Tinder founder, Sean Rad, is coming off one roller coaster of a year.
In October 2014, just as the founder of the hot dating app was to take the stage at the FORBES Under 30 Summit to announce Tinder’s first-ever revenue plan, he learned that majority owner IAC was pushing him out as CEO. “I went through every stage of mourning at once—fear, a bruised ego,” he told me last fall. “I started thinking about the company and my whole future.”
Seeking advice, he called friends, family and business contacts—including billionaire Michael Dell (at the time Rad was dating his daughter). Half told him to stay, the other half said to go. Rad chose to remain at Tinder--the L.A-based company that he founded with Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen in 2012--and act as the head of product. He chose wisely.
IAC brought in Christopher Payne, a former executive of Ebay, Amazon and Microsoft, to run the Tinder in March. By August Payne was out. His replacement? Rad.
On October 6th, nearly a year after learning he was losing the top job at the company he created, Rad (CEO of Tinder once again) took the stage at the FORBES Under 30 Summit once again. Calmer and more confident than last year (for obvious reasons), Rad shared how he survived a crazy year. Below, an edited excerpt from the talk.
Steven Bertoni: After you learned IAC would demote you, why did you decide to remain at Tinder?
Sean Rad: You focus on the mission. Every day we hear stories from users how we change their lives. If you think about the moments that you really carry with you, it’s the people you meet and the experiences you had with them. I’m not going to remember the Instagram photo I saw yesterday, but I will remember the person I met on Tinder and the experience I had—eventually I could marry them or date them or become friends and everything in between. Those stories keep us going. You see you can change people’s lives and that drives me and the team forward.
Bertoni: Even if you’re not in control the company you founded?
Rad: What matters to me is that Tinder wins--not me putting my stamp on it. We needed a level of experience that the board felt we didn’t have and one path to getting there was trying out a new CEO. I saw my role as making sure that person succeeds. What was best for Tinder was for that person to have all the information and the knowledge that I’ve gained so they could make the best decisions. What the company needs is strong leadership, and if that wasn’t me, that’s fine. But my mindset was if it’s going to be someone else, the best thing I could do for Tinder and myself was to empower that person.
Bertoni: How’s Tinder doing?
Rad: We’re up to 10 billion matches—last year the number was 3 billion. We’re getting smarter at putting the right people in front of you. There is a higher chance you’ll like them and that’s driving the number of matches users get and the quality of matches. We see more matches per user, and longer and deeper conversations. Higher quality connection are getting formed.
Bertoni: What’s you take on Tinder competitors like Hinge and Bumble?
Rad: They’re focused on being us, we’re focused on being the next version of Tinder. We’re leading from the front. The best thing you can do is focus on your users and goals. Looking at competitors is just a distraction.
Bertoni: What’s been your favorite new Tinder product?
Rad: It’s our Super Like. Sometimes you want to take a more direct approach to meet someone. It’s the difference between a glance across the room, and walking over and asking to buy someone a drink—that’s a Super Like. It’s an aggressive move and a new way to express your interest on Tinder. Within a few days of launching users have sent over more than 20 million Super Likes. Users are three-times more likely to get a match, and conversations are 70% longer when started from a Super Like. It let’s you peacock in a different way.
Bertoni: How do you chose which new features to add?
Rad: We have a list of ideas and priorities. Justin Mateen came up with Super Like three years ago. Every release we assess and rank these things against are goals. Some things improve the core experiences and others create new experiences. You have to rank them against each other. With Super Like we didn’t have the resources and it wasn’t the right time. Now we had the timing and resources it all came together.
Bertoni: How do you test a new feature?
Rad: We usually test in Australia. Super Likes were there 2 weeks before anywhere else. Australia has certain characteristics—lots of early adopters, close knit communities—new features get circulated and talked about quicker than in other countries.
Bertoni: Tinder helped FORBES build a business networking feature for our Under 30 App—do you plan on moving beyond dating?
Rad: We focus on removing the barriers to meeting someone new. We want to bring the world closer together by creating connections that never would have existed. We’re doing that within the realm of romance, because those are some of the most important connections you make in your life. We have a long way to go before we conquer that space. There are hundreds of millions of single people on smart phones. It’s a massive market, and a we have a lot to do to create an experience that everyone gets value from. We want to cover the globe. Once we’ve done, that we can think about the next segment. There is always a new crop of single people coming in. We could be one of the biggest tech companies around by just focusing on the massive single audience.
Follow me on Twitter: @Stevenbertoni
