Hinge CPTO on Building an App Designed to Be Deleted, Merging the CPO and CTO Roles, Chasing $1B in Revenue Without Chasing Engagement

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

Credits:
Host: Carlos González de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Ben Celebicic

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