Sean Rad is the founder and former CEO if Tinder, a location-based social search mobile dating app that allows users to like or dislike other users, and allows users to chat if both parties like each other.
Early life and education
Sean Rad was born to Iranian parents in the mid-80s, who had migrated to the United States in the 70s. His childhood was spent as part of a tight-knit Persian community in Beverly Hills, and while his parents had great accomplishment working in the consumer electronics industry, Rad wasn’t initially interested in technology and electronics.
However, Rad was interested in the entertainment industry and interned for an entertainment manager while still in high school. Rad attended a private Los Angeles high school, before enrolling at the University of Southern California in 2004. After two years of studying business at USC, Rad dropped out of college in 2006.
Early career
Just as he was starting college, Rad began his first tech company at Orgoo, which was meant to be a unified communications platform, utilizing the mobile technology of the early 2000s. It was while studying at USC that Rad also became friends with Justin Mateen. The two had become friends since they were 14 and both come from Jewish-Iranian families from Los Angeles.
Orgoo wasn’t a success, but in 2006, Rad started Adly, a platform that promoted celebrity social media branding. Adly established to be much more successful than his first tech venture, and Rad continued operating the company for a few years, but eventually tired of playing matchmaker to brands and celebrities. Rad sold his stock in Adly in 2012 and joined Hatch Labs, a New York-based incubator for mobile apps that also happened to have an outpost in Los Angeles.
At Hatch Labs, Rad was responsible for Cardify, a retail card loyalty app, but secretly he and Mateen were discussing concepts for a flirting app based on mutual likings. Then Hatch Labs held a hackathon soon after Rad joined, it was a chance to proceed with this idea, and together with Joe Munoz, an engineer at Hatch, and they developed a prototype called Matchbox.
Matchbox won the Hatch Labs’ hackathon, and soon the Cardify team was shifted to developing the idea further. Three weeks later, the team had a more refined product available for a public launch. Hatch Labs was partially funded by IAC, who already owned the famous dating site Match.com, so the app had been renamed as Tinder, a play on the original Matchbox name.
Tinder
In September 2012, Rad co-founded Tinder, a location-based social search mobile app, most often used as a dating site that allows users to chat if both parties like each other, along with Jonathan Badeen, Justin Mateen, Joe Munoz, Alexa Mateen, Dinesh Moorjani, and Whitney Wolfe.
Tinder won for “Best New Startup of 2013” by TechCrunch’s Crunchie Award. By May 2013, Tinder was one of the top 25 social networking apps based on the number of users and frequency of use. Tinder became the first online dating service to become one of the top five utilized services on the web. As of 2016, Rad is the Tinder’s CEO.
As of October 2014, Tinder was processing more than one billion swipes per day, generating about twelve million matches per day. The average user would regularly consume about an hour and a half on the app each day. In 2015, Tinder launched rewinding, the ability to go back to rejected profiles, if the user senses they made a mistake—something previously impossible on the app. In September 2016, Tinder invested in Vina, a social network where women can meet and nourish new friendships. In September 2016, Tinder Boost was tested in Australia and went public worldwide in October 2016.
In October 2016, Tinder announced it was starting its first office in Silicon Valley in beliefs of being able to better hire technical employees. In March 2017, Tinder launched a web version of the dating app called Tinder Online, which enables people to access Tinder using their desktops. In June 2017, Tinder launched a members-only service called Tinder Gold, giving their most exclusive features: Rewind, Unlimited Likes, Passport, five Super Likes per day, one Boost per month, and more profile controls.
On August 6, 2018, the Match Group declared Tinder had reached more than 3.7 million paid subscribers, up 81% over the same quarter in 2017. On December 2018, Tinder launched Swipe Life, a new editorial website. On May 10, 2019, it was published that Tinder was proposing for Tinder Lite, a lighter version app that intended at increasing markets where bandwidth, data usage, and storage space is a concern.
Funding rounds
In April 2014, Tinder raised $50 million in a secondary market round, led by IAC, which values the app at $500 million. In October 2014, Tinder raised an undisclosed amount in a venture round, led by Benchmark partner Matt Cohler, a former executive at LinkedIn and Facebook. As part of the deal, Cohler will join on Tinder’s Board of Directors.
Tinder has $400 million in estimated revenue annually. Tinder competes with Clover, Hily, and Bumble.