Hinge CPTO on Building an App Designed to Be Deleted | Ben Celebicic | E312
Most apps optimize for time on screen. Hinge optimizes for you leaving. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) sits down with Ben Celebicic, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Hinge, the dating app "designed to be deleted," to unpack how you build a product whose North Star is great dates, not engagement, and still chase a billion dollars in revenue.Ben has been at Hinge for 11 years, since the 2015 relaunch, and recently became one of a growing number of leaders to hold both the product and technology mandate in a single CPTO role. He and Carlos get into the healthy tension between the CPO instinct (ship fast, innovate) and the CTO instinct (protect quality and infrastructure), and how he now runs that debate inside one person and across a team of nearly 300. He lays out Hinge's monetization philosophy in two principles: build the free experience so everyone can succeed, and only charge for things you can't give away free without breaking the ecosystem (which is why fewer than 15% of users pay). He explains how a dedicated culture and consumer insights team studies real daters to find core needs, how generative AI now enables per-user profile coaching that was impossible before, why trust and safety makes up roughly a third of the entire Hinge organization, and where he draws the line on AI-assisted engineering today. He closes on Hinge's mission to reach $1 billion in revenue in 2027.
What you'll learn:
- Why "designed to be deleted" is a real product principle, and how an anti-engagement North Star works
- How to run the CPO-vs-CTO tension, even when both roles live in one person
- Hinge's two-principle monetization model, and why fewer than 15% of users pay by design
- Why you should only charge for things that would break the ecosystem if they were free
- How a culture and consumer insights team turns real dater problems into features
- How generative AI enables personalized profile coaching that wasn't possible before
- Why trust and safety is about a third of the whole org, and how AI powers it
- Where an engineering-background leader draws the line on AI-built product today
- The mission to hit $1B in revenue in 2027, and the "obsess over user needs" formula behind it
Chapters:
00:00 Cold open: the anti-metric, $1B by 2027, and AI's dark side
00:50 Intro: Carlos welcomes Ben Celebicic, CPTO at Hinge
01:38 Welcome, and 11 years at Hinge
01:42 From CTO to Chief Product and Technology Officer
04:09 Leading a team of ~300 (and Hinge's ~360 total)
04:24 The healthy tension between product and technology
04:40 Structuring teams around the problem you're solving
06:37 The North Star: great dates, not engagement
07:03 Why "designed to be deleted" became the metric
08:23 The anti-metric: getting users to leave successfully
08:43 Why fewer than 15% of users pay, and the monetization rule
10:24 Charging only for what breaks the ecosystem if it's free
12:05 Keeping the product simple as it scales
12:27 How AI enables personalized profile coaching
13:31 The dark side: fake images and AI misuse
13:51 Why trust and safety is a third of the org
15:00 Match Group's market cap and the AI question
16:31 Inside a portfolio of ~45 dating and social apps
18:03 Why users run multiple apps at once
18:52 How AI helps the team ship faster
22:11 Where to draw the line on what PMs can build
22:41 Ben's conservative take on AI-built product
24:07 A future where a perfect prompt ships to production
25:56 Wrap-up
Connect with Ben Celebicic: CPTO, Hinge
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lrb-podcasts/about/
Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/
About Hinge: Hinge is the dating app "designed to be deleted," built to help people get off the app and out on great dates. Founded by Justin McLeod and relaunched in 2015, Hinge is part of Match Group's portfolio of dating and social discovery apps.
About the Product Podcast: Product School's podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Receive SMS online on sms24.me
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