Now, as the founder of dating app Hinge, just shy of his 31st birthday, it's all out in the open. A photograph of him jumping into a pool with a girl is the first thing you see when you download the dating app, launched in Sydney on Thursday and available on iOS and Android.

McLeod is in Sydney for the Australian launch, and has brought his girlfriend along for the ride. They're so patently in love with each other it's almost cringe-worthy. He's taking her to see Madame Butterfly at the Opera House.

McLeod wasn't always this lucky in love.

In the pre-Tinder world of 2011 (Tinder launched in 2012), where online dating sites like eHarmony and OkCupid were seen as "tragic", the single Harvard Business School graduate decided to create his ideal dating service: one that helped singles meet friends of friends, just like in real life.

"As soon as the idea [for Hinge] came, there's not a day that's gone by that I haven't spent the majority of my time thinking about it," McLeod says.

Hinge's first incarnation was a desktop app called Secret Agent Cupid, developed with a friend who worked at Google. Its mascot was a cupid in a tuxedo.

"We whipped something up that plugged into Facebook that allowed everyone to list their crushes," McLeod says.

Sadly, his college crush, Nicole, did not list him.

Two years and a complete redesign later, Hinge has launched in 34 cities in the United States and four elsewhere: Toronto, London, Mumbai and now Sydney, where it held a launch party at the Ivy Pool Club on Thursday night.

It has raised $US20 million in capital from a range of investors, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund (Thiel co-founded PayPal and was Facebook's first external investor), plus "a couple of other ex-Facebook people" who were angel investors.

McLeod has a 24-strong team based in New York and is expanding the app city by city, choosing each location based on how many people are downloading the app. Its growth relies mainly on word of mouth, with a smidge of Facebook advertising to kick things along.

The Australian launch location was a toss-up between Sydney and Melbourne, but in the end Sydney won out, with 2000 people apparently waiting to use the app.

"I'm sure we'll be launching in Melbourne not too long after and then eventually other places," McLeod says.

Hinge has managed to carve out a niche somewhere between Tinder, matchmaking sites and Facebook.

Unlike Tinder, which matches users based solely on location, age and sex, Hinge serves up second and third degree Facebook connections, and includes a few extra details such as surname, educational history, and place of work.

It also uses a combination of collaborative and content-based filtering to serve you potential matches based on who you've "liked" in the past, as well as those that users with similar taste to you have liked.

While McLeod wants to distance the app from comparisons to Tinder — the "Facebook for dating" is his preferred line — that hasn't stopped his PR manager from spruiking Hinge as the "classier Tinder", a description that was coined in news coverage overseas.

Perhaps "Tinder for yuppies" might work Down Under: McLeod says the "average" Hinge user is a 23- to 36-year-old urban dweller; is university educated; and works in tech, media, finance, fashion or law.

In other words, Mr McLeod is Mr Average.

IBRS advisor Guy Cranswick says social status is "critical" when it comes to advertising and promotions, which ultimately Hinge could look to add as a way to monetise the network.

"Any technology developer in that social space wants to be pushing up rather than going for average, and certainly not anything that's below average," Cranswick says.

"Companies don't want to be targeting people on social security."

McLeod has also hinted at a possible "freemium" model for Hinge, with users paying extra to add additional filters.

Of course, it all comes down to subscriber numbers, which McLeod is not currently disclosing. (Call it anywhere north of 76,000, though probably much more, if 2000 punters in 38 cities is the starting point.)

Cranswick says consumers have the appetite to try "any type of app", particularly the next iteration of something they're already used to.

"I'm not surprised at an early phase that it will grab a market that is similar to its own creators, plus using word of mouth and other networks to bring people in," he says.

Whether it can maintain the upmarket pitch as its user base expands is another matter.

Dating and lifestyle coach Chris Manak is sceptical that Hinge will do as well as Tinder, yet hopeful at the same time.

"We need more options for dating," he says.

"One of the biggest things I hate in the traditional paradigm of dating is this idea that you shouldn't pursue it, and that when the time is right he or she will find you.

"It's bullshit."

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