Metrics question

You are the marketing manager for Tinder. The user base in a particular city is not increasing at an expected rate. There has been a decline. Devise a growth strategy for Tinder there.

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests metrics diagnosis and growth strategy: identifying the cause of a local decline before proposing a fix, using a clear metric tree.

Break user growth into a funnel: new sign ups, activation, active matching, and retention specific to that city.
Hypothesize causes of the decline: increased local competition, a supply demand imbalance in gender ratio, or a market saturation effect.
Propose diagnostic steps: compare sign up versus churn trends, and segment by new versus existing user activity to isolate the cause.
Once diagnosed, propose targeted interventions, for example local marketing pushes if it is an awareness problem, or safety features if trust eroded.
Define the core metric to track recovery: net new active daters in that city over time.
Confirm with the interviewer whether decline means new sign ups, active usage, or both.

Insists on diagnosing before proposing a fix, checking whether the decline is a sign up problem, an activation problem, or a retention problem.
Considers a real local cause, such as a gender ratio imbalance making matches scarce, which erodes retention even if sign ups stay flat.
Proposes a targeted intervention matched to the diagnosis, for example a local awareness campaign if the issue is top of funnel, not a generic fix.
Sets a clear recovery metric, for example net new weekly active daters in that city, tracked against a stated recovery target.

Jumping straight to a marketing fix without diagnosing whether the problem is acquisition, activation, or retention.
Ignoring supply side dynamics like gender ratio imbalance that are common causes of local dating app decline.

How would you distinguish a gender ratio problem from a general awareness problem?
What would you do if the decline turned out to be driven by a competitor's local launch?