All right, well, why don't we go ahead and get started. Thank you for joining us all here today at the Raymond James TMT and Consumer Conference. I'm Andrew Merrick , and I cover digital media here at RJ, and I'm thrilled to have here with me Jackie Jantos, who is the President and Chief Marketing Officer at Hinge. Before we get started, we'll get into a quick safe harbor statement, and then we'll go ahead and kick it off, so during this presentation and during the question-and-answer session, we may discuss our outlook and future performance. These forward-looking statements may be preceded by words such as "we expect," "we believe," "we anticipate," or similar statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results could differ materially from the views expressed today.
Some of these risks have been set forth in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Also today, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the published materials on our IR website. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results. And so, with that, before we get started, can you give me a quick overview of your role within Match Group and Hinge?
Sure. So, good morning, everyone. I joined Hinge four years ago as Chief Marketing Officer, and earlier this year, I stepped into an added role of President. So, I have been leading the day-to-day operations at the organization this year.
Great. So, we're going to keep our questions mostly Hinge-focused, but before we dive in there, I did want to ask maybe one broader Match Group question.
Sure.
So, what have been some of the biggest changes you've experienced in how things work internally since Spencer has taken over as CEO, and what are you most excited about given what you've seen so far?
Yeah, I mean, Spencer has brought a real added energy and enthusiasm and urgency to the work that we need to do as a category to better serve daters today. I would say there are two things that are most notable about his arrival. One is product-driven growth and really focusing on products that serve the outcomes of daters on our apps, which is incredibly important for doing what you say your app will do and also driving organic growth, and the second thing, Spencer, like myself, has spent quite a bit of time inside of a large portfolio organization. For me, that was the Coca-Cola Company many moons ago, and with that comes an understanding of how to orient a portfolio and how to orient all of the brands and products inside the portfolio to be playing very specific roles.
And so, clarifying that for Match Group has been a big piece of the work that he's done.
Great. And bringing a little bit of that founder energy as well.
Absolutely.
Great. Now, turning to Hinge specifically, for those in the room who might not be quite as familiar with the app, can you please give us, like, the 30,000-foot overview of where Hinge fits into Match and maybe in the broader digital connections landscape?
Sure. So, Hinge is what we call the app designed to be deleted. This means that the app is intended to help you actually get off the app into a great date so you can delete the app and move on in your relationship, and this is a philosophy that guides everything that we do at the organization, so the way that we bring people into the product, for example, has a longer onboarding experience. We require more information from daters, more photos, more prompts. Prompts is a feature, if you will, that Hinge invented many years ago, and it's a way to help people express a little bit more about who they are because daters on Hinge are deeply intentional, and they are looking ultimately for a relationship, a long-term relationship.
And everything within the app experience is essentially built to help people move through the experience and to get off of the app, true to that line designed to be deleted. And we measure that. So, the organization is singularly focused on that outcome. And we believe that when you build a product, particularly a dating product, that works, people talk about it, and the user growth and the revenue follows. And so, we are singularly focused on getting folks off the app.
How do you build that buy-in among the user base? Because the initial setup process is something that we've heard from other companies and apps around the space is a potential point of friction. Like, people want to be on the app quickly rather than as best as they can. So, how does Hinge kind of foster that, you know, putting your best foot forward aspect?
Yeah, you know, our growth in the early years was very, very organic. I myself met my partner on a Match property a long time ago before Hinge existed, and when you find a relationship that is the most important relationship in your life on a piece of technology, you surely tell everyone you know about it, and you encourage them to also try, and I think one of the things about this category is we're not selling a simple experience. We're helping you find partnership, and dating, and relationships, and finding a partnership is a complicated thing, and it takes time and effort, and so, when we talk about Hinge externally, we really set people's expectations about what the app is for and who the app is for.
And so, when you're joining the app, individuals who want to be a part of the Hinge community know that there is a level of effort involved in being part of that community. It's not intended to be a quick onboarding experience because we're going to ask you to share who you are and what you're looking for. We're going to ask you for more photographs of yourself than you need in other dating apps. And all of this is by design. We want the community to represent people who are looking for intentional relationships. And so, it is a really robust space to explore yourself and explore what you're looking for and ultimately find someone and go on a date with them.
That's great. And I think you may have touched on a couple of these aspects in your previous answers here, but Hinge has been very successful in scaling users and engagement. Is there anything that we haven't discussed so far that's kind of like a lightning in the bottle element of the app that really has resonated with your core market?
Yeah, I would say there are really two things. One is focusing on users' outcomes really is everything that has driven the success of Hinge. Truly, user growth when you are a dating product that is serving people to get out on dates, truly that focus is what drives user growth in this category, and Hinge has been doing that for many, many years now, and our growth has been consistent in all of our markets, and we are emerging as the dating app best serving users today. I would say the second thing is four years ago when I joined the organization. I've spent many of my years in brands oriented towards younger audiences, be it Coke or be it Spotify. When I joined four years ago, we made a very specific strategic decision to start orienting our product towards the next generation, this being Gen Z.
Now, this is a very unique audience, and we spend a lot of time learning and engaging with that audience in order to build a product that best serves them. And really, everything within the ecosystem of how we market that product in the real world is also oriented to meet that audience and channels where they're at today. So, we have a unique approach to the product that we're designing and what it's designed for. And we have a unique approach to how we go to market and how we engage with that audience in deeply credible ways.
And then maybe on Gen Z there, you know, we've heard anecdotally at least that younger daters in Gen Z are maybe more a little bit intentional in their relationship formation process, maybe looking for longer-term connections from the get-go. Is that a statement that you would agree with, that you've seen as well? And if so, how is Hinge kind of poised to capitalize on that?
Yeah, I mean, dating is a really interesting category, and the way that you need to think about this more generally is dating is hard. It has always been hard, and we are living in a time period where every next generation is feeling more isolation and loneliness than the generation before them. And this is primarily for any of you who have children. I have a couple of Gen Alphas because they spend such an extraordinary amount of their time online, and so, where they're not spending their time is in person with other humans. They're spending less time with their parents, with their friends, with their teachers, and certainly they're spending less time looking for a romantic relationship, and to compound that for Gen Z, they spent their late teens and early 20s locked down in a pandemic.
These are also peak years where you're experimenting with being in relationship with someone else romantically. They missed that time period of experimentation and learning. And so, their needs are pretty acute. And their needs are going to be, you know, the next generation's needs will be also quite acute. And so, staying ahead of where culture is going, where dating and romance and relationships are going, and building a product that's in service of those needs is really important. So, I'll give you an example. Prompts is a big part of the Hinge ecosystem. Prompts is a feature that Hinge invited, or invented rather, and, like, brought to the market years ago. And these are basically icebreaker questions that people can fill out about themselves to let you know a little bit more about each individual.
And on Hinge, you're not looking at one whole profile and moving past it. You're looking at components of a profile, each of which you can engage with in very discreet ways. You can, like, a prompt. You can, like, a photo. You can add a comment to someone's prompt. So, it's intended to be a much more engaging experience. Gen Z is comfortable and increasingly comfortable with AI tooling. So, an example of an evolution on prompts at Hinge is a tool called Prompt Feedback. We know that great prompts are specific. They offer someone else a way in to have a conversation with you that is more than just the classic, "Hey, hey, what's up? What's up?" which is not really the best way to kick off a relationship.
Prompt Feedback is an AI tool that offers feedback should you want it on a prompt you've just written. It will give you guidance like, "Oh, you like film? What kind of films do you like? What was the last film you saw? Tell us a little bit more about that." And then it will say, "That's a great prompt." There's all these ways that we can add additional product features and tools on top of what we've already got to make that experience work better for this Gen Z audience.
I definitely want to touch more on AI, I think, later in the session. But before we do, I think you talked a little bit there about how the product and the app's focus can evolve with kind of a cohort. But when we're looking at, you know, shifting relationship intentions on an individual basis, you know, how does Hinge maybe fit in with somebody who maybe was looking for a longer-term partner? Maybe now they're looking for something a little bit shorter term. You know, I guess from an individual user's perspective, how does Hinge fit into that journey?
Yeah, I would say there's an opportunity for folks to fill in what their dating intentions are within the onboarding experience. And to your point, these change over time. And also, from what I described about this generation, they don't necessarily know how to articulate what they're looking for exactly. So, some level of learning and change over time is really important. And so, we have sort of tools to support that. You can go back and change your dating intention. There are other tools like, you know, Match Note is a feature that we recently launched that really only exists on Hinge, where if we were to match and maybe I see what your dating intention is and I want to let you know privately what mine is, I can send you that note.
And if you decide that's not for you, then we can unmatch before even going further down the line. So, I think a level of evolution and learning what you're looking for over time is really important. And those are the types of tools and insight we're also trying to offer individual daters on Hinge.
Great. Obviously, you know, Hinge has done very, very well in the U.S., but now continuing to grow internationally as well. So, I guess how do you balance maintaining a consistent brand identity with adapting to some of the different cultural contexts in the markets that you enter?
Yeah, I would say when you look at this audience at the highest cultural altitude, there are an enormous number of similarities market to market, particularly when you're talking about core English-speaking markets, Europe, and parts of Latin America, and so, for sure, generationally, there is a consistency in looking for an intentional relationship and looking for a dating app that is providing the real value and helping you get off the app and into a date. This generation is looking for relationships, looking to meet up in person, and looking for a tool that can help them get there, so that's part one, and then I would say when we go into a new market, we're also looking at some of the differences between relationships and romance and how they play out at a very profound cultural level, so one example is we recently launched in Latin America.
In Mexico, you know, you're not just dating a partner. You're dating their whole family. So, how you consider bringing that nuance into how you communicate what Hinge can offer is really important. And there are some minor tweaks to the product that we make in order to make it work harder. And then how we talk about the product in those markets is where there's a lot of magic in working with local creators and partners on the ground to describe what it can add, what value it can add to you.
Gotcha. I wanted to talk a bit about user acquisition. So, of course, a very competitive space. So, how does Hinge stand out and attract new users, either specific marketing techniques or brand proposition?
Yeah, I mean, this is a category where you're trying to provide deeply human value, and hacking growth through performance marketing is not the mechanism that has worked for us to build our user base, particularly when you're looking for a high-intentioned, willing to put in the effort, genuinely looking to get off the app and meet someone in person on a date. The type of individual we're looking for is someone who fits within that persona and contributes to a community of people who are looking for that. So, the way that we think about going to market is, you know, we look at what is happening in culture, and, you know, I often reference the most talked about romantic relationship in the U.S. last year. If you can guess who that might be.
Is it a football player and a pop star?
Yes, it is. And so, the message that that type of a relationship is putting into the world is one that is actually quite constrained. It's two stereotypically beautiful individuals. It's a real charming fairy tale boy chases girl story. It's taken up so much space in public discourse in the past year plus. And it sets a precedent for a relationship that is entirely unattainable by most of us. And that is not what we want to encourage young people to strive for. And so, I think what we do very well is we go to market and we share stories of real people, a diversity of people who have met their partners on Hinge, and we share the twists and the turns of those stories. And we do it in interesting ways where we're using media channels and partnerships that are closer to where audiences are.
Last year, one of our biggest partners was Substack, and we told the stories of individuals who met on Hinge that were written as short stories by very well-known authors to this audience, and those authors are also on Substack, so they wrote those stories with us, and we published all sorts of media around them, including a book. We put some of those stories in subway ads, just teasers, and then we also published those stories on Substack, and those authors shared their stories on Substack, so it was one of our most visible programs for marketing that earned extraordinary additional media that we did not pay for because of the quality of the storytelling, because of the relatability of the storytelling, and so this is how we do user acquisition at Hinge and how we get stories of success out there in really innovative ways.
It's partly why we're winning in the market today.
You talked about designed to be deleted. I'm sure there's a big component of, you know, I found my partner on Hinge. It was an incredible experience. Hey, single friend, why don't you try?
Yeah, absolutely. We have our office walls covered in wedding invitations and move-in notices. We haven't been to a wedding yet, but I'm thinking about it every once in a while. We got an invitation to a wedding in Turkey a couple of weeks ago. That sounds fantastic, and so we are always paying attention and listening to what's happening, and then the one other piece I'll add around Gen Z is that the employee base of Hinge, we're based here in New York, mimics the user base on our app, which is just over half represented by Gen Z, so when you have a really dynamic team building a fairly dynamic product, you have sort of a shortcut to doing that in a way that is genuinely in service of them, and then we measure great dates. That is a KPI. That is the North Star KPI.
There are a variety of signals we use, including surveys after people delete the app and go out on dates to learn if the app is working. We are bullish on if the app works, the user base grows.
Sure. From all of those very kind of human elements that we talked about just now to AI. So, you talked about AI product development a little bit earlier. I guess how are you thinking about the balance between how AI can be helpful for the user experience versus retaining that very important human input and element?
Yeah, I mean, AI is just a tool like any other technology tool. We've been using machine learning for decades. And so, for us, it's really about how are you using AI to help people through the experience on the app. We just launched a feature today called Convo Starters. This is an AI tool that gives you some guidance on how to kick off a conversation with someone. So, you don't do that hey, hey thing that I described earlier. And so, how we use AI is really to build more momentum in helping people express who they are, Prompt Feedback as an example, engaging in conversation. Convo Starters is an example. And then ultimately, getting off the app into a date. And then the second way we use AI is our algorithm.
There is incredible data that Hinge has on our daters because our onboarding is so rich and people really trust us and give us a lot of information about what they're looking for. So, the real unlock is in how we use that information to offer them even more meaningful recommendations. And then finally, AI plays a huge role in creating a safe experience on the app and all of the safety tooling that is constantly improving so that we can make sure people feel psychologically safe as they're sharing quite a lot about themselves. And we can also do some real mitigation with bad actors on our app.
Great. And I think we've had a pretty great overview of the app and kind of how we've driven the process along over the course of the last couple of years. But finally, if you could choose one thing that you're really excited about that you think investors should keep in mind or focus on for Hinge in 2026, what would it be?
Yeah, I mean, this category has quite deeply underserved women for a long time. And that's not that surprising when you look at the products because they haven't necessarily been designed for women by women. And so, not surprisingly, women also don't really pay for dating apps. And this is something that I find really exciting to think about in a new way. You know, we live in a world where women pay for many, many things and many, many apps in the wellness and relationship and therapy space. And they absolutely want to be on great dates. So, what's going on here? You know, so I won't share anything today, but this is a space that we're really looking at. There are more women daters in the U.S. on Hinge than any other dating app. So, this is a really exciting opportunity for us.
The opportunity is really how do we add more value to their experience because we know if we're adding true value, that will be worthy of their investment.
That sounds great. Something to keep an eye on. Well, Jackie Jantos, President and CMO of Hinge, thanks for joining us.
Thanks, everyone.