Sean Rad

His parents emigrated from Iran in the 1970s.

He has a large family with 12 uncles and aunts and 42 first cousins.

Rad attended private school.

During high school he founded a band and interned for an entertainment manager.

He later decided that being an artist wasn't for him.

Sean Rad (born May 22, 1986) is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of the dating app Tinder.

In 2004, at 18 years old, Rad enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC).

That same year, he started his first company, Orgoo, a unified messaging and video communications platform.

Rad leveraged a network of University of Southern California (USC) computer science students to help him build the Orgoo technology.

In 2006, Rad left USC to pursue his business ventures.

In 2009, he founded Ad.ly, a celebrity endorsement platform that connected celebrities with brands.

In 2010, the company raised $5 million in VC funding from Greycroft Partners, Matt Coffin, and GRP Partners' Mark Suster.

Suster said of the investment, "I didn't invest in Orgoo but by the time he launched Ad.ly I knew [Rad's] capabilities and knew I wanted to work with him."

Rad launched Tinder in 2012 and by 2014 the company was recording one billion "swipes" a day.

Rad holds 15 patents for his work, including the patent for Tinder's "double opt-in" system, in which users must match before they can exchange messages.

In January 2012, Rad joined the startup incubator Hatch Labs to build Cardify, a next-generation, app based, customer loyalty rewards program.

However, within weeks of his joining, the incubator held an internal 48-hour hackathon; Rad was paired with Hatch Labs engineer Joe Munoz.

During the hackathon, Rad presented the idea for a double opt-in dating app called Matchbox.

MatchBox (which would later be named Tinder) was awarded first prize in the hackathon.

In the following weeks, while waiting for Apple to approve the Cardify app, Rad and the Cardify team shifted their focus to Matchbox.

In September 2012, Rad and his team officially launched Tinder.

Unlike previous dating apps, Tinder was designed for a mobile interface and utilized photo-focused profiles that were easily navigated with an intuitive swiping motion.

Within two months of launch, the app had facilitated over one million matches.

Rad served as Tinder's CEO from 2012 until March 2015 and then again from August 2015 until December 2016.

Tinder was named the "Best New Startup of 2013" by TechCrunch.

By 2014, the app was processing more than one billion swipes per day with the average user spending 90 minutes on the app.

By 2015, Tinder was the top grossing app in 99 countries, and in 2017, Tinder became the highest grossing app in Apple's App Store.

From March to August 2015, Rad was replaced as CEO by former Ebay executive, Christopher Payne.

During this time, Rad served as president and head of product and marketing.

Rad returned as CEO in August 2015 and remained in the role until December 2016, when he was replaced by Match Group's CEO Greg Blatt.

In 2017, Rad left Tinder over a valuation dispute with Tinder's parent company, IAC/Match Group.

Rad remained Tinder's Chairman of the Board until late 2017.

In 2017, Rad left Tinder over an RSU (restricted stock unit) valuation dispute and in 2018 he filed a $2 billion dollar lawsuit against Tinder's parent company, IAC.

In 2018, Rad and Tinder's founding team filed a $2 billion dollar lawsuit against IAC.

In 2022, the lawsuit was settled for $441 million dollars.

Rad was born in Los Angeles, California to an Iranian Jewish family.

In 2018, Rad and Claire Schmidt co-founded AllVoices.

AllVoices is an app that allows employees to anonymously report harassment, ethics, compliance, and other workplace issues directly to a company's board.

AllVoices was developed by Rad and former vice president of technology and innovation at 20th Century Fox Claire Schmidt in response to rampant complaints of sexual harassment in the technology and entertainment industries.

After submitting a report, users are notified when the company receives the information and when or if the company acts upon that report.