From Swipe to Scale: How Tinder Became #1

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:04 You’re only as good as your ability to listen
0:00:07 to the people using your products.
0:00:09 If there was a easy way to get information
0:00:11 without me inputting a lot of information,
0:00:13 we always pursued that.
0:00:14 It was really this idea
0:00:16 that it had to be passive and magical.
0:00:18 If I have to do work,
0:00:22 it might make me feel like a little desperate.
0:00:26 A lot of startups put marketing ahead of product.
0:00:29 If you don’t have product market fit before you do that,
0:00:32 you’re not actually getting quality feedback.
0:00:35 If I don’t understand it in five words
0:00:36 and I can’t connect with it,
0:00:39 then you’re probably not going to be that viral.
0:00:42 In 1995, just 30 years ago,
0:00:46 2% of couples met online through sites like match.com,
0:00:49 which by the way, was one of the few dating sites
0:00:52 that even existed prior to 2000.
0:00:55 Now today, that number is well over 50%,
0:00:57 meaning it’s the primary way that couples meet.
0:01:00 Perhaps that alone is not surprising to you,
0:01:02 but it was right around 2012
0:01:05 that we saw online become that primary channel,
0:01:08 eclipsing, meeting with your friends, work, the bar,
0:01:10 family, school, you name it.
0:01:14 That also happens to be the year that Tinder was founded.
0:01:15 At the beginning of this episode,
0:01:19 A16Z General Partner Andrew Chen asked the audience,
0:01:21 how many people in the room have used Tinder?
0:01:23 Well, count me in Andrew,
0:01:26 but I want you the listener to reflect on the same.
0:01:29 If you haven’t used it, how many of your friends have used it?
0:01:32 How many couples do you know that have met through it?
0:01:33 Any marriages?
0:01:36 Well, today you’ll get to hear from Sean Rad,
0:01:38 founder and longtime CEO of Tinder,
0:01:42 about how he created a product that changed culture.
0:01:44 This podcast was recorded live in LA
0:01:47 during our A16Z Games speedrun program.
0:01:49 So if you’d like to learn more about speedrun,
0:01:53 which is returning for its fourth iteration in San Francisco,
0:01:57 head on over to a16z.com/games/speedrun.
0:02:03 As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only,
0:02:06 should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice,
0:02:08 or be used to evaluate any investment or security,
0:02:11 and is not directed at any investors or potential investors
0:02:13 in any A16Z fund.
0:02:15 Please note that A16Z and its affiliates
0:02:19 may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast.
0:02:21 For more details, including a link to our investments,
0:02:24 please see a16z.com/disclosures.
0:02:35 Show of hands of who has downloaded or used Tinder at some point in their life.
0:02:37 Let’s do this. All right. There you go.
0:02:39 Amazing. Yeah. Sean, this is all the people that you call.
0:02:40 My wife just raised her hand.
0:02:46 That’s like where I wanted to actually start
0:02:49 and where we’re going to actually spend most of the conversation
0:02:52 is the underdog story of being a founder and an entrepreneur.
0:02:57 And so I wanted to actually just start with the Sean Radd origin story before Tinder.
0:03:03 Good question. I think up until the age of 17, I was in music.
0:03:08 My dream was to be a singer, songwriter,
0:03:11 but also always had a passion for technology.
0:03:14 Something always gravitated me towards.
0:03:17 I remember like when I was a kid and my dad got DSL,
0:03:20 which is probably no one even knows what that is anymore.
0:03:22 It’s like early high speed internet.
0:03:23 I would rip that apart.
0:03:26 I’d like try to hack into the system.
0:03:27 I’d always mess it up.
0:03:29 So I always had a passion for technology,
0:03:34 but I pursued music, got a job at a music management company,
0:03:36 realized at least at that time,
0:03:39 musicians aren’t treated that well within the industry.
0:03:44 And I was like, I’m not going to be beholden to anyone.
0:03:49 So decided to go make a bunch of money and then come back to music.
0:03:53 And then that’s when I started my first company in college called Orgu.
0:03:57 And that was basically taking all the different ways you communicate
0:03:59 and putting it into one interface.
0:04:03 And then started my next company, Adley,
0:04:07 which pioneered influencer marketing and influencer advertising.
0:04:12 So we had 5,000 brands and 10,000 what you would call creators right now.
0:04:17 And we would broker relationships with them and track the analytics.
0:04:19 Sold Adley.
0:04:22 And around the time, the iPhone had just come out.
0:04:27 And I sort of recognize everything is about to change.
0:04:31 The idea of having the most powerful computer in our pockets
0:04:34 everywhere we go was just fascinating.
0:04:36 And I wanted to do something in mobile.
0:04:42 So I started one of my investors at Adley had created a test flight.
0:04:44 So I started working with the test flight team.
0:04:51 And I built what is now Apple Analytics, then left to pursue two ideas.
0:04:57 And one of them was Cardify, which was like a local loyalty program.
0:04:58 Still a great idea. No one’s done it.
0:05:01 If you go into a restaurant, swipe your credit card.
0:05:07 In the app, you get points, but you don’t have to open the app, do anything.
0:05:09 It was all connected through the credit card system.
0:05:12 And the other idea was Matchbox, which is Tinder.
0:05:20 And my thinking at the time was both of those ideas came out of this realization that,
0:05:21 I mean, now this is pretty obvious.
0:05:27 But back then, I’m like, all my friends are heads down in their phones when we were together.
0:05:28 And I’m like, this is so weird.
0:05:35 And I saw very early on, I’m like, this device could either bring us closer together,
0:05:37 or it could tear us apart.
0:05:41 It could take us out of the moment and distract us.
0:05:48 So I started thinking, how can we use the phone to help me interface with the world
0:05:52 and make my real world interactions even better?
0:05:58 One of those work streams was I want to interact with the places I frequent more.
0:06:04 And another one of those work streams was I was single and wanted a better way to
0:06:13 meet people and overcome, I would say, this kind of fear of rejection or anxiety we all
0:06:15 feel in walking up to someone.
0:06:19 And the root of Tinder was, well, what if we could take that away
0:06:22 by introducing this ephemeral matchmaker?
0:06:24 I don’t need to tell the person I like them.
0:06:26 I could tell the matchmaker.
0:06:29 And if someone else tells the matchmaker, then there’s an introduction.
0:06:31 The ice is broken and we can connect.
0:06:33 And that was sort of like the core thesis of Tinder.
0:06:38 And at the time, I mean, there had already been a couple large online dating products,
0:06:41 like eHarmony existed and got into an interesting scale.
0:06:42 There was match.com.
0:06:46 When we talked about this in the past, one of the observations you made is that
0:06:50 all those products almost felt like work, the way that they had been designed.
0:06:51 Yes.
0:06:56 I mean, if you think about this problem that I laid out, which is rejection,
0:07:03 those products actually were worse than the real world because I would message a bunch of people
0:07:04 and not get a response.
0:07:09 I granted, and this is true, I’ve never used any of those products still to this day,
0:07:13 because we never saw ourselves as competing within online dating.
0:07:19 We really saw ourselves as creating a new way for people to interact and make new connections.
0:07:25 So we didn’t even think about it as online dating or even a dating product.
0:07:28 We always thought about it as an introduction platform.
0:07:32 And we actually banned in the early days, like you weren’t allowed to say dating,
0:07:33 because dating products were not cool.
0:07:36 No one felt cool being on them.
0:07:41 So we were a social discovery app, because also dating was a very loaded word.
0:07:44 It’s like, what does that mean amongst our age group when we talk to our friends?
0:07:50 It’s a heavy word, and we wanted to create a more natural, real experience
0:07:55 and more of a platform where you can define it and make use of it, everyone.
0:08:00 You could date, you could get married, you could make a friend, you could hook up, of course.
0:08:03 I mean, whatever it is, it’s all in the user’s hands.
0:08:06 And I think this is like supervision area at the time,
0:08:10 also because as a business model, I remember being in the Bay Area,
0:08:16 and investors would just say, yeah, we don’t fund gaming and we don’t fund online dating.
0:08:18 It was just like a category they didn’t believe in.
0:08:20 Yeah, they didn’t get, they didn’t believe in.
0:08:24 Obviously these days, we see how people meet romantically,
0:08:26 and I think it’s now up to what, 70%?
0:08:32 Tinder, I would say, we did a study in 2017, I think that concluded that 40% of US marriages
0:08:36 met on Tinder. I don’t know if that’s more or less, it’s still the number one dating app in the
0:08:40 world. But back when you started, it would have been like…
0:08:42 2%. Yeah, exactly, right, right.
0:08:46 Yeah, it was not really something that was perceived as a mainstream activity.
0:08:50 And so that means you have to build a product that conveys trust,
0:08:54 and you were already starting to think about is, quote unquote, dating the right term.
0:08:58 Talk a little bit about how do you even position yourself and talk about the idea,
0:08:59 given all those constraints?
0:09:05 I think it all starts with product. So what is the problem you’re solving, being very clear on that?
0:09:14 I think a mistake that a lot of companies make is there’s product as a silo, then it goes to design,
0:09:17 then it goes to engineering, then it goes to marketing, or maybe product marketing first,
0:09:23 then it goes to customer acquisition. I hated this waterfall model of building a product.
0:09:29 We always saw it as one cohesive narrative. If you hear about it from a friend all the way to
0:09:34 signing up, all the way to using the product to experiencing the value proposition, to then telling
0:09:39 your friends, that’s one narrative and that needs to be one unit. So I think what was unique about
0:09:47 Tinder is we really fused together these multi-disciplinary crafts. And we were able to bring
0:09:51 together these different perspectives and build on a platform that was brand new, right?
0:09:55 No one understood mobile. I mean, I don’t know if you guys remember Facebook’s app at that time is
0:09:59 horrible. Well, they tried to basically take their whole website and crank it to
0:10:05 tiny app. Yeah, I think everyone just saw it as like a different canvas. We saw it as a completely
0:10:11 different way of interacting. So I think we also pushed the edge of mobile user experience design.
0:10:17 And I remember the initial versions of Tinder required Facebook login and you showed mutuals.
0:10:22 We really believed in like human design and really understanding what people are already doing and
0:10:26 accentuating that versus getting people to do something completely different. And if you think
0:10:33 about meeting, you don’t walk into a bar and give someone a resume. That’s what every dating
0:10:40 experience felt like. So we knew Tinder had to be very minimalistic, very simple, very natural.
0:10:47 So if there was a easy way to get information without me inputting a lot of information,
0:10:52 we always pursued that, whether it’s mobile phone sensors, whether it’s connecting your Facebook
0:10:57 account, where we were able to pull in a lot of information about you. That was also unique
0:11:03 at the time. I guess not a lot of apps were even thinking that way about how do you properly leverage
0:11:09 the social graph to create new experiences. So it was really this idea that it had to be
0:11:15 passive and magical. If I have to do work, it might make me feel like a little desperate,
0:11:20 like I’m going out of my way to meet someone and we never wanted Tinder to feel that way.
0:11:24 Right. And one of the ways that I’m interpreting the way that you’re talking about this is that
0:11:28 because you had mobile as this new platform, there’s a whole thing about like, how do you surf
0:11:32 these waves, right? And a lot of what you’re talking about is sort of like creating the native
0:11:37 product experience to that wave as opposed to just trying to take the last thing and kind of copy
0:11:42 and paste it onto it. Yeah, totally. I mean, look, you always have to remember in these waves,
0:11:50 it doesn’t mean that the new technology necessarily creates a new problem. You still have to solve
0:11:57 the problem. Now, the new technology gives you new ways to solve that problem. But I think what
0:12:03 you always see in some of these waves is you have startups that are like, I’m doing something in AI
0:12:11 or I’m doing something in mobile, but what does that really mean? Mobile or AI is a way to deliver
0:12:17 an experience. It’s a tool. It’s not actually a problem or a solution. So I think going back to
0:12:22 this like human centered way of building business, like who’s your customer? What is their problem?
0:12:29 And how are you solving it? AI might be part of that narrative. It might not be part of that narrative.
0:12:34 But I think definitely the technologies give you new ways to solve problems. And then sometimes you
0:12:41 have these distortions between how people are accessing information and what’s being provided
0:12:46 to them. In our case, there’s a shift to mobile. And it’s like, even if you had the same exact
0:12:51 product Tinder, but on the web, right? That’s a very different product when it’s on mobile,
0:12:55 because the behavior is different. And that’s something Facebook didn’t understand in the
0:13:01 early days. They saw mobile as like mobile web. They didn’t see it as a new behavior, a new way
0:13:08 of interacting. Right. Let’s go to a process of launching the product and tell us a little bit
0:13:12 about what did the team look like at the point where you were getting started? And then how did
0:13:19 you get your first users? So in the beginning, it was just me. So I designed it myself. Very few
0:13:24 will know this, but I’m a product UX designer. And to me, this is however great idea starts. It’s
0:13:29 like get it on paper so you can actually show it to people. You need that to recruit and inspire
0:13:37 others to join you. But also it’s like the first product market fit test. And then I think recruiting
0:13:45 a team to build it, but it was very important to me to bring people on the ride who really believed
0:13:52 in our vision and had that passion. Because I think I knew very early on that passionate
0:13:59 inexperienced person will still be more effective than a dispassionate experience.
0:14:05 So like passion to us was like the number one currency of joining the team. And that started
0:14:09 with me being able to articulate the vision or else how can anyone else get passionate about it?
0:14:17 Hey, it’s Steph. You might know that before my time at A16C, I used to work at a company called
0:14:22 The Hustle. And then we were acquired by HubSpot where I helped build their podcast network.
0:14:27 And while I’m not there anymore, I’m still a big fan of HubSpot podcasts, especially My First
0:14:33 Million. In fact, I’ve listened to pretty much all 600 of their episodes. My First Million is
0:14:37 perfect for those of you who are always trying to stay ahead of the curve. Or in some cases,
0:14:42 take matters into your own hands by building the future yourself. Hosted by my friends,
0:14:48 Sam Parr and Sean Curry, who have each built and sold eight figure businesses to Amazon and HubSpot,
0:14:53 the show explores business ideas that you can start tomorrow. Plus, Sam and Sean jam alongside
0:14:59 guests like Mr. Beast, Rob Dyrdek, Tim Ferriss, and, every so often, you’ll even find me there.
0:15:04 From gas station pizza and egg carton businesses doing millions all the way up to several guests
0:15:09 making their first billion. Go check out My First Million wherever you get your podcasts.
0:15:21 We had this whole group earlier this week. Actually, everybody gave like a elevator pitch,
0:15:26 which I always love because you put so much effort into simplifying the message to a point where
0:15:30 everybody can understand it. And it takes effort to make it simpler, not more complex.
0:15:37 Absolutely. That was actually a core principle a tender was simplicity is genius. There’s a great
0:15:40 Albert Einstein quote that if something isn’t simple enough, it’s because you don’t understand it.
0:15:46 Oh, right, right. It’s truly get to the essence of something. It requires deep exploration and thought.
0:15:52 The iPhone is a great example of that, right? Removing buttons and simplifying and subtracting
0:15:58 versus adding. So I think the same thing applies to your pitch. If I don’t understand it in five
0:16:02 words and I can’t connect with it, then you’re probably not going to be that viral because how
0:16:06 am I going to explain it to someone else? Yeah, that’s right. I’m not going to say to my friend,
0:16:11 hey, can I give you this pitch about this new app? It’s more like check this out. Five words.
0:16:14 Yeah, that’s right. Well, it’s a little bit like the NPS question is like, how likely would you be
0:16:18 to recommend this to a friend? The sub question that I always love there is, okay,
0:16:21 now tell me how you would recommend it to a friend. Like literally describe it.
0:16:25 What words do you use? What words do you use? And it’s always completely different than whatever
0:16:29 the creator of the product thinks. Yeah. And it’s very, very educational because it tells you like,
0:16:33 oh, okay, I’m being compared to these things that maybe you like, maybe you don’t like.
0:16:38 It’s a very important signal. You’re only as good as your ability to listen to the people using your
0:16:43 products. And many times, these products take a life of their own and they’re taking you somewhere
0:16:47 that you didn’t even think about going. So one of the nice things about Tinder was that we were in
0:16:55 LA and we were in West Hollywood and nobody was in the tech business there. So like when we go to
0:17:00 restaurants and we’d show the app or we get feedback, we were getting some pretty honest
0:17:07 reactions. It was more about reaching the populace and what they think than our other technical
0:17:11 friends who might give that explanation very differently. I totally agree because if you
0:17:16 can’t tell your story, not only is it maybe unclear in your own mind, but also, yeah,
0:17:21 maybe you can’t recruit, maybe you can’t fundraise. 100%. Maybe your product is actually less viral.
0:17:25 So getting that right is so key. Absolutely. So you have the V1 of Tinder in your head,
0:17:31 you write it down, you start recruiting the people. And then famously, you eventually get into this
0:17:36 motion of going college to college to college. Yeah. Well, I had the benefit of a Tinder coming
0:17:43 off of Adley where I sort of really understood how social media marketing or let’s call it
0:17:48 virality worked, at least in a digital environment and also real environment. But the first thing
0:17:53 we did, we had the app and we launched the app. We were all playing with it, gave it to a few
0:17:57 friends. We loved it and we’re like, “What the fuck do we do? How do we get this out there?”
0:18:04 The first thing we did was I told everyone on the team, “Take out your phones, text 100 of your
0:18:10 friends.” And then we texted 300 people and to our shock, it was like three days later,
0:18:15 we had 500 users. I was like, “What the fuck? Did anyone else text anyone else? What is going on
0:18:22 here?” And part of that was really refining, what was that pitch? It was like we were grilling people
0:18:27 and I think the message we sent was, “Download this app and think me later.” We didn’t even
0:18:33 say what the app was or what it did. So we also understood there had to be an element of mystery
0:18:40 and curiosity in how things go viral. Then one of our interns was in college at the time
0:18:47 and his friend, she was very popular on campus, was having a massive birthday party with 2,000
0:18:53 people. And we went to her and we said, “Hey, why don’t we throw the party for you?” We ended up
0:19:00 doing it at Justin, my co-founder’s house and we literally shuttled all these USC students
0:19:09 to his parents’ house and we trashed the house. Worth it. Yeah, worth it. And what we did was,
0:19:14 we were like, “Okay, you can’t get into this party unless you download this app called Tinder.”
0:19:19 And literally the bouncer was checking, “Cannot get in the door unless you download the app.”
0:19:25 And the next day, a bunch of hungover college students were like, “What was that app I downloaded?”
0:19:31 And we realized, “Whoa, we just created a little echo chamber within USC and it’s starting to go
0:19:37 viral.” And we are a local product which I think introduced more complexity in how we grow. We
0:19:44 were a social product that needs network effects to work that’s hard enough. Social local product
0:19:52 compounds it even more. So we realized, “Wow, that’s like a way to reach a bunch of people who are
0:19:58 within an ecosystem, have connections to each other, and it’s another way to stress test this
0:20:04 thesis that we had.” Which was, “We’re not for people who are busy professionals who go to
0:20:10 match.com because they don’t have time and how many people walking around a college campus
0:20:14 might see someone but not have the courage to go talk to them. Can we make more of those
0:20:20 connections?” And it was working. So then we’re like, “Okay, how do we penetrate USC even more?”
0:20:27 And we realized that every Thursday night, fraternities and sororities have like chapter
0:20:32 dinners where other fraternities and sororities would come in and give a presentation of what
0:20:37 they’re doing that week. So we’ve literally posed as college students and would go to the fraternities
0:20:43 and sororities and just talk about the app. And that worked. And then we’re like, “Okay, well,
0:20:49 that just got us 5,000 users I think at the time.” And we’re like, “All right, if we do this in every
0:20:55 college, it’s all going to add up.” So we hired a bunch of college students across all campuses
0:21:00 in the US and we just started pounding the pavement. We would throw parties. We would go into Greek life,
0:21:06 introduce the app. But again, none of this would have mattered if we didn’t have a product that
0:21:14 works. I think this is so fucking important. A lot of startups put marketing ahead of product.
0:21:20 If you don’t have product market fit before you do that, you’re not actually getting quality
0:21:24 feedback. You’re doing yourself a disservice. You have one chance to introduce your product’s
0:21:30 people. That one chance has to count. So I would say it was systematic of a great product,
0:21:38 but also really focusing customer acquisition on the right people, creating a bubble around groups
0:21:43 of people rather than like spraying and praying and going wide. Did you guys worry at the beginning
0:21:47 where if you had certain kinds of VCs that were involved or something like that,
0:21:51 they would have probably told you something like, “Oh, this could go to market via college. It’s great
0:21:55 and everything, but you’re only getting a couple hundred users. It’s not scalable. It’s not repeatable.
0:21:59 Why do it?” And obviously it ended up working out ultimately.
0:22:03 This is actually a very important lesson that we learned, especially when you’re
0:22:10 building a network product. The engagement you get from every user matters. So if I see
0:22:14 something on a billboard, I download it. The effect is very different than if my friend tells me
0:22:20 about a product. And we had opportunities, many opportunities to actually do mass marketing,
0:22:26 actually in the early days, Kim Kardashian wanted to promote the product. Again, going back to my
0:22:31 Adley days. And we didn’t want to do that because we’re like, “Wait, if we just get a bunch of random
0:22:36 users all over the world and we’re not creating the density and the organic virality, then the
0:22:42 network effect will be very weak.” So that was our answer whenever this question came up with
0:22:48 investors was like, “Hold on. This isn’t because we can’t go and do bigger marketing. This is
0:22:53 because you have to understand the nature of the product and how to actually create
0:22:58 effective network effects.” And I think once we would explain it that way, they’re like,
0:23:01 “Wow, these people really know what they’re fucking doing.” And it was about consistently
0:23:08 sort of widening the tent, but taking every step on the way and not trying to take shortcuts.
0:23:14 Shortcuts don’t always work. Yeah, amazing. I know Tinder went through lots of really
0:23:20 interesting ups and downs. And one thing I always admired was you guys were always launching in new
0:23:24 countries or there was like different new product lines. I remember one time we were chatting and
0:23:28 you were like working on something where there was going to be tabs on top of Tinder. You were
0:23:33 going to be able to meet friends and maybe even professionally network on Tinder. Talk a little
0:23:39 bit about this culture of just being okay with failing and being willing to try stuff versus
0:23:42 I can also imagine a version when you’re working on a product that’s kind of working,
0:23:47 you’re kind of like, “Okay, don’t change anything.” And you’re trying not to like rock the boat.
0:23:55 Well, okay, so two things. One is you won’t know starting a company is very hard. It’s emotionally,
0:24:01 like you’re kind of like a mental athlete. And if you’re not doing it for the right reasons,
0:24:07 if you don’t have that drive, that passion, that motivation of love, then I think when
0:24:14 shit gets hard, you’re going to give up. So I think resiliency starts with passion. The more
0:24:18 passionate you are, the more resilient you’re going to be. And that I think leads the second
0:24:26 thing, which is when it’s from the heart, we can be honest and critical of each other. And
0:24:30 we’re all fighting towards one mission and it’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the
0:24:36 mission. When it’s out of ego, well, then maybe we’re not being honest for playing politics.
0:24:44 And we had a culture that was extremely honest and open. And that kept making these products
0:24:51 better. And part of that open and honest culture was also recognizing that if something doesn’t
0:24:58 work and we made a mistake, that we have to be able to look at each other and say,
0:25:04 that didn’t work and not be afraid of that and take that as a lesson and leverage it into something
0:25:09 greater. Companies grow through trial and error and learning. Do you have a favorite project
0:25:12 for a few days? I’m sure there are many about where you feel like you really learned from it.
0:25:17 There were a lot. I would give a good example of how we institutionalize some of this is like our
0:25:23 all hands were all about the product and design team and every team presenting to the company.
0:25:29 We were small, started doing this to 10 people, but we’d present to the team and I would encourage
0:25:36 everyone to say what you like or don’t like and rip it apart. And that mattered because people learn,
0:25:42 oh, if I actually say something sucks, I’m not going to get in trouble. And every time that would
0:25:47 happen, it would lead to a better result. And then we also embodied that. The amount of debates I had
0:25:54 with John, we would have like lovers quarrels over product openly in the floor because I wanted
0:26:00 everyone to hear that that is okay for you to debate and that builds better products. Getting
0:26:04 all those perspectives in there is only going to result in a better product. And then there’s many
0:26:09 things that we killed that didn’t work. Matchmaker was one of them. We had a product where we were
0:26:14 like sure was going to work where you can pick two of your friends and force a match. So you could
0:26:20 play a matchmaker. I was like certain that was going to work. And we ended up killing it. I remember
0:26:25 when we killed it, the team was really sad because they’d worked really hard on it. But the way I
0:26:32 presented it was like, if we don’t kill it, then we don’t have room to do something new. But if a
0:26:36 team is afraid to do that because, oh gosh, we worked so hard on something and you’re not really
0:26:42 being honest or intellectually honest or in it for the greater good of the company. So you have to
0:26:47 check the ego at the door. That’s right. I remember the very first couple of times I was hearing about
0:26:52 Tinder. It was often, so this is sort of a question about press and controversy and all that other
0:26:58 stuff. You know, obviously many of us remember the point where it was like, oh, it’s a hookup app.
0:27:02 Do you think that was ultimately helpful because it just created heat? And they asked us sort of
0:27:06 knowing that there’s so many folks that are working in AI right now and AI itself is controversial.
0:27:11 Do you kind of play into that? I think in the early days we’ve leaned into it because we didn’t
0:27:17 give a fuck. We just wanted more users. We believed in what we were doing and we didn’t care what the
0:27:23 press was saying. At a certain point we started caring and I think it became a huge distraction.
0:27:28 And then you start comparing by your competitors and that becomes a huge distraction. We let it go
0:27:32 at a certain point and that unlocked a lot of creativity because really what matters is your
0:27:38 relationship with your users. They’re the people you should really listen to and care about. Your
0:27:44 pundits matter too because maybe they have great feedback for you and there are many times like
0:27:50 press would say something like, oh, that’s actually a good criticism. We got to look into that.
0:27:56 But also, at least in our case, it would never make a difference in metrics. It was a fraction
0:28:02 of the horsepower of our users being our advocates and telling their friends and that’s really what
0:28:06 we tried to focus on. And it also ignored the competition because it’s like they have a different
0:28:11 set of circumstances. They’re doing a different thing. We’re focused on our users and that was
0:28:19 always where we would get alignment and peace. We had a very similar experience at Uber as well
0:28:25 because there was famously a week or two in France where all the taxi drivers came out and did like
0:28:31 a mega anti-Uber protest and all the politicians were saying all this stuff. It was in all the news
0:28:37 headlines. Absolutely crushed downloads that entire month. It was like record everything.
0:28:42 Yeah, we had moments like that too. Sort of a fun controversy cells. One point of view is as
0:28:48 long as they’re saying your name, your abs name, then great. That’s a win. Especially nowadays,
0:28:53 most people don’t remember what they read in the press, but they remember maybe if you’re lucky,
0:28:58 they’ll take away the name of the product. Right. And then maybe that generates curiosity to go
0:29:02 download it. And then if you have a really good product, despite whatever anyone’s saying,
0:29:04 then you’ll earn that user’s trust.
0:29:14 All right. That is all for today. If you did make it this far, first of all, thank you. We put a
0:29:17 lot of thought into each of these episodes, whether it’s guests, the calendar touchers,
0:29:22 the cycles with our amazing editor Tommy until the music is just right. So if you’d like what we
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0:29:37 your favorite episode is. It’ll make my day. And I’m sure Tommy’s too. We’ll catch you on the flip side.
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