Tinder cofounder Sean Rad has been interviewed at Disrupt Europe in 2013, at Disrupt San Francisco in 2014, and this year, he’ll be hitting up the Disrupt NY stage. Why? Tinder has had a wild year.
The company headed into the summer of 2014 facing a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by former VP of marketing Whitney Wolfe after a relationship between her and cofounder and CMO Justin Mateen ended badly. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but it had long-lasting effects. Justin Mateen was suspended indefinitely and later resigned, and a few months later IAC’s Sam Yagan told Sean Rad that he’d be moved out of the CEO role.
Soon after, the company rolled out a monetization strategy, launching Tinder Plus as a premium tier of the service. Tinder Plus offers added features like Rewind, letting you go back on accidental left swipes, as well as Passport, which lets users search for matches anywhere in the world. Tinder Plus also offers an ad-free experience, though the company has yet to roll those out across the free product just yet.
Tinder Plus is a complicated product for a few reasons. The first is that it introduces a “right-swipe limiter”, meaning that users who swipe right too much and too fast (based on an algorithm) will run out of likes for the day, unless they upgrade to Tinder Plus.
Another interesting piece of Tinder Plus, which we’re excited to get more clarity on at Disrupt, is the pricing model. Tinder Plus pricing is based on age, with users over 30 paying approximately $20 and users under 30 paying around $10.
With the upcoming launch of advertisements and the recent debut of monetization, 20 minutes might not be long enough to get to the bottom of everything. But we’re definitely going to try.
Rad joins other notable founders speaking at Disrupt like Tristan Walker and Emily Weiss.
The show runs May 4-6 at the historic Manhattan Center. Tickets are available at an early bird discount rate until April 11th.
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