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1. Background
Education: Dropped out of Business School
College: University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business
Previous Career:
- Sean Rad started his first company, Orgoo, in 2005 at the age of 19, right when he was about to start college.
- Sean started his second venture, Adly, in 2006.
- He worked at Hatch Labs on a loyalty app - Cardify.
2. Origin Story
The Spark
When Sean Rad started his first company Orgoo, he met Justin Mateen, with whom he later co-founded Tinder. Post his stint with Aldy and while working on the app Cardify at Hatch Labs (a mobile app incubator based out of New York), Rad was tinkering with the idea of building a flirting app based on the concept of 'hot-or-not'.
The Launch
In a Hackathon conducted by Hatch Labs, Sean Rad, in collaboration with Joe Munoz built Matchbox, which was along the lines of a flirting app. Matchbox won the Hackathon, and the team shifted their attention towards its future development. After 3 weeks and an investment of $50,000 (part of which was from IAC), a polished version of Matchbox was ready for the launch. Re-branding Matchbox as Tinder, the app was launched in 2012.
3. Other interesting points
- While in high school, Sean Rad interned as an entertainment manager, to pursue his interests in the music and entertainment industry. He realized that fate of artists is controlled to a great extent by managers and agents. In his words - "I figured I could amass a lot of wealth by doing things I love – then I can control my own fate as an artist".
- Sean Rad stepped down as the CEO of Tinder, when there was a scandal filed against one of the founders. He was still working for Tinder after stepping down. Within six months, he was restored to the position of CEO.
- As of early 2020, Sean Rad's estimated net worth is around $1.2 billion, owing majorly to his stake in Tinder's net worth of ~ $10 billion.
4. Quote
"We believe in democracy. If society just wants to “hook up”, who am I to judge?" - Sean Rad
5. Company growth & sources (links)
