Tinder just undid its “swipe left” on former CEO Sean Rad.
The fast-growing hookup app — majority-owned by billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, reappointed the 29-year-old co-founder as its chief executive late Wednesday night.
Rad returns after being replaced as CEO just five months ago by Chris Payne, a former eBay exec who had also held top positions at Microsoft and Amazon.
Rad was demoted to president last November in the wake of a C-suite sex-harassment storm last summer that engulfed the company’s other two co-founders, Justin Mateen and Whitney Wolfe.
In a lawsuit that was reportedly settled for about $1 million earlier this year, Wolfe had accused Mateen, a close friend of Rad, of texting her “a barrage of horrendously sexist, racist and otherwise inappropriate comments.”
In addition, Rad’s reputation was tarnished by allegations that he had sent a text calling Diller a “d–k” — and drew Diller’s initials,“B.D.,” in the shape of a penis.
After the penis prank, Diller’s IAC put Rad on notice that he was on his way out. Rad was a good sport, publicly voicing hopes that Payne would provide some “adult supervision” at Tinder the way Eric Schmidt had for Google’s young co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
But Payne, who was never a popular choice among staffers loyal to Rad, wasn’t a good “long-term fit,” Tinder board member Matt Cohler, who is also a partner at Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Benchmark, admitted on Thursday.
“Given Tinder’s rapid growth trajectory, both Christopher and the board thought prompt action was best for everyone,” Cohler said in a statement.
One key issue initially had been that Payne, long based in San Francisco, was reluctant to relocate to Tinder’s headquarters 380 miles south in West Hollywood, one source said.
“We mutually determined that this wasn’t going to be optimal and thought that a quick transition served everybody best,” Payne said in a statement.
Taking up the adult-supervision role, Greg Blatt, 46, will be appointed as the executive chairman of Tinder. Blatt also serves as chairman of The Match Group, which is slated for an IPO in the fourth quarter.
The news of Payne’s exit came the same day Tinder apologized for embarrassingly “overreacting” to a Vanity Fair exposé last week. The story recounted lurid tales of young Manhattan bankers using Tinder to order up random trysts with females like they were ordering Chinese takeout.
Tinder this week fired off a series of 30 tweets attacking the story, titled “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse,’ ” and accusing author Nancy Jo Sales of doing a one-sided hatchet job.
“Our intention was to highlight the many statistics and amazing stories that are sometimes left unpublished, and, in doing so, we overreacted,” the app said Wednesday.