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Sean Rad Tinder

Tinder co-founder Sean Rad re-takes the dating app's helm

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By John Glenday, Reporter

August 13, 2015 | 2 min read

Tinder co-founder Sean Rad has returned to the dating apps hot seat just five months after making way for outgoing chief executive Chris Payne.

Tinder, Sean Rad

Payne's departure precipitates a management shake-up that includes the appointment of Greg Blatt, a senior executive at Tinder’s parent company IAC, who has been made executive chairman.

Explaining the rationale behind cutting Payne loose a mere five months into the job, board member Matt Cohler said: “It became clear after a few months that it wasn’t going to become a long-term fit. It’s only been a few months, but everyone came to the realisation, the board and Christopher, and all agreed it wouldn’t work out long-term. Given that, we thought we might as well take action on this sooner than later.

“One of the things the board has to navigate is how much the company has to conform to the leader or vice versa. In this case it became clear that both would have to contort themselves too much to make it really work. And in this kind of a company that is growing so quickly, everything needs to happen quickly. I’m proud of the fact that everyone around the table had the maturity to look the situation in the eye and take action.”

Payne was originally brought on board to bring more experience to the dating app, but Rad’s return leaves Tinder back where it started at the beginning of the year.

Tinder has not been far from the headlines this week. The app's management rejig comes just days after it accussed a repoter on Twitter of quoting faulty figures in a Vanity Fair article. Most of the coverage spun the rant as the company's public meltdown though there have been murmurs from some quarterts of the press that it was all a publicity stunt.

Sean Rad Tinder

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