'Above the line or below?' How Hinge baked meaningful connections into its workplace

When Hinge CEO Justin McLeod reinvented his dating app in 2015, he didn't just change the product. He transformed the company's entire culture.

"I fundamentally believe that our outsides are going to reflect our insides," Justin told me in our This is Working conversation. "If we're going to build strong relationships out in the world, we have to have strong relationships internally."

Part 1 of our interview focused on how Justin realized he'd built a dating app that didn't align with his values or what he wanted to put out in the world. A member of his leadership team pointed out that, as CEO, it was on him to do radical things — and he did, rebooting the company to prioritize meaningful connections over the swipe-and-date standard. His users loved it, turning Match into a top a $550 million-in-revenue business, growing nearly 40% a year. In February, relationship site The Knot surveyed nearly 8,000 recently engaged couples and found that Hinge was the top technology leading to marriage.

In Part 2, he explains how he applied similar principles in the reboot to create a lean, fast-moving company by emphasizing strong relationships internally. Hinge boats an impressive 3% voluntary turnover rate. And, he says, it's not about perks or light workloads. 

"I think it's because we've just created an environment that is less that people have all this time off or whatever," he said. "People ... feel like they have a purpose. They're working with people who are like-minded and like-valued and just doing work that they love. And I think ultimately that's what allows people to feel fulfillment and feel a level of sustainability with their work."

Transparency helps here.

Though owned by the publicly traded Match Group, Hinge shares detailed financials with employees at every level. "We had to make every single Hinge employee a Match Group insider because we were so transparent with our financials," Justin explained. They take the exact presentation given to the board and share it with employees regardless of position.

Why? "It builds a level of trust and authenticity with employees. And so when you say things are good, they believe you and [when] you say things are bad, then... we can all solve it together."

Keeping tabs on emotions

It's not just financials where Justin demands transparency. He runs his team based on four core principles, with "tend to trust" as the foundation. His executive team begins their bi-weekly meetings with a 30-minute "temperature check" where each leader shares a gratitude, an anxiety, and a hope.

They even have language for emotional states: "above the line" (open, curious, creative) or "below the line" (defensive, resentful).

"I felt that someone blamed me for something yesterday that felt a little weird, and we had a nice clearing about it," Justin shared of a recent meeting. "Then we were like, 'Okay, great. Let's get into the work now.'"

Lots of companies, tech ones in particular, have embraced this kind of openess. But that gets infinitely harder as the company grows. Justin keeps Hinge purposefully small — just over 300 employees — which is good for culture but only works if you're extremely focused on what you're building.

"You can move much faster when you have a smaller, more dedicated, more talented team than you can with a very large bureaucracy where suddenly everyone has to justify their jobs and create levels of approvals and all that," he said.

Love the problem

The key to staying focused again goes back to the 4 principles: "Love the problem" is a reminder to deeply understand user challenges before rushing to solutions. "I think on our first version of Hinge, someone would come with a feature idea, and we would all get obsessed with this feature," Justin recalled. "But our hit rate was only like 30-40%."

Now, they obsess over the problem first. "How deeply do we understand it? What are all the different ways to solve it?"

And their second principle, "keep it simple," is evident in everything from Hinge's black-and-white branding to their willingness to remove features that don't perform.

"I've learned the hard way that the more features you build, the more features you have to maintain," Justin said. "There's a real incremental cost of complexity."

This requires difficult decisions, especially after teams have invested months in building something. "We stand up at wrap and we celebrate failures," he told me. "As long as people have a thoughtful approach."

To see the full interview and learn more about Justin's approach to building workplace relationships, click here.

Prefer to listen? Check out the full interview with Justin on your favorite app:

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On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving difficult problems. See more from Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Savannah Bananas owner Jesse Cole, Google CMO Lorraine Twohill, Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant, Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, former US President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, cosmetics legend Bobbi Brown, F1’s Toto Wolff, and many more.