Before he started the popular dating app Hinge, Justin McLeod was on the consultant career path.
Through college and Harvard Business School, McLeod had the desire to be an entrepreneur, but "nothing really clicked" for him. The lack of direction led him to accept a consulting job at McKinsey during his second year of business school.
"It felt like the safe bet to work at a consulting firm," McLeod tells CNBC Make It. "That was kind of the standard job that you got coming out of business school."
But his plans quickly changed soon after when he had the idea for a dating website called Hinge. And thanks to McKinsey, he had some funds to build his business with.
His job offer had come with a signing bonus, $12,000 of which McLeod took and put straight into his nascent website. He then asked his would-be employer if they would allow him push back his start date.
"I just said 'Can I start a little later in the summer?' And then 'Can I start maybe early next year?'," he said. "I kept pushing it off and pushing it off until it had been two years of me pushing it off."
Once McKinsey realized what McLeod was up to, the jig was up.
"They finally got word that I had started Hinge and called me up and asked for their money back," he said.
It wasn't just his employers at McKinsey who were less than thrilled about his new venture. He says that his parents, who were proud of him attending business school and then getting a job at a prestigious consulting firm, "thought I was a bit crazy to go start my own thing."
While McLeod credits his parents for supporting his goals, including writing some of the first checks Hinge ever received, at the time he knew that his gamble was disappointing to them.
"I think my mom was quite disappointed that she got to tell everyone that I was at Harvard Business School and then at McKinsey, and now she had to tell them that I was unemployed and working on a dating website," he says.
In the long run, however, his decision paid off. Now, Hinge is one of the biggest dating apps in the country, part of the Match Group umbrella along with giants like Tinder. In 2023 alone, Hinge brought in $396 million in direct revenue.
For the full story of how McLeod turned Hinge into one of the most popular dating apps in America, check out the latest episode of CNBC Make It's Founder Effect.
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