Justin McLeod, founder and CEO of dating app Hinge, is consciously uncoupling from his app. Hinge’s president and chief marketing officer Jackie Jantos—recently named one of Fast Company’s CMOs of the year—will succeed him in the role of CEO, effective immediately. McLeod will stay on as an adviser through March to support the transition.
McLeod, who founded Hinge in 2011, is leaving to launch Overtone, an AI-driven venture focused on facilitating connections between people; it will be backed by Match Group. In a blog post, he calls his departure “a wildly bittersweet moment.”
“This past year, I got higher conviction on two different things. One is that Jackie is the next right leader for Hinge. She’s an incredible strategist,” he tells Fast Company. “The other thing [is] I realized how much I miss and how much I love the early-stage part of building a company. That was where my heart was and where I wanted to focus.”
Jantos joined Hinge four years ago as CMO and took on the role of president in March. She’s behind the company’s breakout “No Ordinary Love” campaign and has steered its outreach to Gen Z users, who now account for more than half of Hinge users. She also helped bring the app to new markets, most recently Mexico and Brazil.
“I’ve been operating the business for the past year, since I stepped into this president role, so there won’t be much change,” Jantos says.
“Hinge has been so successful because Jackie and the team understand their consumer,” says Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Hinge parent company Match Group. “They have [their] finger on the pulse of where the world is at with respect to human connection.”
“DESIGNED TO BE DELETED”
Hinge has been one of the few bright spots amid a broader downturn in dating apps. Earlier this year, Bumble’s struggles led to the return of founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who has since laid off 30% of staff. Tinder, another Match Group property, has lost more than 1.5 million paying users since its 2022 peak.
