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Sep 2024
1h 4m

20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons...

Harry Stebbings
About this episode

Sean Rad is the Founder and former CEO of Tinder. Sean has made more romantic connections between humans than anyone in history with Tinder having matched 50BN different people. Sean is also the Founder of Rad Fund which has made over 100 investments in companies and funds.

In Today's Episode with Sean Rad We Discuss:

1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App:

  • Starting: How did the idea for Tinder come to Sean in a restaurant in LA?
  • Scaling: What are Sean's biggest lessons for consumer apps scaling to their first 10,000 users?
  • User Acquisition: How did a party change the entire user acquisition strategy for dinner?
  • What did Tinder not do that Sean wishes they had done?
  • What did Tinder do that with the benefit of hindsight, they should not have done?

2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship:

  • Annual Product Redesign: Why does Sean believe that every consumer company should have a complete redesign of the app every year? What are the benefits?
  • Detachment: How does Sean advise founders when it comes to detaching their happiness from the performance of the company? What works? What does not work?
  • Common Mistakes: What are the most common mistakes that Sean sees early-stage founders make when it comes to leadership?

3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office:

  • How does Sean analyse his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time?
  • At what stage of wealth does Sean believe you have true financial freedom?
  • What is the single best investment Sean has made? What did he learn?
  • What is the worst investment he has made? What did he learn?
  • What have been the single hardest and most surprising elements of creating a family office?

4. Love, Death, Marriage:

  • In what ways does Sean think love has changed with time? How do we deal with the loneliness pandemic?
  • What does Sean believe are the most non-obvious but important secrets to a happy marriage?
  • How does Sean approach and think about his own spirituality today? Why does he not fear death?

 

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