YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Rad

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68
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2024-09-09
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2024-09-09
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  1. “Losing, I think something that scares me that we talk a lot about freedom of speech, but we don't talk a lot about freedom.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think we do have freedom of speech. It is under attack. Now, whether people actually use their freedom of speech and feel safe to speak up is a different story. I think courage, there's a great Winston Churchill quote. Courage is the strength to stand up and speak, but also sit down and listen. So I think we need more of that. We need the courage to speak up, but we also need the courage to listen. And one thing that makes America the greatest country in the world is our openness to debate and debate leads to better ideas and it leads to a stronger meritocracy. And when you have a cancel culture where people don't feel safe to speak up and speak their views, or you have a culture where people are not willing or tolerant of other people's views or sit down and listen, then the outcome is never going to be great. We've seen that story before. And I also think we're”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “that we lose Americus fragile, the ideals that built America fragile, and that we easily take them for granted and we lose those values, such as freedom speech, such as free will, such as meritocracy.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I think we've had identity politics invade meritocracy. I think we want to live in a society where I am judged not based on my identity, my age, Lyanne, but I'm judged based on my contribution and the merits of my work. And what's beautiful about tech and innovation is that you have an ecosystem, you know, where in my case you could be a young kid or in my parents' case became to this country with $20 in their pockets and had the opportunity regardless of their background to work hard and succeed. And that is the American dream. It's the underdog story that you can overcome obstacles and pursue your happiness without your identity being a limiting factor. I don't think we're a perfect meritocracy. I think we need to improve our meritocracy. And we need to have more equal opportunity, but I think equal outcome is a very bad thing”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Look, I think diversity is important. Diversity of perspective, diversity of thought, creating an environment that is meritocratic is equally as important.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think we're going through growing pains, but I think we're still the greatest country in the world. I know you're in the UK. UK is pretty great too, but”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So first of all, wealth does not bring you happiness. Meaning brings you happiness. Wealth can create meaning up to a certain point, or it can give you freedom to sort of create meaning up to certain points, but wealth on its own does not bring happiness. And I think the other thing people don't ask enough is what is wealth? If I have great relationships in my life, I have a job that I absolutely love, I feel like I'm making a contribution to those around me. I'm living a life of meaning and purpose in my wealthy, even if I don't have a lot in my bank account, I would say, yeah, you're wealthy. I think people also have to question, what is wealth? Is wealth the Bugatti? Is wealth the yacht? If the person sitting in the yacht has cancer, it's relationships is secretly really lonely and isolated and has a lot of noise and has no freedom and no time to be thoughtful, then is that wealth?”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think the better way to think about it is in terms of percentages 5 million too much if you have a billion dollar company no is 5 million too much if your company is worth 20 million and someone you know that's a different scenario”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “A little bit. We took enough, and I'm a big believer in this take a little bit along the way to live and be comfortable. I think the more you can create freedom, the more you can give to what matters, which is your company or your relationships. And sometimes money buys that freedom and it allows you to sort of focus even more. So we did take money along the way and our investors wanted us to do that because I think they realized that if we alleviated some of that pressure, then we can go even harder. But we didn't take too much.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “People tried, but money doesn't solve money doesn't create innovation. If money resulted in innovation, then you would never have disruption. I think so it's like just because you have more money doesn't mean you can beat us. Does it mean you're the most creative? In fact, I would actually say sometimes constraints force creativity forces you to focus, forces you to prioritize. When you're resource constraints, you automatically don't do the shit you shouldn't be doing. You're forced to make a decision with your time, with your money. So I don't think necessarily more money. In fact, there's many startups that actually failed because they raised too much money. And they threw money at the problem and they threw people at the problem and they didn't actually tussle or force themselves to think out of the box or get creative and find new ways to solve the problem. So I don't think more money necessarily solves problems.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Building a company is not easy. You have moments when you're getting crushed. Any entrepreneur knows this, when you're having”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Standing for something and willing to take risks for what you believe in and really love, I think the energy of that is love, right? So love is what makes me overcome obstacles, what makes me stick through, that to me is the meaning of living.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “No, you can't have lights without darkness, and you can't have life without death. If you would never die, then that means you're never willing to die for something. And that means you don't have a life of meaning. And if you never have darkness, that means”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, I don't believe I'm going to get really spiritual with you. I don't believe our soul dies. I think our soul carries on and our soul through many lifetimes, including what we leave behind in the memories, we're sort of always contributing and always growing and always facing new challenges of elevating and maybe a soul level. But our body dies, our presence on this earth dies. But I think our soul does.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “To me, it's like one thing leads to another. When you have honesty, you have trust, when you have trust, you have laughter, when you have laughter, you have sex.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Had this moment she's like, is this going to always be a problem? I don't, you know, I'm like, are we going to get through this and everything? And I kind of looked at her. I'm like, babe, we've been through way worse. We've overcome all these challenges. So the answer is yes. I mean, if this is like, you know, we've overcome every other challenge, every other moment where it's been like, oh, this is so hard. We've prevailed and we've become better. So this is no different. When you have the mindset that every challenge is working for you and is bringing you closer, that's when you grow. You can't grow without challenges. That's the thing of life. I mean, if it was all rainbows and butterflies, what's the point?”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I think because we have more options than we have had at any moment in history that increasingly we have the ability to switch and give up. You go back in some moment of time. It's like you were in a tiny little village. If you're lucky, there was one person that you loved and cutting bait. I mean, where are you really going to go? You've had to stick through it. Now you could quit and you could say, okay, I'm going to trade this for something better. But I think the reality is every relationship comes with challenges. It's just a question of which challenges. Once you stick through all the hard moments and you keep getting better and elevating and then you look back and it's like with my wife, it's just like what we said about companies, like all those challenges made us better. They brought us closer or stronger as a result. We're more resilient. The other day, I got into a little thing with my wife.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “It is very, very hard. Relationships, I think, for you when they're good to become better as a person. But in order to become better, you got to stick through the hard tops and not give up.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Because this never works out. I think I have the luxury, the gift of being able to work with people that I really enjoy working with. And again, that's what life is about. It's about relationships. The money doesn't matter if you don't have great friendships, relationships, partnerships, and loves in what you're doing. It's like love is the energy that I think produces the best outcomes and the greatest results.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Versus constantly make excuses. This didn't work out. Let's blame the market. Let's blame the circumstances rather than let's look at it.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “The worst investments were when I chased the idea and not the team. So there were moments where I'm like, fuck this idea is so good. I'm not really sure about the team. Like, do they have the passion, the energy to go and execute? Is their heart really in it? And I kind of ignore those elements because I'm like, oh, idea is so good. I don't want to miss out. And nine times out of ten never works. So the number one thing is team and passion. I think you want a team that they're heart and soul is in it. Like you have a founder market fit. They are building the product for themselves. They are the customer. They understand it. It's coming out of some personal problem or experience. So they won't give up when times get tough. They'll power through. They'll iterate their morph teams that are humble, self-aware are able to recognize when they made a mistake and adapt.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “The thesis there was actually very simple. It was, I admire Elon, I think he's a once-in-a-lifetime entrepreneur. I was just willing to let him investment money.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Most of what the family office does is we invest a lot in real estate because I think real estate is an amazing asset class. We invest a lot in venture. That's direct or through funds. And we invest a lot in public equities. We invest a lot in credited debt. There's a different things. And then there's a lot of things we don't do. There's a lot of things that we don't do either because I don't feel like we understand it enough. We're not good at it. You know, for me, it's really focusing on the areas where we can add value, where we have an edge. And who knows? It morphs new opportunities present itself. We're opportunistic. But for the most part, it really is following passion and love and the things that I enjoy working on. And I want to work on and I want to spend time on and eliminating distractions as much as possible.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yes. I think it's a really rewarding position to be in because I can focus on strategy and trust others to run the business. It doesn't mean that I don't come in and get detailed and help in the areas where maybe I'm the best person to do something. But I've found a lot of meaning in building. So I'm not going to stop building.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Anyone who has accumulated experience and wealth also accumulates freedom and leverage, no matter what stage. So of course, I would say I have more options. I can think bigger.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I've done both. So I have a family office where we've invested in over 100 different companies and funds. And I enjoy that because it allows me to meet other great entrepreneurs to give back to mentor, to learn myself. But at heart, I'm a builder. I'm a problem solver. That's what gets me up in the morning. I don't talk about it because I don't want to, I've started four companies since Tinder, but I just kind of purposely, I think I kind of learn like it's a little easier to build without a lot of attention”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I wanted to be. And then when I got there, I was kind of like, okay, now what? Whoever, what do I do with my time? And I could do anything with my time. So what is meaningful? And that requires you to look inward and really self explore. Or you can look outward and replace it with a bunch of noise and shit that actually distracts you from answering that question meaning. In a sense, that's why I say, you know, kind of getting what you want can create the next challenge. Life is a journey of challenges. There's never, you're never going to get to the end of the road.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “No, no, I didn't say the standard of living is getting better. I said our access to resources are getting better. The more abundance we have, if we're not careful, can actually impact our quality of life. Because more choice isn't necessarily better. It's like when you show up to the restaurant and you have a book this big of items, it's not easier to make your choice of what you want to order than if it's just one page of something that's highly curated. In a world where more than ever, anytime in history, you can get on YouTube and learn anything, you can become anything. We're more free than any generation. We have more possibility than any generation. I think it also becomes harder to identify who you are, what you want, and meaning in your life. And I think at a different scale, success sort of created that same challenge. My whole life was building companies, trying to make money, getting to the point that.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “We're at a moment in history where, regardless of your wealth, by any means we are all way wealthier and have access to way more resources than previous generations, which also has expanded the options and possibilities and who we can become.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “For me, and it took me a while to see this, but I live a life that is much less than I can afford to live because I don't want chains. I don't want stuff. I don't value those things. I don't care about a yacht. My friends are my childhood friends building, creating products, solving problems is what makes me happy. And I think there's a lot of other things when you have a lot of freedom, you can kind of get crushed by the paradox of choice and possibilities. When I achieve that freedom, it was also very hard because what do you do when at least financially and to some extent as entrepreneur, you can kind of do anything. So it's sort of a harder problem, harder to find meaning when you're living in a world of infinite possibilities. And I actually think that's why globally there is a little bit of a crisis of meaning.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Number one, you said it money does not buy you happiness. I think up to a certain point, you want freedom, money brings you freedom, freedom does enable happiness. But after a certain point, it doesn't make you happier. If you're not careful, it could actually complicate your life a lot more. You can accumulate more shit. It could change your relationships.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “That is a very sad idea. The journey is part of the reward. Me actually talking to someone, getting to know them helps me learn about myself, helps me learn about them. It's not about a transaction. Romance is a journey. It's not just an ends to a means. I think abstracting away the journey is a stupidest idea I've ever heard. And you learn a lot of that journey. And look, it's like addiction is when something is too easy, when you get a free dopamine hit without doing a lot of work, and you actually feel worse about yourself, when you have to work for something, the reward is even greater.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “I haven't been there in a long time. So, like, would I look at the product and say, I'm proud of the existing iteration of the product, you know, I think I would look at the product now and say, fuck, like all the missed opportunity, because when the core team, when I left and then others left, there was a lot of unfinished business. We had a roadmap that I would say was like 10 years long. We knew once we achieved this, it's going to open the opportunity to this. It's going to open the opportunity to this. So I think I would look at the product right now.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Look, I don't subscribe to anything that's elitist. I think in many ways a lot of these dating apps are elitist. Living in a world where one person or one group is better than another. Bumble is elitist. Why, you know, women go first. Women have all the control. Why? Actually, I'm not even sure that's good for women. It was always a weird concept. I'm like, what? It was a good marketing gimmick, but I don't think it actually ever made sense. And then, you know, the league's perspective is, you know, you have to be some educated, highly educated, or Rai's perspective is you have to be cool and rich. Like, fuck that. Tinder was always, you're yourself. We're going to find and match you with people who love you for you. And everyone deserves love and everyone deserves a match. We want it to solve core humans.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Unfree to everyone, and then we charged if you wanted to super like again. What the one free did is it took away the desperation. So someone didn't know, did I use my one free on you or did I actually spend money to get your attention, which could make me look desperate? So it gave me the sort of excuse like the out. But then I can spend money to buy more super likes and super like more often. But again, charging for that not only allowed us to build better products, it created more revenue allowed us to fulfill our mission, it built business, but it also made the product better because it created a new feature where it made sense for us to charge.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “It was highly effective. Our perspective on paid features was the only reason we would charge you is if charging you for that feature made the ecosystem better. Meaning if we gave that capability to free to everyone, it would actually dilute the quality of the ecosystem. The first feature we launched that really started making a lot of money was the super link. So we wanted to have this signal that you're not just someone I swiped right up right on, you're extra special. It's sort of like in the real world, I can walk up to someone and say, hey, what's up? Or I can walk up to someone and maybe this might not be a good idea and say, you know what, like I feel this strong connection. I really like you. Like there was sort of like the next level of romance. That was what the super like was. But if we actually gave it to free, it would have no value. So we gave one.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, it was a reminder, I think the more we scaled, the lesson was always focus. Focus on your mission. Focus on what you're good at. Stop trying to be something you're not. Every company needs to continuously fucking relearn. It's like even when Steve Jobs left Apple and he came back, what did he do? He killed a bunch of products because he said, we have no business doing these other products. This isn't in the DNA in the soul of the company. So I think when you get bigger and you have more money and you have more resources, you fall in this trap of, oh, we could do more things. But you have to stop and ask yourself, just because we can, do we have any business doing those things? Does that map to our core competencies? Is that why the thousands of employees we have actually joined this company? And if you're going to change that vision, they're better be a very good reason. And it's got to be bottoms up. It's got to be start with because your users are asking for that.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Your friends, and you can share moments with your friends. So we started tried to shift from a dating product to a social network. And we very quickly learned we have no business doing. Our brand, our mission, our thesis is very much about creating new connections, introducing you someone new. We weren't in the business of connecting you with your friends. And our users didn't want. At some point, we also said, hey, let's create an app to help you make friends. And we very quickly learned that no one wants to open an app to make friends. Like that's a very desperate, weird experience. And then we said, well, could we apply Tinder's mechanism to business connections? And then we quickly learned, well, no one wants to swipe and match and make new business connections.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “In the early days, very few people know this, but we had every user sort of got to the point where they had a lot of matches, whereas almost like you would open the app and you're like, I don't want to meet someone new. I need to make sense of all the people who already want to connect with me. So we started shifting our focus to like postmatch. What we wanted to do is create more moments where you could get to know your matches and find opportunities for connection. So we created this product called Moments, which was sort of Instagram stories before Instagram stories. You could share a moment like something you're doing in the real world. And it was an expiring 24-hour moment and people could reply to it and your matches could be like, oh, you know, great. And we all love the product so much that we were like, you know what? Maybe this could be for friends. Maybe we let Tinder be more than just romantic connections. Maybe you can add.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I'll give you two lessons there. I would say the Tinder team was maniacally good about focus and prioritizing and saying no and keeping the product simple. Well, we believed in simplicity. I think if you look at the Tinder product, it's very simple. I would always reiterate the Albert Einstein quote, which is like if something isn't simple enough, it's because you don't understand it enough. The more you get to essence of something, the simpler it actually becomes. And it's like fools make things more complex. So prioritizing and picking our battles was very critical. That became a little harder as we scaled. In the early days, we were very much one team, all building towards one product. Everyone was involved in one release. We all knew what everyone was doing. Even by the time we were like 100 people.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Was not really a system of dating and marriage that was very much curated by your parents, your parents decide. And I think that was a moment in time where we were like, hey, we could adapt the product to that, but actually no. We're not going to because we believed in empowerment and we believed that you should be in control of your own faith when it comes to love. So that was actually sort of a moment where like, no, we're not changing the product, even if it means we're going to have less users because it was socially less acceptable. So it's like unique things like that where it's like, wow, the social norms and the dynamics are just completely different.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “I'll give you two stories. In Korea, group dating, that's like the socially accepted norm. It's actually very rare that I would go out one-on-one. It's usually friends or double dates. Like we're going out as a group. So group dating was a huge thing. So we had to really think about that experience, like reorient Tinder as a group dating, not as an individual dating. But then what was interesting is as we reoriented that, it got us thinking like, well, could that be a thing everywhere else? Maybe that's actually more effective means of connecting. So could we bring group dating? Can we make that a thing? Can we make that easy? I mean, naturally, a lot of times we go out with our friends, you know, and but, you know, we didn't really double date until it's later into the relationship. So that was one thing that was interesting to tackle. Another thing was that in India,”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Yeah. So international expansion was one of the hardest things because, first of all, building a global organization is not easy. Building a global team and making people in another country feel like they are a part of the team, even though the executive team isn't there, you know, sitting with them. That's not an easy thing. But it was particularly difficult around the Tinder product because in the beginning, in the early days, we thought localization meant that the language of the app had to adapt to the language of the user. But localization is much more than that because particularly around social human connection and relationships, there are cultural differences in everywhere in the world, which means the product had to adapt to meet those cultural differences, which means Tinder was slightly different as a product in every country, which means we had many product organizations.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Translation, what I took away was that the team was saying that product and engineering is in everything. The other parts of the organization equally matter. In fact, every part of the organization equally matters. And maybe it was a mistake on my part to say I'm going to maybe play favorites and spend give a little more love to this part of the organization. And as a leader outsource another part of the organization. And I think the truth is that the learning that I had is everything matters equally. Unfortunately, the team didn't come tell me that. They sort of just threw up their hand and said, come back or we quit.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Ran a public company, very experienced. I think the board sort of felt like, well, Sean, you know, maybe we should give that person the CEO title because they would carry more authority. And then you do the same thing you're doing with take president title. And I was like, okay, fine with me. But when I stepped out of those other functions or I kind of stopped being in the room for a lot of those other functions, it created a lot of issues in the organization. And at one point, I don't know if this is about me or maybe the other person wasn't that good. But at one point, there was like mutiny. We had the entire executive team. I don't talk about it, but since you know the story, I'll say, I don't know how you sound away. We try not to talk about this. But there was one point where entire executive team, unbeknownst to me, went to the board and basically said, if Sean doesn't come back in the CEO role, we're all quitting. I found that very flattering. I think definitely like a crazy moment for me personally, the trans”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Users revenue. We used to play this game where we would chart the growth rate and figure out how fast we would get to billion users if we held the growth rate. If you charted the growth rate we experienced at a certain moment in the first year, we would have reached a billion users in three months. That's how fast we were growing. Now, obviously, we didn't sustain that growth rate, but the product was growing fast, the organization was growing fast. Revenue was growing fast. We were growing so fast that we couldn't even solve problems with humans because we couldn't hire humans fast enough. We had to get creative at solving problems. But at a certain point, I had felt like I need help. I felt like I wanted my Cheryl Sambert. I wanted my partner who can help me scale the organization while I focus on product and technology. So we brought in very, very experienced person. And I think the board sort of, he was.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “To me, founders are really good at keeping and reiterating the mission because they care the most. Sometimes, you know, founder market fit, team market fit is essential when it is your personal story, which it often is for founders. It's another level of storytelling. And it doesn't mean that the founder is the best person to execute it. I actually think great sounders put the company before themselves and are intellectually honest and self-aware enough to say, hey, you know what, maybe I've taken it to this point and there's someone else better than me.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “My lifetime, your lifetime. Maybe they'll outlast my kids' lifetime. So nothing's inevitable. But yes, I think everything has a natural decay or a conclusion. The question is when? Nothing's forever. That's for sure.”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Look, you could make the argument that everything dies. It's just a question of when. Companies or organisms, just like humans, humans die, companies die, and it's just a question of how long and what is the longevity. And I think if you don't keep disrupting and you don't keep setting the bar higher and higher and higher, you will achieve complacency. And complacency, which is a lot of big companies die by complacency. You have teams who don't care. You have politics. You lose sight of why you are there. It's every person for themselves, or you're not intellectually honest and you're not forcing yourself to disrupt yourself and question the mission and improve it. So I wouldn't say it's inevitable. I think we've had organizations that have outlasted”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Of the product to Cade because no one's actually sitting there and saying, how do we scale the impact of the product? Everyone's saying, how do we scale the metrics of the product?”

    2024-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source