Justin McLeod Net Worth – Update

What is Justin McLeod’s net worth?

Justin McLeod is the founder and CEO of the prominent dating app Hinge and has a net worth of $5 million.

His unique ideas of how dating should be done in the age of the internet have given the world a different kind of dating app but faces the daunting task of competing with the absolute giant Tinder.

His incredible drive to succeed and deep understanding of the dating world of today has put him in a great position as a technology expert and innovator.

It is a well known fact that Justin McLeod is a romantic, and he is trying to connect people seeking love online with his app.

“The idea originated back in 2011 when I tried to reach out to my college girlfriend and get her back, and she said no,” McLeod said in an interview for the Yahoo Finance website. He added: “And so I was heartbroken over the fact that we weren’t going to end up together, which I always thought we would.”

The Origin Story

Justin McLeod was born and raised in Kentucky, and his love of entrepreneurship came from his father and uncle, who co-owned a building supply company.

After being fired from a restaurant job at the age of 15, he started helping local businesses set up websites and decided that he needed to learn how to code.

At this age, in high school, he developed the partying habits that would trouble him in his adult life.

Wife

During his time at Colgate University in Hamilton, where he took several computer science courses, he met his girlfriend and sweetheart Kate Copaken, the main reason for later creating the Hinge app.

Because of his partying problems and alcohol addiction, Kate broke up with him in early 2011.

After that, he decided to sober up and try to fix his life by building an app.

After a lot of hard work and a reboot of the Hinge app, he actually succeeded in getting back to Kate, this time for good.

Justin McLeod and Kate got married in 2019.

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Net Worth

So, how much is Justin McLeod worth?

McLeod created the Hinge app to fit his own romantic life and get rid of his own personal problems with addiction.

In part, that is why Hinge has seen such enormous success with its user base.

Unlike the competition, the Hinge app has the advantage that the CEO and founder of the company actively use it for dating himself.

Having a natural affinity for coding, he decided that getting rid of his own problems would be done by building an app from scratch.

In 2012, Tinder was launched, with Bumble being launched shortly after that, and Justin’s app then had to undergo a brutal transformation to stay afloat against the competition.

But the transformation was done so that it would also best fit the founder’s vision for what he thought that the dating scene needed.

Instead of quick dates of a non-serious nature that Tinder provides, Justin decided that what people needed was an app to help them find stable, long-term partners.

Later in 2012, he let go of half of his employees and started all over again with a new code, even getting rid of the user base that he had built until then.

After that, the business model for the app changed completely.

The motto for it is “Designed to be deleted.”

It’s not a free app like Tinder but rather has a paid service and a rigorous vetting scheme for new users.

The idea is to limit access to the app to people that are really interested in a long-term relationship, and not just a weekend romance.

This vetting process is also what determines who are the best matches between the users.

As if McLeod was predicting a change in the dating scenario worldwide, the transition to the new app was a great success.

Between the years 2018 and 2019, the app’s revenue increased four times, and downloads reached incredible new heights, with an increase of 87 percent year after year (measuring January 2020 to January 2019).

How the app records dating metrics is also different from the competitors, by measuring if the users actually went on a date or not, and if that was good or not.

The company claims that the app sets up one date every four seconds and that those dates result in a second date 75% of the time.

They also lose 20% of the users in the sign-up process because of the vetting required to be in the app.

In another interview, Justin said: “If you don’t have that much time or intention, then you’re probably not the right person for the community.”

In 2015, the Hinge app had raised $26,35 million, but after the radical change of the code and the business model, the app was evaluated at more than $75.5 million, with more than $17.5 million being raised over the years after the changes.

Nowadays the Hinge app has more than 5,5 million users around the world and has an estimated annual revenue of $5,2 million.

Therefore, Justin McLeod has an estimated net worth of $5 million.

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