Yo, technology. What is it all about?

So I think that sort of first date, if you will, will happen more online.

I think people will get a sense of someone through a video chat first.

That is definitely the way that this industry is going. Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech. I have a very important question for you this week. Are you single?

If not, where did you meet your partner?

So I feel like kind of an old fart here, but back in my day, my single days, that is.

Dating apps were super fringe.

Most people just didn't use them or if the people who did, they were kind of like, well,

they just can't get a date otherwise. So you had to, you know, rely on this very analog way of meeting

people, which was just, you know, randomly going up and talking to folks, completely bereft of

data, which is, of course, insane. My wife and I actually met randomly on a plane to Africa.

It's a true story.

Anyhow, obviously a lot has changed. Now, apps are the way that people meet each other. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. And a lot of the people who do use dating apps use the one that

was created by this week's guest, Justin McLeod.

So nearly a decade ago, he founded Hinge, which has long built itself as kind of the anti-Tinder,

the place where one goes through the fine love.

Anyhow, the founding story is great, as is McLeod's kind of wild ride getting to this point now

where Hinge is used by millions of people.

Two years ago, IAC as it was then, bought the company.

Now it is owned, it's been spun out into Match, which, you know, the company I like to call big dating.

Not big tech, big dating.

You see what I did there.

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