YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Rad

lines on the record: 68
first: 2024-09-09
most recent: 2024-09-09
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

“Of connections. So the natural course of Tinder, all we saw is actually we're moving to a world of no swiping, where Tinder is so smart that I could just say, Harry, I have the person for you. And why don't you focus on that? And if I was wrong, great, I'm happy to introduce you to someone else. Technology becomes, I think, the better it gets, the more human it gets. And to me, the ultimate archetype was the matchmaker. Could we achieve the success of the human brain matchmaker who was able to say, Harry, here's the girl for you? Again, I'm not going to judge what you want to do. You know, I'm just going to introduce you guys. You can do whatever you want. Once the core team left, I think that promise, that mission was maybe replaced with a desire for retention, a desire for revenue, the sort of intention of why we created that company, what we were trying to achieve got lost. So over time, the quality.”
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
“Meaningful and more valuable. So we were always very careful, like there was many times a desire to look at retention as sort of the end all be all metric. And by the way, we have fucking phenomenal retention. We had retentive powers beyond social media platforms. But what you were doing on Tinder, I always thought was 10 times more meaningful than kicking back and watching content, you were actually connecting with human beings. And I think to me all we have is connections. All the other shit is just noise. All we want is to experience love with other human beings. Remember I told you as things scale, right? New problems form. They take new shape. If I was still at Tinder and in fact, while I was there this was sort of a metric of success, I always drove home for the team is that retention and the number of connections isn't as important as the quality.”
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
“Because I think when you're focused on retention and you believe that retention equals value, you can sometimes delude yourself. Me spending hours doing something doesn't mean I extracted true value of it. I could spend hours getting high doesn't mean that's valuable in my life. You know, so drugs have a great retention and they're really good at retaining people, but are they actually driving meaningful value? I would argue no. Facebook and social media is really good at retaining users and almost against your free will and hacking your desires and keeping you there. And they do that because they make money through advertising. And the more time they have with you, the more ads they can put in front of you. But is that truly enriching my life? Is that truly creating value? Or can you look at that and saying, well, that's actually distracting me from a lot of other shit that is more meaningful.”
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
“The thing that we really focused on is how many conversations we could drive. So, you know, there's swipe, match, talk. The ultimate value proposition is that you're in a dialogue. So the number of you look conversations we were driving was one of the metrics we would look at a lot. We did look at retention in the sense of what was Dao to Mao Mau to, you know, wow to Mao. But over time, those metrics became less important. The metrics that became more important were conversations, matches, sort of us delivering value, the metrics that measure true value and revenue, which is your desire to compensate us for that value. Retention on its own, it is a problematic metric that could lead sometimes if you're not careful to Lot more harm than it can”
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
“Narrow with the problem yourself, but maybe you do yourself a disservice if you're too narrow in the audience that you're serving because that problem that you're solving can speak to many audiences. So for us, the problem we were solving was to make a new connection. Everyone felt at that time, I think even more so now a little isolated. They wanted new connections. They wanted to meet someone for whatever reason. Marriage, friendship, whatever. We actually had a rule here. We were not allowed to say dating at tender. You were not allowed to call Tinder dating app. You're not allowed to say marriage because we weren't about that. We were about an introduction. We were about connecting you with someone for any reason. The sort of marketing message that we would always repeat is find out who likes you. Is that FOMO? Who likes me that I don't know about? So that was the hook, the reason you would come in is because I'm curious who likes me. The reason you would stay is because you made a new connection that 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
“Press them. So we have to make that one shot count. And we would not take that shot until we're very ready. The sort of lean startup throws shit against the wall, I think, lacks a little bit of soul.”
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
“People. You want to slowly start expanding your circle of reach and test in every step. So product market fit isn't one moment in time. Product market fit is a constant iterative process because as the product grows, it sort of faces new challenges at scale. And just because it worked with a thousand people doesn't mean it'll work with a million people. The idea of MVP, one thing people really miss in MVP, you know, yes, you want to launch and get feedback, but if you launch a shitty product, what's the point? So I think there is a bar of quality that you still have to hit before that product is ready for people to play with. And if you haven't achieved that, then whatever data you're getting is corrupted data to begin with. And another thing I'll say, we always believed in this. You know, Tinder, we always believe we have one shop. There isn't a second chance with users. We have one shot to improve.”
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
“First of all, you got to be very clear about the problem that you were solved. And I think you have to feel as a founder a connection to that problem. Have to be the customer. Because I think products are incubated and grow in phases. And phase one is that you're using it and the team is using it and that you have product team fit. And then I think once you cross that boundary, then I think you could go to like product friends fit. And then I think once you cross that boundary and it's working amongst your friends or, you know, network of close customers, then I think you slowly start expanding it. But it's the idea of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks is a very soulless, you know, I don't describe. I think you have to have a clear vision test, iterate the vision. And don't put the cart before the horse. If it's not ready for a million people, you don't want to give it to a million.”
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
“A mind of its own. But I can't stress enough though that none of that would have mattered if we didn't build a great product. Marketing is important. This is another thing people sort of miss. They think like, all right, I need to figure out how to get it out there, but they don't spend enough time focusing on whether or not they have the right thing to promote.”
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
“Where we had a bigger venue and we can invite more people. But the other condition was that no one gets into the door unless they have Tinder on their phone. So we literally had bouncers at the door, you know, whether you're invited or not, anyone can come in. But you needed to have Tinder installed on your phone. Now, no one even knew what Tinder was, but the next day everyone woke up and saw the people that they saw at the party confirming this thesis. It's like maybe there was that girl or guy that I didn't have the courage to walk up to. Now I see them in the app and now I can swipe right and now we're matching. Bringing people together and then empowering them through the app was a great marketing strategy. And that worked. Once we did that party at USC over the coming days, it went viral on campus. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was sharing it. And we realized that was a great mechanism of when we introduced Tinder to the right groups of people. It takes”
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
“Tinder was a relatively complicated product to market because it is very much location specific. And you're building network effects, right? So the strength of the network, you don't want random people just sort of downloading that app and never opening it again. So you need a sort of strong connection amongst the network. So we kept thinking like, what are areas where groups of friends or similar people sort of gather and congregate? And one of those are parties. And an intern of ours was in college at the time. And his friend, who was sort of like one of the most popular people at USC, was having a big birthday party. I think it was like a thousand people were invited to this party. So we told her, we're like, look, we'll pay for the party. We'll throw the party. But in exchange under one condition, you have to do it at another location. So we shuttle all the students to another location.”
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
“Viral amongst our close group of friends. And then what we started to see, which was sort of confirmation of this thesis that we had that we could uncover connections that would have never existed if we removed these barriers. We started hearing that friends who already knew each other were now getting together. So I would have friends calling me like, oh, I never, you know, I shit. I never knew she liked me. We never put two and two together. I'm going on a date with so-and-so. And it's like, whoa, we've been in the same friend circles for years, but neither of you expressed that interest. So, you know, it's that like confirmation, like, okay, this thesis that we have that we're walking about our lives, not maximizing the potential of our relationships is true. And it was working. That was the initial spark.”
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
“No, no. So when we released it, nothing happens. No one knew about it, right? So it was a very anti-climactic moment. But what we started doing at a certain point sitting with the team and it's like, okay, we built this great product. We know there's something special here. What the fuck do we do? And I think as an entrepreneur, you sort of have to like work with the resources that are around you. You have to make the most of what you have. And for us, it's like we all had friends. So it's like, all right, let's just start there. Everyone take out your phone, text. 300 friends. And I think the thing that we texted was download this app and thank me later. Sir, wanted to create this like FOMO mysteriousness. And I think in total we texted 500 people over the course of a few days, we had, I think it was like 700 signups. I sort of looked at him like, did anyone text anyone else? Like, where did this additional come from? And we realized that it started going.”
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
“There was a group of girls at the table in the restaurant, and I would probably not walk up to one of the girls that I was looking at because it would be inappropriate in that setting. I would have to really put myself out there.”
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
“Before I show her tender, I just sold a company and was thinking again, what is next? Reinvention. Around that time, the iPhone had just come out, had been in the market for a few years. And it was really obvious. Maybe this was a little early thought at the time, that this thing is going to change everything. I saw very early that as much as the phone was connecting us, it was also separating us from the real world. You know, I'd sit at restaurants and I would just like observe. My friends were, you know, heads down in their phone. It was the weirdest fucking thing. We're all together in a table that everyone's heads down in their phone. And so for me, I was obsessed with this notion of how can the phone actually empower the real world and not take us away from it. So I had this insight one day just kind of hanging around looking at my friends on their phone at a restaurant. I'm like, how can this phone help me connect with people around me? And I realized.”
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
“To me, leadership is when you sort of try to abstract yourself away. If things are dependent on you, then you haven't really achieved something, you haven't really been a great leader and given to the next generation, shared your talents and empowered other people. So I think truly great leadership, you know, the greatest CEOs are the ones that are there always available killing, pushing the company forward, but are building organizations that if they step away can run without them. Because that's when you have a healthy organization. You can't have any individual be the source or single source of success or failure. And you haven't matured the organization and that organization will never outlast you.”
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
“The best when there is sort of to some extent an all for one, one for all mentality, but we are here to accomplish a mission. We are all aligning against that mission. We understand our individual contribution to that mission, but we also have the humility to understand that none of us are significant enough or matter enough to success. And if we did, then that's actually a problem. We haven't built a great organization that's greater than us.”
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
“It's really hard. In my case, I sacrificed so much. Not only it was my identity, it was sort of all I did for a big portion of my life. So when you walk away and one day that's no longer your identity, it's really existentially rocking to your core. How did I deal with it? It took me a while to recognize that is not my identity and that is actually not healthy to make that my identity. And founders are better when their company is not them because it's not about you. It took me a while to sort of step away and see that. And I actually reflecting back our most successful moments when we were a little detached and can see the bigger picture beyond the individuals. And I think it's really important. I mean, a company is a group of people that are on a mission to solve problem. You need to take the individuals out of it. That's when companies perform.”
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