

Tinder’s Sean Rad Demoted from CEO, Will Serve as President of Board - funkyy
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/tinders-sean-rad-demoted-from-ceo-will-serve-as-president-of-board/

======
chimeracoder
> Ultimately, it’s a giant “he said, she said” that will likely forever remain
> cloudy—in September Wolfe and Tinder settled out of court, with neither
> Mateen nor anyone at Tinder or IAC admitting any guilt

This is _unbelievably_ sloppy journalism.

It's not 'forever cloudy'. We have the actual text messages in question.
Unless one wants to accuse Wolfe and her legal team of fabricating evidence
(which is quite the accusation), those SMS logs are more incriminating than a
smoking gun.

Also, while they did settle, Tinder (IAC) did admit wrongdoing, pretty much
immediately after the story broke[0][1].

If _both_ Wolfe _and_ IAC are admitting that Mateen harassed Wolfe, and we
have the evidence to go along with that, that's about as conclusive as one
could reasonably expect.

 __EDIT __: For clarity, this quotation was pulled from the Forbes article[2]
now linked in the comments. Not sure if this was the original submission and
the post was merged or if I just confused the two links. Either way, though,
my comment still stands, as the Techcrunch piece says 'In the end, no party
admitted guilt and the case was settled out of court.'

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7971289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7971289)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7971983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7971983)

[2]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusive-
sean-rad-out-as-tinder-ceo-inside-the-crazy-saga/)

~~~
fossuser
Yeah my read from this article was a lot different. Seemed to imply that there
was a nasty break up and they both sent nasty messages to each other
afterwards. Also implied that she was only given the cofounder role because
they were together in the first place.

Edit: Was referencing this article from the comments -
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusive-
sean-rad-out-as-tinder-ceo-inside-the-crazy-saga/)

------
funkyy
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/11/04/exclusive-
sean-rad-out-as-tinder-ceo-inside-the-crazy-saga/)

Great article about how this was done. Sounds really scary.

------
trhway
>In July a former Tinder executive—and former Mateen girlfriend—named Whitney
Wolfe went public with a salacious sexual harassment lawsuit that generated
awful press and the CMO’s quick suspension.

it is simple - don't mix relationships and work. Reminds about that GitHub
story too. And about a high-power couple and several low-power
couples/relatives we have here across our organization too.

~~~
alexandros
Sounds simple until you realise that boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife teams
have also done very well. Bezos started amazon with his wife, and of course
we're having this conversation on the news aggregator of an accellerator that
started after a conversation between PG and Jessica Livingston, who then
extended their personal relationship into co-founding YC.

~~~
topynate
Starting a company with your wife is utterly different from starting a
relationship with your not-yet-co-founder. If your relationship with your
spouse goes to shit, everyone knows what the deal is - division of assets,
etc. Spouses are incentivised not to 'harass' because they're afraid of what
it will do to the settlement. This Tinder shit is so unclear it's actually
devaluing the stock price!

~~~
arach
From the sound of it, the scandal merely provided an opportunity for the
parent company to take back power of a hugely valuable property. The scandal
itself, while obviously unpleasant for all involved, didn't affect Tinder's
performance as a fast growing app. At all as far as I can tell.

As far as relationships at work go, it's really hard to say that it's always a
bad idea. Bill and Melinda Gates met at Microsoft and ... well it worked quite
well. [http://www.biography.com/people/melinda-
gates-507408#persona...](http://www.biography.com/people/melinda-
gates-507408#personal-life)

------
discodave
Best part of the whole article, this line:

“I learned if we could penetrate social influencers first, it would trickle
down to everyone else.”

Oh how spot on that choice of words is :)

------
coherentpony
> Tinder’s parent company just swiped left on Sean Rad, ...

[https://i.imgur.com/Sg8vJkv.gif](https://i.imgur.com/Sg8vJkv.gif)

