love story, he was upset by the negative hookup culture dating apps had created so in October 2016, he relaunched Hinge to create a culture of thoughtful dating. Justin’s vision for a more thoughtful experience resonated with millennials and led to the company's user base growing 400% in the last year.
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Key insights Shared:
Hinge - how to build a successful social media company around serving your customers need rather than fundamentally focusing on getting the user to spend more time on the app and get more impressions.
The start of Hinge - Justin entered business school after being sober, felt like he couldn't mingle in a party-centric dating scene and came up with the idea of a dating app you “wouldn’t be embarrassed” to sign up for.
With the launch of the new version: When Justin and his team officially launched the “new version” a dating app that’s designed to be deleted, it felt like an airplane where each part needed to be redesigned from the wings to the nose to the engine. The entire business model was transformed by a simple premise that the app is meant to be deleted.
What value does this product truly add?: In 2015 Justin felt like if Hinge was taken down tomorrow, no one would care because they didn’t offer something truly unique to the market. It has a better heart and ethos that goes beyond a simple gimmick like “these people message first.”
How social media platforms measure success: You think social media and news is designed to inform you, but it’s not according to Justin, if you were to sit in on a product meeting for Instagram they’re not focused on how to make their customers feel like they have more belonging, they’re focused on how to increase engagement and get more people to spend more time on the app.
“Don’t Be Evil”: Justin thinks that in the tech world the market is “amoral” not evil or good but neutral. The greatest product and engineering minds aren’t being paid to make the apps more fulfilling but rather they’re trying to figure out how to get people to use the apps for longer periods of time.
What are the responsibilities of the users and what are the responsibilities of the companies? -
As individuals, we have to be more diligent because companies won’t do it for us. We have to understand who their true customer is. For ad driven business models their true “customer” is the advertisers, the product is the user.
How does Hinge cultivate meaningful connection VS junk food validation: Hinge has tested multiple prompts for users profiles, finding that the prompts that are more superficial are less effective at connecting people in a meaningful way. Instead of swiping left or right, you actually choose something on the persons profile that you resonate with.
The context for creativity: Giving people more context or prompts, tools and structure can encourage further creativity.
The Tech Industry often tries to sell you one thing when in actuality it’s providing something else. Social media apps are sold on the premise that you’ll be “more connected” but they're designed around keeping you on the platform and
Addiction to social media and apps: Unlike some addictions, social media addiction is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern society. As a recovered drug addict, Justin has an acute sense of how tech can be addictive and understands how insidious any type of addiction can be in a person's life.
Mindfulness as a cure for addiction: Justin developed a mindfulness practice in the face of recovering from addiction. After cutting drugs and alcohol, he found that he would continue to gravitate towards some type of crutch like sugar or caffeine. Developing a mindfulness practice allowed Justin to recognize when he was trying to push away a negative feeling and actually sit with that feeling rather than try to run away from it.
Urge surfing: the idea of giving people the tools to just become present to the emotion they’re feeling and ride that wave rather than attempting to escape it.
Addiction isn’t the problem, it’s the (bad) solution to a problem.
With social media we often accept the junk food of validation instead of the healthy nutritious meaningful connection that we’re actually craving.
The keg stand at a party is a manifestation of validation vs meaningful connection. It’s not an authentic expression of a true self, and their cheering isn’t meaningful. It will make you feel good for a minute, but when you wake up the next day hung over you’ll realize that none of those people would show up for you.
Hinge creates at least 1 meaningful date every 3 seconds.