The moment that I realised we had lightning in a bottle was when, of the first couple of thousand users who signed up in the first week, 95% were using Tinder every single day when we checked back 30 days later. In January, two or three months after launch, we grew 10,000%. Now we create more than 4.5m matches a day. The first Tinder users were people we went to college with. Within days we started getting phone calls from our friends saying: "Oh my God, I just matched with this girl and we started talking, and now we're going on a date next week."

We launched it in our backyard in Los Angeles 12 months ago, and it's sort of exploded from there. It travelled through word of mouth, and within months it had spread to all the states. Tinder isn't making any money right now. We're sustaining ourselves through capital we've raised from investors. But it has definitely become the focal point of my life – I go to sleep and I dream Tinder. I feel sometimes as if I'm working as I sleep.

It has affected my life in a very big way. I met my girlfriend of six months on Tinder, and we've been happily together ever since. I was the one who messaged her. I don't remember what I said; I think it was "Hello".

I've had no time off in the last year – I had one weekend with my girlfriend but I was still working. It's a very stressful existence, but I would not trade it for anything. I get messages every day from friends telling me what the app has done for them.