Tinder’s Sean Rad Demoted From CEO, Will Serve As President Of Board

Tinder’s parent company just swiped left on Sean Rad, who will step down as the company’s CEO, according to a report from Forbes. He is to remain with the company and serve as the president of the board. But he’s not out yet. Tinder and IAC will soon start looking for a replacement CEO for the growing startup.

Rad said in the article that the company is looking for a “an Eric Schmidt-like person” to take the top spot.

Tinder’s growth has been explosive. Its estimated worth is well over a billion and IAC likely does not want to gabble its potential unicorn on the unproven Sean Rad — even though he lead the company’s growth to this spot. Forbes pins Rad’s demotion on the uncertainty generated within IAC following the company’s high-profile sexual harassment suit against Whitney Wolfe.

If you’re in the dark on that, the story goes like this: Sean Rad and his best friend Justin Mateen were at the helm of the Tinder ship, with Whitney Wolfe working as VP of Marketing after joining as part of the founding team. After a couple years of Justin and Whitney dating on and off, the relationship came to a rough end, which led to a lot of inappropriate conversation between Mateen and Wolfe.

But the lawsuit isn’t just about sexual harassment from Mateen, but also argues that Rad stripped Wolfe’s title of cofounder away because she was a female, and later wrongfully terminated her once the Justin drama and hit the fan.

In the end, no party admitted guilt and the case was settled out of court. But Tinder is too big to rest on slippery shoulders, and though Rad handled the post-drama media craze like a champ, the evidence in the lawsuit brings into question whether or not his judgement was harmed by working so closely with his best friends.

Pushing out a young CEO from a growing company is hardly a new tactic. It remains unseen if Rad will stick around at his new post. Yet IAC cannot take away Sean Rad’s title of Tinder founder. He holds 10% of the company’s value, which is easily a ten digit number.

Tinder’s parent company IAC stock price opened down on the day and at time of publication is trading .85% down at $67.30.

We’ve reached out to Rad, Tinder, and IAC and are waiting to hear back. We’ll update this post as soon as we know more.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/yxjHfAv-A4w/

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