Dating App Hinge Scores $12 Million In Shasta Led Round

Dating app Hinge and Shasta Ventures just started a serious relationship (sorry).

Today Hinge announced it raised $12 million in Series A round led by Shasta Ventures. Previous investors Lowercase Capital, Red Swan Ventures, Great Oaks and Founders Fund participated too.

“Shasta has helped a lot of companies that are a little slower growth but deep network effect kinds of businesses—companies like Relay Rides, Task Rabbit and Next Door,” says Hinge founder Justin McLeod. “They really seemed to get where we’re going and have more patience with our approach—they aren’t trying to jam us into a model.”

Hinge is a New York City-based mobile dating app. It works similar to Tinder—a simple, sleek interface feeds you photos of people you might be interested in dating. There is one main difference—Hinge, which links to your Facebook account, only serves up people with whom you have friends in common. The pitch is since the potential mates are already in your circle of friendship, odds are you have a lot in common. It also lowers the chances of bad (and creepy) behavior both on the app and on dates. After all no one wants any stories of shadiness getting back to their group of friends.

The scheme seems to be working. Anecdotally I have spoken to many pals who swear by Hinge. McLeod won't share any user numbers but does say that users have grown 5 x since last January (weekly active users have jumped 16% month over month). Tinder, by contrast, has seen 600% growth over the past 12 months and has been downloaded 40 million times. The 30 million people who have registered collectively check out 1.2 billion prospective partners daily—that’s 14,000 per second.

McLeod says he’ll use the new cash to strengthen his engineering team, scale customers and expand the service internationally—Hinge now only operates in the U.S.. McLeod says 2015 will be all about growth--revenue will have to wait to 2016.