Hinge is a dating app available on iOS and Android that matches people by surfacing friends-of-friends its "romance graph" algorithm thinks will be compatible. The app is live in 28 cities across the United States and positions itself as a more relationship-oriented alternative to swipe-first apps. Founder Justin McLeod aims to improve the app’s speed, chat, and usability and has hinted at features to better schedule and facilitate real-world dates. Hinge competes for users who also use Tinder but targets those seeking more meaningful connections. The company raised a $12M Series A to fund international expansion and product development, and the founder said the new capital will allow Hinge to delay monetization until at least 2016. The business has now raised over $20M in total funding. Hinge's core product is a mobile dating app that uses a "romance graph" built from Facebook data and user-added tags (religion, ethnicity, favorite date spots, personality) to suggest compatible matches. The app shows fuller profiles with mutual friends, last initial, employer, and education, and delivers a curated daily set of around 30 tailored matches. Hinge operates in nine cities and reports its iOS and Android userbase is up 300% this year across DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and L.A. The service is free for now, with potential monetization through subscriptions or premium features (promotions, more matches) and a possible option to license the romance-graph data. Founder Justin McLeod says Hinge aims to expand beyond romantic matching into a broader social discovery network for meeting people users haven't met yet. The company plans to use new capital to focus on product features that foster meaningful interactions and to expand its engineering team in NYC. Hinge is a mobile-first dating app that aims to match people through a "romance graph" of friends-of-friends rather than anonymous nearby users. It pulls Facebook data to surface matches with similar schools, jobs, and deeper cross-group patterns. The app is available on iOS and Android and has officially launched in Washington D.C., New York, and Boston. After expanding beyond D.C., Hinge doubled its user count to about 60,000 and reports roughly 85% of downloads active after one week and 75% active after one month. The company raised new capital to fund growth into additional cities and to revamp its apps. Hinge positions itself as a mobile successor to sites like Match.com and OkCupid, emphasizing relationship-oriented matching rather than casual hookups.

Total raised

$21M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Dec 2014