The Story of Tinder - the Startup That Changed the Way of Dating

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Spring 2012 saw the release of the Tinder app, which has changed the way we connect with new people. But, like any other super-successful startup, Tinder has not been without scandals, problems, and even litigation.

Accidental find

Unsurprisingly, Tinder came about by accident. Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, after meeting Jonathan Badin, decided to create the Cardify platform. With its help, sellers could increase the average check: Cardify offered people rewards for purchases in one place or another.

After working on the platform for several months and bringing it to a pre-release state, the creators of Cardify conceived a new product - a dating app. Rad and Matin wanted to make it easier for shy people so that they knew in advance if the other person liked them. This idea spilled over into Tinder.

Tinder operates all over the world, but the greatest impact is achieved in major US cities. There you can go to a bar, launch the app and see the people sitting around you (Tinder locates). Swiping photos of people to the left if you don't like them, and to the right if you like them, you can get to the person who also liked you and start a conversation in the app or in person.

The developers immediately decided on the audience - young people from 18 to 24 years old. Therefore, it was decided to launch primarily on campuses and colleges in order to gain a critical mass of users. The idea took off, and a year later, Tinder had hundreds of thousands of users. Then the Android app arrived.

Harassment and legal action

Six months after the creation of Tinder, Whitney Wolfe joined the team. She was a good friend of Alexa, the younger sister of Justin Matin. Justin and Whitney started dating. This went on for a year. During this time, Tinder got bigger and bigger. Investors came, and the company's capitalization grew.

In early 2014, Mateen and Wolfe broke up, and in June Wolfe sued Tinder for sexual harassment and abuse. It is difficult to understand this situation. Business Insider, for example, writes that Wolfe had every reason to sue the company and its co-founder Justin Matin:

Wolfe stated that Matin forced her to leave the company after their breakup. There were also frequent insults like slut and liar.

TechCrunch, on the other hand, sees a lot of inconsistencies in the story. For example, Wolfe's statement that Matin had been courting her for a long time to no avail was denied by the girl's friend, saying that Whitney was also attracted to Justin. Nevertheless, the claim for $ 1,000,000 was partially satisfied. The amount Wolfe received was not disclosed.

Tinder and the Olympics

During the Olympic Games in Sochi, all the major media wrote about Tinder. The reason for this was an interview with American snowboarder Jamie Anderson published by CBS. Then it turned out that 100,000 condoms had been ordered for the Olympic athletes.

Tinder! Anderson said with a chuckle. “It's just something in the Olympic Village. There are athletes everywhere! In the mountain village, they are everywhere. And a lot of pretty ones.

What's next

By 2015, Tinder had registered:

1 billion hits, 10 million hits per day.
800 million swipes every day.
300 marriage proposals.

The app has become very popular. Thus, 5% of the Australian population are Tinder users.

Not so long ago, the first Tinder Plus monetization appeared in the application. By paying a premium, you can cancel the last swipe and search for a pair anywhere in the world. The creators approached monetization in a rather unusual way, making the subscription cost different for different users. For example, the price for residents of the United States is $ 10 per month, for residents of other countries - from $ 0.99 to $ 4.99.

And the number of co-founders is decreasing. Sean Rad, who was at the origin, left the project. Tinder is now headed by Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badin.