YouSaid · the spoken record

Joel Simkhai

lines on the record: 108
first: 2023-07-17
most recent: 2023-07-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I would just look up who's covering the space or who was and find any reporter I could email them, said, hey, just launch this app. And that's how we got the word out.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so our strategy was twofold. One was these grinder parties and the other was press into reaching out to the press. And so I didn't have a PR firm. I would just pitch them and I just sent them a short email.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think various times I thought of it in different ways. But yeah, essentially, I see it as a hookup app. But if you peel it a little bit more, I just thought this is a way to meet someone, right? This is just a way for you to meet someone nearby. And whether you go have sex or you go whatever you want to go do, the whole point is to go meet. And that was something that was not really happening on an iPhone at the time.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that this was in the early days, so these were very general ads, and most of them, I don't think, even were location-based ads at the time. These were just very ads for other apps too. Uber at one point was a big advertiser, so other apps would advertise.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Couple pennies every time there was a little ad, and it could be an ad for whatever. I mean, this is probably still early days when it came to targeted ads. So not necessarily ads that would be targeting gay men.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's how we funded the business was through ads, maybe a few thousand dollars the first month, and imagine the first year we probably made a few hundred thousand dollars in ads.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he's, you know, the beautiful thing, he's a hacker. And so he essentially figured this out. But Morton was a developer, an iPhone developer on the front end. What he wasn't was a developer on the back end. Those skill sets of front end and back end are very, very different. And so that was soon after launch became our big challenge was how do we scale and how do we deal with all this traffic. Him and me and none of us expected the scale we would get. I remember when I had this server before, I would go on once a day and I'd have to restart the server to kind of flesh out, I don't remember exactly why, but it was not built for scale at all.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so it's clear after you launch this app that you're getting some traction. People are downloading it, right? That's right. And like you said before, I mean, there weren't a lot of people out there at the time who even knew how to make iPhone apps.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, what I do know is that I have one skill, really. I don't know how to program. I don't know how to design. I don't really have any hard skills. The only skill I have is to figure it out and to know that everything has every problem has a solution, especially with technology. And so surprisingly”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think it was some of the responses that I got from the competitors that the iPhone wouldn't take off that now we understand how important location is. But back then that was not the assumption. There was no Uber, there was no Foursquare, there was nothing like that. And so our minds at the time were not oriented around location. My mind was oriented around location because I was a guy who would go online and would have to talk to people who were nearby. And so for me, my struggle was all about location largely. Now you realize, hey, I want to order some food. Of course, I want to order food to exactly where I am. I want to order a car, but none of that existed at the time and none of that was done through your phone.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I was met with a lot of doubt. And I asked a lot of people to help me. I mean, I asked some friends hey, would you come work with me on this? A lot of people turned me down. You know, when we were launching this and I was looking for beta testers, I had reached out to my friends and I said, hey, can you help me beta test? A lot of people didn't respond to me.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I got a loan about $100,000 from my parents. Fortunately, I wasn't paying Scott. He was working for equity. Morton was getting eventually what the deal I had with Morton was a rev share on the ads that would come in so he would get paid as ads would come through And it was just the three of us, really. So the costs weren't that high other than, and the serving costs were not that much at first. But quickly, the complexity kicks in and we needed to find ways to monetize.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a few other apps, but certainly if you would type in gay into the App Store, you wouldn't come up with much. What we decided to do was to have parties, and we would go to local gay bars in LA and throw grinder parts. June was Pride Month. We went to different prides, and I remember going to San Francisco Pride, and what we would do is we would hand out little business cards, download Grindr. And the reaction was very, very positive. Anytime someone at that time heard that there was an app for gay people, they were really excited. It was a free app. And so we got probably about 1,000 downloads a day.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when you launch the app, I mean, this is a time where there were probably only like 10,000 apps in the App Store in total. So Discovery was just much easier. And was it just discovered? I mean, was it pretty soon after you launched it? Did people start to find it because there weren't many, first of all, gay hookup apps, if any, and probably even not even that many dating apps yet?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah, so it was just like you know, grid, just like your photo album. The first photo essentially was the closest person. You would look at their profile and it would say, you know, so and so is 500 feet away. Five miles away, whatever the distance was, and then you could chat with them. And so you would hit the chat button, send them a message. I think at the time you might have been able to exchange photos. I can't quite remember if we launched with that or not, but eventually you'd be able to exchange photos and chat.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the idea here was two things. One is that not all gay people are going to be comfortable, so let's not make a lot of requirements. Number two, let's make this as frictionless as possible and very, very simple and straightforward.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and to get onto the app. So we didn't even require an email address, no phone number, nothing. It was just, we had used the device ID. You could log on and you didn't have to even create an account, which later became a problem. But initially you could just log on. Photos were not required. They were optional.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember, I was alone in my house at the point. I had no marketing plan. I had no budget. There was no launch party. There was no celebration. There was no champagne. It was almost just like any other day except for this phone call I got.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was a lot more than I had. It was a lot more than I had spent. I'd spent probably a few thousand dollars. It would have been a decent return And I remember him calling and saying, Manhunt calling and saying, you know, we just commissioned a study, we spent a few hundred thousand dollars on this study, and we asked our users, and location was not at the top of their list of importance, but we're still interested in buying you. We think it's interesting. Let me call you back tomorrow, I want to talk to the boss and call me the next day and say, you know, we'll pay you. Actually, they said $25,000 to $35,000. And I said, you know, listen And many years later, I told him, you know, hey, had you offered me the $200,000 that you had paid for this study of yours, I would have taken your offer.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Manhunt was the big incumbent. They were the dominant player in the United States, a multi-million dollar business. That's the website that Gayne would use. And I remember I went to them and They called me actually the day we launched and said we're not interested in doing a partnerships, but we're interested in buying you.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was very frustrated with the pace because Morton was working part-time, or actually, you know, he had a full-time job. Understandably not his first priority. And I wasn't really paying him that much. So I wasn't in the position to be very demanding. But fortunately, there were no other apps. And I remember I would check often to see, you know, I would type in gay into the App Store to see what would come up. And I remember at the time also before we launched, I reached out to some of our competitors. I said to myself, how am I going to get this and how am I going to distribute this? How am I going to get people to know about this? I don't have the money to do a marketing campaign. I just don't know how to do that. And so my idea was, you know, why don't you go work with the incumbents and private label, what grinder was.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least in my mind. And even things like. Even though Morton was working for very little money, but even things like filing for a trademark and looking for a lawyer to help you do that, that still costs money, not that much, but it still costs money. How are you financing that? I mean, did you have savings?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't have a day job. We were just working on this. There was a lot to be done. To me, this was a race, a race to launch first, because I thought to myself, if I have this idea, I'm sure there's lots of other people who have this idea. I don't remember quite because the iPhone was announced in June. I don't quite know when the App Store and the distribution started, but it was starting already and people were starting to get these new iPhones. And so I realized it was just a matter of time before someone else would do this. But the challenge was, you know, Morton Scott were both had full-time jobs. That made things go very slowly, at least in my mind.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we came up with the name kind of brainstorming various names and we didn't want it to be something that was all about being gay or queer, but we wanted to be something distinctive. We wanted it to be something that was unique. And Grinder was one that we liked. We also looked at Mixer and Blender. And we really liked this idea of mixing people together. We chose Grindr because one, I like that it was edgier and I also liked kind of these, it wasn't quite sex, but it was sexual. And I thought it was unique and masculine also.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought of this as something that I needed in my life and that put me at the center. And I remember many times talking to people online and they would say, yeah, I'm going to, you know, you hit off and say, okay, great, when can you meet? And they'd say, oh, yeah, I'll be in town in a few weeks. And with the power of GPS, I wanted to meet the guys who were nearby.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the three of us worked on this app. And I remember one day looking at my photo album on my phone. And I said, hey, wouldn't it be great if these were the guys around me? And so that was really the inspiration for the user interface of Grindr. And it still remains today. It's a grid of people. The first person would be me. And then the next profile to the right would be the closest person nearby. And then the next person to their right would be a little bit further away. And that's how we would display all these profiles of the people nearby.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the other thing I did at this point was ask a lot of my friends for help. I said, you know, I need a name, I needed a logo, I needed to design this app. There's a lot that needed to happen. And I reached out to my friend Scott Llewellyn, and he was a graphic designer. And we were friends. He had a full-time job. I asked him to help me and he was excited by the opportunity.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. And so that was the other part I said to him. And by the way, I don't have a lot of money. And he said, okay, well, we'll figure it out. This sounds like a very good idea to me. I think it's going to do well. We'll figure it out.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so let's just for some perspective here we're 2008. You get in touch with this Danish guy Morton who knows how to build an app. First of all, how are you going to pay him? Did you have any money to pay him?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great? That sounds perfect. And he was very excited about it, and he thought that that made a lot of sense and he thought it would be a great market to launch”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, at first, I was kind of mentioned the gay part right away, but eventually when I told him I want to build an app where I can meet people using location, I want to see who's nearby. By the way, I'm gay and I think this would work really well for the gay community. And so I'd like this to at least initially focus on helping me find other gay people.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't remember how long, but I didn't get many responses. So a gentleman out of Denmark. And I think we had gone on the phone and I kind of pitched him my idea and he was all very excited and you know he.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uh, well, the ones I remembered were some mapping apps. This was, again, before any Apple maps or Google Maps. And so I reached out to each of those developers and I said, hey. I'd like to develop an app myself, and I was wondering, you know, would like to hire you to build this app for me. I think I said it was an apt for dating. I think I probably had said it's a dating app, but I was a little bit cagey about what it was because I didn't want them to steal my idea.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so there was an App Store, the Jailbroken App Store, I think it's called, or it was called Cydia. And they had a number of different apps that you could download.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A coder, and I don't have any design skills. I don't know how to build, you know, I don't know, I don't know technology. And back then there was no ecosystem for iPhone developers. Yeah. Not clued into the tech community. I was included into development and anything like that. So what I did was I went to the first generation iPhone had a jailbroken app store where third parties would develop software for the iPhone and this was sanctioned by Apple.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't almost immediately, it was immediately the second he said this, I said, I need to build an app that lets me meet guys on it. So I had this idea. The big problem is I had no skills to make this happen.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this iPhone now would have three things. One was the App Store, and so now developers could develop third-party apps. Secondly, they could distribute those apps in the App Store. And third was that they would add GPS to the iPhone. In some ways, I felt like jobs had built this phone for me because it was exactly what I needed. There was no hesitation in my mind. This was the moment I was waiting for.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You just assume. And so this nagging problem was always there. And then a few months after I'd moved to LA, Steve Jobs announces the second generation iPhone.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, that's, I think every queer person walks into a room and wonders who else is just like them in the room. And so that's our big challenge. I mean, I think for straight people.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was something that you'd been thinking about. Like why you were doing the magazine subscription business. You were thinking. I have a hard time meeting other guys. Because presumably, like, you know, you might meet somebody or see somebody and you wouldn't know if they were gay. They might be gay. You wouldn't necessarily know. You wouldn't know if you could approach them or toxic, right? I mean, there are probably things like that too.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had no idea. But I remember at this point, you know, I had for a number of years been kind of trying to think about how can I meet guys in a more efficient manner and how can I use technology? And I remember the founders of Foursquare before they started Foursquare. They started a company called Dodgeball, I think, and it allowed you to connect with people using SMS. And so I remember I reached out to them and I said, hey, can I use your platform? I thought this would be a great way to meet guys.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you're doing this magazine subscription website, but I guess from what I understand, the business kind of plateaued around 2008. And you decided to close it down and make a major move to Los Angeles. Why LA? What were you going to do when you got there?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know, I actually had other people. There's a marketing component into it. So we had people helping with the marketing and then people, some people helping with the customer service and the operation. So it wasn't a very complex business. But I was able to work from home and run my own business.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the business grew. I mean, it was, you know, I don't remember how big it grew to, but this was my main business for a number of years. And it grew to a point where I actually couldn't handle it anymore.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I went to go buy a subscription to something. And I went online on eBay and I saw that it was like really cheap, cheaper than you would get it if you bought the magazine directly. And so I said, huh, how do these people sell these magazines so cheap? And then I found out that you could buy these subscriptions through these clearinghouses. The mechanics of the businesses, these magazines are eager for subscribers because that's how they get their advertising base. And so they often would sell it the subscription at a discount just to get the subscriber. And so I set up a website. Contact us in clearinghouses and started selling magazines”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so he'd point to the buttons on my shirt. And say that there's millionaires who made their wealth by selling buttons. And it might not be glamorous, but it's a great business for a bunch of people. And so that ethos was always very much part of my upbringing. We were not the lawyer or doctor kind of family. We would go find your own success. But I had started selling magazine subscriptions online. And so I started a website that sold subscriptions. We just.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I always thought that I would want to do something of my own. I remember my dad would always say to me, people out there have become very, very successful in selling shirt buttons.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did you always, in your mind, think that you would start a business? I mean, your dad had a business. He sold diamonds. And so maybe it's in your DNA, but did you see yourself as somebody who could hang up a shingle and start something?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, New York, you know, right after college, I remember just a great time. This is I just come out and now everyone essentially knew I was gay, maybe not at work, you know, not something I advertised at work. And so I just would go out, I would go to clubs, bars, restaurants, and would still use online Craigslist became very popular.”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, in terms of your personal life, this is still early internet era, but internet dating is starting to gain traction. How was your sort of social life in New York? Were you dating? Were you having fun? Was it exciting? Was it easy to meet people?”
2023-07-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Grindr: Joel Simkhai · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT