George Arison, Grindr CEO: How Grindr Built a Free Flow Cash Machine | E1234

1. 0:00 – 1:03

   Intro

   1. GAGeorge Arison0:00

      The second thing that I think Silicon Valley showed and has learned is that there's insane inefficiency in each individual that you have working for you because there's very bad management. Management does not mean micromanagement. Grindr has less than 150 full-time employees. We are very, very efficient. You know, our revenue per head is very high. It's, you know, over two million bucks per full-time employee. We shouldn't be just comped to dating apps when they talk about, kind of, what the multiple and the stock should be. That we should be comped as much as to social network products-

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:28

      Mm-hmm.

   3. GAGeorge Arison0:28

      ... as much as we're comped to dating products.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:31

      Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) George, I am so excited for this, my friend. I've been such a fan of the Grindr business for a long time, so thank you so much for joining me today.

   5. GAGeorge Arison0:50

      Well, thanks for having me. I, um, love your podcast. It's, uh, done really well, and I'm really impressed with what you've built, so psyched to be here.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings0:57

      It's amazing how far a British accent can take you, um (laughs) , literally.

2. 1:03 – 4:01

   What Is Grindr & How George Became a CEO

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:03

      Uh, my question to you is, for those that don't know, what is Grindr and how did you come to be CEO of Grindr the public company today?

   2. GAGeorge Arison1:09

      So, Grindr is the largest network of gay and bi men in the world. Uh, started out as a product for hookups and casual dating in 2009. Took over the gay world in a very vital way. I mean, I remember when I first saw Grindr on a friend's Ph- iPhone in 2009. I was building a company on Blackberry, so I didn't have an iPhone, and the next day, I went and got an iPhone because I'm like, "Whoa, this is, like, way too good. I, I have to have this." Um, and there's some estimates, like Grindr sold half a million iPhones in the f- in the first year it was around, uh, et cetera, kind of in early adoption. Um, and over time, it grew bigger and bigger, and we're, uh, we're at over 14 million active monthly users now. And so, we have a much broader spectrum of audience now than just people who are looking for a hookup. Um, it's still, it's now the largest source of gay relationships in the United States. Um, so four in 10 gay relationships start on Grindr. People spend, on average, an hour a day in the app, which is really remarkable. Um, and we had 125 billion, approximately, messages sent in the app last year. Um, that's about 50 messages per person per day, um, which is more than WhatsApp messaging in, in a given day, uh, per, per user. Um, so it's a, it's become, like, a very critical network for gay and bi men all over the world, in, by the way, in 190 countries and territories all over the world.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings2:34

      Do you know what's insane? Is that I think the average stat is, like, one in two heterosexual relationships is started, like, o- over the internet-

   4. GAGeorge Arison2:40

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings2:41

      ... mobile or... And you have 40%.

   6. GAGeorge Arison2:44

      Yup, and it's really awesome.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings2:46

      That is insane. And an hour a day? Do the, do they not work? (laughs)

   8. GAGeorge Arison2:53

      I actually... When, when I first heard it, I'm like, "Wait, do you mean, like, a week?" Uh, right? Uh, um, but yeah, it's a remarkable thing. And then as far as how I became CEO of Grindr, so Grindr has a very unique kind of founding story and, and how it got to where it is today, and we'll, I, I assume we'll talk about that. But the, um, there was an ownership group that owned Grindr, um, as of 2020, um, and they had a temporary management in place, knew they wanted to take the company public, and wanted a long-term CEO. They really wanted a product-driven person who had built a company from scratch and who had run a public company and who was, ideally, in the community, which kinda leaves you a very few set of choices. Um, they found me and, um, made a really strong pitch. I was like, "Man, I've built three companies. I never thought I'd run anybody else's company." But, um, the argument was really strong that, uh, this was a really amazing business and, kind of, once in a lifetime chance to do something really special. When do you get to run a business with, you know, 40-plus percent EBITDA margin? And I saw a huge opportunity to take this community that we have and build a lot more stuff for them, um, and become more of a super app product for, for the user base, um, and that got me really excited, and so

3. 4:01 – 10:56

   Grindr’s Identity

   1. GAGeorge Arison4:01

      I took the job.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings4:02

      I'm still in awe of the stats you just gave me. But I, I'm fascinated, because you mentioned there the super app element, but then we also have... The, the specific word that you said was "hookup app."

   3. GAGeorge Arison4:11

      Yup.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings4:11

      And I remember I had Sean Rad from Tinder on the show, and, like, there was this, like, visceral, um, objection to any hookup app from him. He was like, "Don't you f- dare call us a hookup app." Do you mind being a hookup app?

   5. GAGeorge Arison4:24

      Mm-hmm.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings4:24

      And how do you think about that, like, hookup app to super app transition?

   7. GAGeorge Arison4:28

      Totally. Um, so, look, in gay culture, sex is a really critical part of who we are, right? U- even, like, the term homosexual, like, the reason we are different than the majority is because of sexuality. And I think we are far more open about sexuality. We are far more willing to engage in sexual activities with people and then be able to have, you know, friendships with them. Like, it's very not common for people to hook up and then develop a friendship in the straight world. It's very common in the, in the gay world for, for that to be the case. And so, I just, I think the way we look at sex is very, very different, but it's a very core part of, of who we are. Um, and, uh, for that reason, kind of, that makes Grindr very unique, because that's the thing that people really wanna solve for in any given day, and Grindr lets them solve that. So, we have actually no qualms about being viewed as, as a hookup app, and we actually are leaning more into it. The really big product we're gonna be launching, you know, worldwide sometime towards the end of next year, it's now live in two markets today, is called Right Now, which is actually making the hookup experience better and more easy for a user to access. Um, this is a way for people who are looking for a Right Now encounter, whether it's hookup or otherwise, uh, can kind of get into that Right Now mode, and then they're only talking to people who are in that mode as well, right? Because we have people who have different intentions on the app, and one of the things that we hear from users is, "Hey, make it easier for me to find the person who wants to have a Right Now, um, o- occurrence." A- and so, we are leaning into that massively and will continue to, but in gay life, a lot of...... friendships, social connections, even networking and relationships originate with a hookup. And so, that gives us a chance to kind of do all those other things as well for people, um, on top of the thing that makes Grindr kind of, at- at its core, be this interconnection product for the community.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings6:27

      What are the other things on top of, like, the insertion point of the hookup app that's a really natural extension that you can overlay?

   9. GAGeorge Arison6:34

      Totally. So I-- well, there's two things that Grindr is already really big in, in- in small ways, but plays a really big part. One is travel. Uh, f- four in, um... Oh, sorry. Um, 25%, uh, of Grindr users, so one in four, uh, is traveling in any given week, uh, which is a really remarkable, um, thing to- to think about given that, you know, in the US, average person takes two vacations a year in a car to visit, like, family 60 miles away or something. Um, so, mm, but it makes sense, right? Like, we have an audience that is high disposable income, um, that- that is usually single, or if not single, doesn't have children, and so travel is a big part of their li- life. Um, so there's a lot we can do in that, uh, whether it's, hey, we're... Like, let's allow somebody on their profile to say, "I'm going to Coachella this year," and they start connecting about the fact that we're all gonna be at Coachella together, right, in- in the spring. Uh, or whether we're going on this cruise together, and let's kind of all connect about it before we get on the cruise, to here are the top 50 hotels that people really, um, like to stay at when they go to various cities, and maybe we do a deal with those hotels and create special packages and experiential ways for people to stay in them that right now are not available. Um, the second area where the- there's a lot of connection already is- is health. Uh, Grindr really did an amazing job, way before my time, uh, at educating people about PrEP, uh, which is a medication that you can take, uh, and it prevents you from catching HIV. Uh, e- e- and, you know, it... PrEP really changed life for a lot of people in a very fundamental way because it... if you're on PrEP, the single biggest fear that so many people have about having sex, which is, "Hey, I might catch HIV," kind of, i- i- is gone, right? Like, y- you're not gonna get it. Um, but it came out a while ago, and for a long time, it was not getting an uptake in the community that, uh, ideally you'd- you'd have. And only when Grindr added it to its profile page and allowed people to say, "I'm on PrEP," and then did a massive effort inside the app to educate people about the benefits of PrEP, did PrEP start to take off, um, with- with the community. Um, e- we do other things in health that are similar. A year and a half ago, we started working with the CDC to allow people to order an HIV test to be shipped to their home, um, to get an HIV test. We've sent out about half a million tests, um, since then, which is really incredible. And more importantly, 30% of people who are getting that test have not had an HIV test before, uh, which is also-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings9:07

       I'm- I'm- I'm-

   11. GAGeorge Arison9:08

       ... pretty remarkable.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings9:08

       I'm so sorry to sound like such a venture capitalist, but do you then make margin on the PrEP that you provide, on the tests? Like, is that-

   13. GAGeorge Arison9:16

       Yeah.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings9:16

       ... not an amazing answer, but-

   15. GAGeorge Arison9:18

       We- we- we don't- we don't- we don't make money on, um, uh, on HIV tests because CDC actually sends those to people for free.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings9:24

       Mm-hmm.

   17. GAGeorge Arison9:24

       Um, and we don't make money on PrEP because we don't sell PrEP. Uh, there are companies that do sell PrEP. We just do education and marketing for them. Uh, but we... Or, but my point on that is, like, we already play a role in healthcare for people, and so there are things in health and wellness that we can build on where we will make money. Um, totally hypothetically, you know, you can imagine that a lot of gay men use various compound drugs, um, that are quite popular these days, whether it's ED medications or hair care products or skincare products. Um, you know, I think there- that's one area, for example, that we can play in, um, where we can provide our users with a really good experience and the margins are also really great.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings10:03

       Which will have a more impactful hit on revenue or, like, addition to revenue, travel or healthcare, do you think?

   19. GAGeorge Arison10:10

       Look, these are both zero to one products, right? Uh, like, I don't know if they're gonna work. Uh, and I say this to investors all the time. Like, if they work, they can be massive, but you gotta understand that we're starting at scratch and they might not work. With that caveat, I think if healthcare works, um, it will be very large. Because if you just do the- the math on it, right? Like, a- a compound ED medication costs $100 to $130 per month subscription, um, and, you know, people, I think, average, kind of, l- lifetime value of a user is six months. That's a pretty... Uh, for Hims because Hims is public. Um, so it's a pretty significant kind of dollar value, uh, in a year on- on that subscription. So if- if those things work, I think from the revenue perspective, they'll be pretty significant.

4. 10:56 – 12:50

   Balancing Market Growth vs. Deeper User Adoption

   1. GAGeorge Arison10:56

   2. HSHarry Stebbings10:56

      Can I ask you, when you think about, like, market adoption and breadth versus depth and penetration within existing market, how do you think about the balance between we need more Grindr users, just-

   3. GAGeorge Arison11:08

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings11:09

      ... period, versus we need to bluntly get deeper adoption for the products we have from the existing customer base?

   5. GAGeorge Arison11:14

      Totally. So our M- our MAU has been just naturally growing. You know, we grew MAU like seven-ish percent last year. We're on track to do something similar this year based on public data so far through Q3. Um, and so, uh, we- we don't really focus on MAU growth, frankly, at a- at all. It just kind of happens. Um, uh, we do know that there are a lot of n- users that we can add that are not using the product today. We have a 95-plus percent, uh, uh, you know, name recognition in the US. Uh, in a lot of countries abroad, it's closer to 60%. So we've- we've done a few, you know, studies on- on this. 60% is still amazing when you think about it.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings11:54

      (laughs)

   7. GAGeorge Arison11:54

      But 95% is just totally remarkable. And if people don't know us, they can't use us, right? So there's a lot of room in a lot of places internationally to gain more adoption by just getting better brand recognition. And that's something we are- are gonna start working on in the coming years. We kind of view international as a mid-term opportunity for us, rather than immediate. Meanwhile, um-... enabling more features and more products that our users can pay for today is something we are working on every day. Our pay penetration is about se- a little over 7%. Um, you know, our peers, again, public data and not anything confidential, are viewed as like 15-ish percent for Tinder, for example. So, there's a lot of room to have a lot more paying users, um, in, in this business. We don't need to be at anywhere near Tinder's pay penetration to hit our, say, three-year financial targets, and so we think there's a ton of opportunity to go deeper with paying products for our users today.

5. 12:50 – 15:00

   What’s Wrong with Tinder or Bumble

   1. GAGeorge Arison12:50

   2. HSHarry Stebbings12:50

      It's a tough balance 'cause if you have the Tinder app, it is a hard monetized product. I mean-

   3. GAGeorge Arison12:55

      Yup.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings12:55

      ... it sucks. It sucks as a UX company.

   5. GAGeorge Arison12:57

      And, and they've, and they've dramatically, um, underinvested in the user experience, uh, which is, I think, why they're suffering so much, and it's not just Tinder. It's also, um, Bumble. But what basically happened, I think, with those products is they, they had a hit, right, like they had a thing that worked really well and they just spent years monetizing only, not really adding anything new to the user experience. Uh, and that, I don't think, is a really right approach. And so we, from the very beginning, kind of even before I took this job, like when I was thinking about what do we do with Grindr, my sense was there's so many features that have not been built o- on Grindr yet that people really badly want, and, you know, there's an incredibly long running list of things that we need to create. Uh, our job should be to build those things, create value for users through those features and products, and if you create value for people, people will pay for those. And so we have a very, very robust free product, and we're gonna keep that to be a very robust free product.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings13:52

      I mean this with total respect to you and, and other colleagues in the industry. There's been relatively little innovation in the market-

   7. GAGeorge Arison13:59

      Mm-hmm.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings13:59

      ... I think, over the last few years, the simple swipe functionality or-

   9. GAGeorge Arison14:01

      Yeah.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings14:02

       ... cross and tick, but other than that, segmentation on customer groups-

   11. GAGeorge Arison14:07

       Yep.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings14:07

       ... would you agree with that, or am I being harsh?

   13. GAGeorge Arison14:09

       Yeah. I fully agree. Whether it's for us or for other companies, innovation has been dramatically limited, um, except for maybe Hinge, which has had a little bit more innovation, um, uh, kinda along the way. W- I think, you know, I built an AI company in 2019, 2020 and, and then sold it, and so I had some AI experience coming into this, this job, and that was one of the more exciting things about what was possible because we have so much rich data about our users, whether it's from their behavior patterns in the app or their chat history. And so only obviously with their consent, but if we use all that data to create better matches for them between what they want and what we know other users want, we can really reshape how dating happens, at least in our community. Uh, and I'm really psyched about

6. 15:00 – 17:16

   Dating in a Virtual World

   1. GAGeorge Arison15:00

      that.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings15:00

      I saw Whitney say that we would actually have kind of, uh, extensions of ourselves, robots-

   3. GAGeorge Arison15:05

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings15:05

      ... that would kind of date each other in a virtual world. You-

   5. GAGeorge Arison15:08

      Yeah, I said that six months before she did, so I think it's totally gonna happen. Um-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings15:11

      You think that's gonna happen?

   7. GAGeorge Arison15:12

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings15:12

      Can you just envision that world for me?

   9. GAGeorge Arison15:15

      Yeah. So I don't think that people are want- will wanna have synthetics, robots, agents, call 'em whatever you want, doing the whole conversation, right? But, um, one of the things that I think is very constraining to dating, and it's particularly true for, for gay men because of, um, density issues, uh, is that dating mostly happens by geography. Like, you normally end up settling down with somebody you meet in the geography you live in, and that makes no sense 'cause the idea that the best person for you is necessarily in the city that you live in or in a town you live in makes, like, no logical sense, right? Um, the reason it happens that way is because the cost of, "Hey, I'm just gonna, like, you know, date anybody anywhere," is prohibitive from both time perspective and, and money perspective. But if I could give you an incredibly transparent and rich recommendation for five people around the world who are the right matches for you based on your behavior patterns in my product, based on your entire chat history, maybe even pulling information from outside of Grindr that you p- give me and match you with other people for whom I have the same rich data, and then on top of that, expose it to where, okay, George and Harry are the right match and they're synthetics, spend some time talking to each other about a set of questions that they really care about and gave each other the answers and then you're provided with like a write-up of like, "Okay, these are the things we talked about, and these are the things that make a lot of sense for us, and this is why I think it's okay for you to pack a bag and fly to, m- London t- to meet him," that'll make people a lot more open to meeting people further away. And so, I think for our community in particular where density is a huge problem, other than maybe New York City, London and San Francisco, maybe LA, you don't have a huge number of people to potentially kind of partner with. Um, it, it'll be really game changing, and I, I can't wait to, to make that available to users.

7. 17:16 – 19:50

   How Is Grindr So Efficient Compared to Others?

   1. GAGeorge Arison17:16

   2. HSHarry Stebbings17:16

      You mentioned the 40% EBIT at the beginning.

   3. GAGeorge Arison17:19

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings17:19

      I mean, that's extraordinary, George.

   5. GAGeorge Arison17:21

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings17:21

      I- I said at the beginning what a great business it is and what a fan I am of it. But like, I think it's 120 million of free cash flow on 300 million of revenue, give or take, and I might be getting this slightly wrong, but-

   7. GAGeorge Arison17:31

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings17:31

      ... kind of ballpark, how are you so efficient when everyone else isn't?

   9. GAGeorge Arison17:36

      Yeah. So there's, like, three things that make us, I think, very different. Uh, one is we don't spend any money o- on marketing, and the reason is is we don't do any acquisition, uh, marketing. Um, so our marketing is focused on, on brand building, and we do a lot of stuff in social, narrow casting to, again, gay and bi men, um, but, uh, and it's a lot of storytelling. Um, but we don't do kind of pay or user acquisition. We don't have to. All our user acquisition is through word of mouth and kinda the, the brand building approach. Number two is we have a tiny team. I'm a really, really big believer in super lean organizations that get a lotta stuff done. Uh, we have a very audacious mission, and my expectation is that people who are here work super hard to deliver results. Um, Grindr has-... less than 150 full-time employees. We are very, very efficient. You know, our revenue per head is very high. It's, you know, over two million bucks per full-time employee, um, and that's something I'm really proud of. Um, we are actually nowhere near the peak capacity we were at when I joined. We had 225 people at the very peak when I first joined, um, and we had some transition on staff and we've seen a ton of productivity improvements in our team. And I think there's still a lot more to be gained, right? So, like, I'm a huge believer in using AI in work, a- and I want us to be, you know, in a world where a lot of our code is written by AI and our engineers are actually overseeing that process, rather than necessarily being the first ones to be writing that code. Um, a- and so, there's still a lot more leverage to be had with the team that we have. Uh, obviously we'll still continue to add some more people, but slowly and carefully. Um, so that's, like, the second, um, m- really, kind of, big thing. A- and then thirdly, you know, our cost structure's pretty simple. Like, we have... We pay Apple and Google, we pay Amazon, and we pay people, but there's n- really nothing else that we kind of heavily spend money on. Um, and so that's how we end up with a- a really good EBITDA margin. But amazingly, it's still actually a lot of leverage, right? Because we're a public company and all the costs that public companies have, we still have to have, and we'll have them at 300-plus million and we'll have them at a billion in revenue. And they're mostly gonna be the same. Like, the accounting team is not gonna grow that much from where it is today as we grow, a- and so there's still a lot of leverage in the business, um, for us to actually improve our margins o-

8. 19:50 – 23:33

   When Does Efficiency Start Hindering Growth?

   1. GAGeorge Arison19:50

      over time.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings19:51

      Can I grow- drill down on number two, which is like the efficiency and the lean focus. When does a focus on efficiency and leanness impact growth negatively?

   3. GAGeorge Arison20:01

      I, uh... I'm asked this question a lot in a lot of different ways. You know, we just did our earnings on Thursday, so I've been doing a lot of investor calls and this, like, comes up in every investor call. Like, "Hey, could you spend more money and do more things?" A- and the reality is actually no. Um, I- I- I- I think what Silicon Valley showed in the last 10 years or so is the idea that just adding more headcount to do more stuff actually is not the right thing, because you end up spending a lot of money on a lot of stuff that doesn't work and probably shouldn't be getting as many resources as it needs to. You can... We're gonna launch a bunch of new stuff this year, but a lot of it's gonna be done through partnerships with one or two people working on those things. We'll learn our way into them. If they work, we'll put more resources behind them, but we don't need to be having, uh, teams of five, six, seven people launching these different products that, that we're working on. It's just not necessary. The second thing that I think Silicon Valley showed and has learned is that there's insane inefficiency in each individual that you have working for you, um, because there's very bad management. Uh, and, uh, you know, management does not mean micromanagement. Uh, there's a big difference. But being able to have really strong accountability, uh, is- is really critical and- and I don't think we have it, uh, in- in the tech world today.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings21:16

      Why do you say that? Why do we not have the accountability, do you think?

   5. GAGeorge Arison21:19

      Because in the beginning when companies are built, and look, I'm a f- again, I've built companies. I've built three companies from scratch, so, like, I'm a full-on founder in- in every way, right? Like, um, we hire people who have a ton of self-accountability. Like, that's kind of... Most founders have incredible self-accountability, they work all the time, and, um, like they're, you know, like animals that, "I'm gonna get this done," and they hire a lot of people like that. So your first 20, 30, 40, whatever number it is employees are all like that, they don't need management. That's why so much gets done at very early-stage companies. But eventually, you end up hiring people who are not gonna be like that. Uh, for one thing, because whatever equity grant you give them is not gonna be large enough to justify that level of work, right? It's just not possible. You hire more normal people. That's totally okay. Like, that- that's, you know, the- the world you're in. At that point, you need management, which... And by management primarily I mean sets culture, sets goals, sets clarity around how to achieve them, and holds people accountable. Unfortunately, most people who work at startups in the first phase are really bad managers because they never learn how to be managers, they don't want to be managers, uh, and they don't like to make people feel bad. A- and the resu- or they manage in the way that kind of, you know, the stuff that you'd hear about Uber and, like, the culture that Uber had in 2016, '17, '18, and that is not attractive to people either. And so the result is very bad management across startups. Startups that succeed, succeed because they either have really amazing margin, they can just kind of like pour more people at problems and have massive inefficiency, or through kind of cultures that are just not very healthy. Uh, and I think there is a better way to do that. And I think lean organizations with really good management where everybody is in founder mode, is kind of what I classify, um, but we still allow for good integration between life and work, is how one should build, uh, businesses. It... And that took me like 20 years to figure out. Like, it's not something I kind of just made up. It was a lot of trial by error and learning and a lot of self-discovery and learning of my own kind of blind spots and where I was screwing things up, um, that kind of got me to that point.

9. 23:33 – 26:21

   George’s Key Lessons For a Young CEO

   1. GAGeorge Arison23:33

   2. HSHarry Stebbings23:33

      This is a hypothetical situation. I am a young CEO and I do not have your years of wisdom.

   3. GAGeorge Arison23:39

      No.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings23:39

      You are an angel investor in my company. If you were to teach me how to be a good manager, what would you say I should know from the 20 years that you have learned?

   5. GAGeorge Arison23:51

      Yeah. So I think there's a difference between being in the details and micromanaging people. I stay really, really close to details, and the... And I need everybody else on my team to be really close to details. Like, if someone comes to me and says like, "I don't actually know this number," that raises a lot of red flags for me because I'm like, "H- it's a pretty crucial number for you. Like, how can you not know it?" So being in the details and the numbers and what is happening in the business is different from letting other people make decisions. And I think it's really crucial to let other people make decisions and guide them to the right decision if they're not making the right decision, uh, but not to micromanage them.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings24:33

      How do you guide them without micromanaging them?

   7. GAGeorge Arison24:36

      You ask tough questions, you raise the hypotheticals or what could happen if the decision that they want to make happens, and get them to understand what the problem might end up being.... because ultimately, you, as the founder and the CEO, know the full picture and they don't. What you can bring to the table is, they wanna do X, they don't understand how that X impacts Y and Z over here, that they're not thinking about. Only you can do that. But that does not mean you tell them, "Hey, you are wrong, and this is the answer." I think that's, like, a really big kind of factor, at least in, in my view, uh, and, and that's a pretty big learning, kind of, ex- experience. Secondly, uh, that I think is really crucial to kind of, w- how I would do things differently now is, you gotta know what you're not good at, and get the right people around you. That's different from, "Oh, man, the, I'm really bad at this and so I need to change this." The idea that a grown adult is gonna change everything about themselves is very low probability. Like, it's probably not gonna happen. Um, you can pick, like, one thing you really wanna change, and I'm gonna work on this really hard. But, man, in a Series A company, where cash is running out and your product market fit might not quite be there, and your team is causing problems, and your investors are yelling at you, like, trying to change everything about yourself is not gonna happen. Even changing one thing about yourself is really hard. But you can put people around you who catch your blind spots, and you need to be comfortable with them coming to you and saying, "Hey, George, you do this a lot. You are really stressed right now and you're doing the one thing that causes a lot of problems, and I'm gonna straight tell you that to your face, and you need to listen to me." And sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong, but if you don't have people around who can kind of catch those blind spots, it's a huge

10. 26:21 – 28:17

    What Did George Learn He Wasn’t Good At?

    1. GAGeorge Arison26:21

       problem.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings26:22

       Can I ask a weird one? What did you think you were good at that you turned out to be bad at, and how did that show itself?

    3. GAGeorge Arison26:28

       There are a lot of things I'm really bad at. I don't know if I ever thought I was necessarily good at them, but I didn't know I was really bad at them. Um, and, and then there are a lot of things that I thought I was not very good at, but I actually am really good at. Like, I thought that I was not very good at recruiting engineers. I was terrified of recruiting engineers. The first, kind of, after I started my company, first engineer outside the CTO that I went to recruit, like, I was literally scared to death. I have a huge fear of snakes, and this was, like, the second-most thing I was scared of. Like, how am I gonna talk to this guy about engineer problems? I know nothing about engineering. Turns out I'm actually pretty amazing at recruiting engineers, and engineers really like transparency, and I'm super transparent. And so having very transparent discussions and being very honest, like, "Hey, I don't know this, and this is why I need you to come and help me here," really works with them. They actually appreciate that. Instead of it coming off salesy, they actually like, like, "Oh, here's a business guy who, like, is willing to say, 'I don't know X or Y.'" Um, and, and that was a huge learning 'cause I had, like, you know... I was a business person working in the tech world, and you can't be successful in that unless you're very good with engineers. But it was challenging for me to believe I could be good with them. Big learning, that I became quite good. Another one I had to learn that's really tough is, it's okay to be quiet, because I respond to things really fast, and a lot of engineers are actually very different. They probably have an opinion on whatever you said right away, but they spend a lot of time thinking through what they're gonna say before they say it. And for, like, an extroverted dude who talks all the time, that's really difficult, right? 'Cause you kinda, like, need to get comfortable with silence, and that silence can last, like, one or two minutes, and you wanna fill that silence with content, but you just need to shut up and wait. (laughs) Uh, that one was a really... tough for me to learn, but I think has served me very well.

11. 28:17 – 31:29

    The Great Manager Makes People Feel Bad?

    1. GAGeorge Arison28:18

    2. HSHarry Stebbings28:18

       You said y- as a manager, you, well, many people don't want to make people feel bad.

    3. GAGeorge Arison28:23

       Yep.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings28:23

       Do great managers make people feel bad?

    5. GAGeorge Arison28:26

       So, I have a really hard time with this one because I'm told by everybody all the time, "Oh, I love feedback, George. Tell me, give me feedback. It's okay." But if I have to give them developmental feedback, even though they might be selling- telling me it won't make them feel bad, I believe it, I'm gonna make them feel bad. And that's really tough. Not everyone has this issue, but I do, and it's probably my single biggest, um, challenge, uh, uh, in kind of, like, being a leader. Uh, and it's for the one thing I've picked that, like, I have to work on this because if I don't become better at this, I cannot go to the next level, um, as, as, as a CEO and as a leader. On an individual level, being in front of somebody and being like, "Hey, you are not doing this very well," is really hard for me, especially if I care about that person. Um, and, uh, uh, uh, y- you know, even when I know that they wanna hear it and they wanna be better, i- it's just hard for me to do. So, there is a level of, like, if I care for you, um, it's difficult for me to be giving you direct feedback when something is not working. When things are working really well, totally not a problem. So, like, with very high-achieving people, I have no issues with, with giving them feedback. But when I- there is development feedback, it's really tough. So, you know, I've learned how to do it and it's painful, but I write everything out. So, I give people, like, very long written documents that are, like, really detailed, um, that give examples, etc., etc. Uh, and then I, like, send it to them in advance, and then I sit down with them and go through them, which is not the nece- maybe necessarily the best thing for them 'cause usually, it's better to do it in person. But, like, to be a- for me to be able to express fully what I think, I have to do it in writing 'cause otherwise, I will, like, not tell you the full story 'cause I, again, will feel like I'm making you feel bad, and I won't want to come there. Um, so yes, it's 100% true, like, I actually don't give a shit what people think about me in, in a broader sense. But on an individual level, th- it's something I kind of run into problems with.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings30:20

       Has it ever hurt you on a broader level?

    7. NANarrator30:22

       Mm-hmm.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings30:22

       I saw where it said, it was like... I, I can't remember what itwas -- and this is where the danger of media -- but it was like some tweets that you sent, like, upset people.

    9. GAGeorge Arison30:30

       Yep.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings30:30

        Like, does that really get you into trouble or is it, like, pshh, people get over it?

    11. GAGeorge Arison30:34

        Um, I mean, people get over it, uh, obviously, and you have to have the right people behind you. You know, when I was taking this job, I actually told the big shareholders at this point, granted it was still private, so the, kind of the owners, like, "Look, I'm a conservative guy. I'm Republican. I'm also gay."... I'm very social, uh, like, on, uh, uh, on these social issues of being gay, I'm very liberal and libertarian. I'm libertarian on some other issues as well. But, you know, on a lot of stuff, I'm pretty conservative, um, and I don't, I don't think there's a conflict on, on those things. Um, uh, and, and people knew that, and they were okay with it. I also knew that, like, some people are gonna have a problem with that, and we need to be prepared for that, um, because unfortunately, we are in a world where people are not willing to appreciate differences of opinion, right? Like, you have to be exactly down this line, and that's true on both sides. Like, you, you have to be all in on this side or all in on that side. Nothing that makes any, any

12. 31:29 – 35:46

    Do We Still Live in a Free Speech Society?

    1. GAGeorge Arison31:29

       sense.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings31:29

       Do you think we have freedom of speech? I had the founders of Anduril on the show recently, um, and Intercom, and we talked about it.

    3. GAGeorge Arison31:36

       Mm-hmm.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings31:36

       Do you think we are in a society where freedom of speech is present?

    5. GAGeorge Arison31:40

       Look. I grew up in the Soviet Union, where literally, like, if people knew what you believed in, you could go to jail. I remember evenings where my great-grandfather, who, like, had fought in World War II and was a general in, in World War II, would turn on a radio and try to find Voice of America on the radio to listen to what actually was happening in the world. And we all knew that if ever- anyone ever got a hand on his radio, he'd be arrested even though he was, like, a, you know, 75-year-old, um, Soviet hero, right? And so I know what not having freedom of speech truly means from that perspective. Obviously, that is not the world that we live in today. Has there been a little bit too much self-censorship and/or censorship from other sources in the last decade? Yes, absolutely. Um, I think the pushback against it has been pretty strong, and I think we're gonna end up in a pretty good place, um, all things being equal. And, and, you know, I, I, I don't like saying I'm a free speech absolutist. The same way you don't yell, "Fire," in a crowded theater, right? That- the freedom of speech doesn't protect that. But at the same time, you know, as much as I despise the idea of burning the American flag 'cause I think this is the greatest, most amazing country in the world that has ever existed and probably will ever exist, and, you know, part of my mission in life is to do everything I can do to perpetuate that, um, people have the right to burn the flag. I can't stand that idea. Like, it makes me wanna puke. But if people wanna burn the flag, they have the right to do that. They shouldn't do that, but they have the right to do it. And I need to accept that, uh, on my level, and somebody hearing something that somebody else says they don't like, that's totally okay. They need to be comfortable with that as well, even if it offends them.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings33:17

       Do you not worry that you will offend your stakeholders, being the customers? If you think about it, maybe a more Democrat audience in terms of your user base. Do you not worry that maybe... Like, I, I have LPs. I'm a fund manager-

    7. GAGeorge Arison33:28

       Mm-hmm.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings33:28

       ... and I, I'm always wary of saying something that might upset my stakeholders.

    9. GAGeorge Arison33:32

       Oh, totally, and look. A decision I made when I took this job was I'm- I do not make political statements today, uh, at, at all. I do make statements related to issues that we as a company really care about, and we have a list of things we really care about. We are really devoted to, uh, marriage equality around the world, and we spend money on that, and, and we will always be very comfortable saying things about that topic. We really care about decriminalization, um, because there's still 60 countries around the world where it's illegal to be gay, um, and we obviously care about it being changed. Uh, and in countries even where there- it is legal to be gay, in many places, it's still really hard to be, um, gay. And so addressing those issues, we really care about, so we'll make statements on that. Um, thirdly, we care about access to healthcare, uh, and equal access to healthcare for our users, especially when it comes to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but general access to healthcare as well. Um, and then lastly, we really care about access to family formation, um, right? And, and that's a, a big topic for us, a- as well. So, those topics, we will make statements on, and I- and I will speak to those as well, but broader political topics, I actually don't make statements on right now because it is not my job. My job is to be the best CEO I can be for Grindr, and things I might say that distract me from being- doing that job, uh, and providing my users with the most awesome experience, um, in the app and, and outside of the app, uh, are not the right things to do. Um, that- that would be distracting to my shareholders. It'd be distracting for my employees and would not be good for my users. Uh, but, uh, that's not a decision that everybody needs to make. Like, that's a decision I make. Um, other companies might choose a, a different path, and I'm not saying that they're wrong, right?

    10. HSHarry Stebbings35:10

        What do you think Wall Street doesn't get about Grindr?

    11. GAGeorge Arison35:13

        The biggest thing we are really focused on educating people on today, uh, is that we shouldn't be just comped to dating apps when they talk about kinda what the multiple and the stock should be. That we should be comped as much as to social network products and, and, and, and comps as much as we are comped to dating products 'cause people are using Grindr for dating, yes, but they're also using Grindr for all these other social experiences that are more akin to a Pinterest or a Instagram than, uh, than the dating product.

13. 35:46 – 39:11

    On Advertising Revenue Model

    1. GAGeorge Arison35:46

    2. HSHarry Stebbings35:46

       Okay, if we take that then, they are powered by advertising engines, which are incredible free cashflow machines. Does Grindr become an advertising engine like they are?

    3. GAGeorge Arison35:55

       We have an advertising business, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But I also think it's actually pretty cool that we are a social network that has a monetization engine that's subscriptions, right? 'Cause that's pretty unusual, um, and

    4. NANarrator36:05

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GAGeorge Arison36:05

       ... so it proves they're a pretty good, good business to be in. Um, we do have an ad business. Um, the ad business actually is how Grindr got started. So, Grindr was profitable from day one, right? 'Cause it was a bootstrapped company that just one founder built from scratch, and, and he always made money on it, and ads were the primary way he did that in the early days. So, we've always had an ad business. You know, in 2018 to 2022 period, there was a big underinvestment in our ad business, and so it was not growing, uh, uh, uh, re- really well. Um, we started to change that in 2023, and those investments actually helped help us-... to have a really strong year in ad, in the ad business, um, this year. Uh, ads are about 15% of our revenue in, in total. But obviously, on a margin basis, they're a, an even higher percentage because it's a very profitable part of the business, uh, and we don't have to pay the Apple and Google taxes on that revenue. Um, but, um, we want that business to be bigger, and we're gonna continue investing in that. Today, most of our ad business is what we call third-party ads, meaning we use networks, um, like AppFolio or Google, et cetera, to, to source those ads. Um, we do have some direct ads as well, where we partner with brands to market directly in Grindr. Over the long term, I want us to have a much bigger direct ad business. We have this really amazing audience that people wanna access, and, um, they should be using Grindr to, to reach that audience. Um, but we need to do a lot of work inside the company to get ready for those types of partnerships. Um, that's work inside the, the, the product specifically, right? We need, uh, we need to have better ads. We need to have more ad formats. We have to have better, um, data access, um, uh, in terms of how the ad is performing, um, for our, our advertisers. And we need a much better, uh, kind of approach to sell, how we sell, better relationships with the, with the, um, agencies. So, that's all gonna happen in the, in the future. Um, but in the near term, kind of, we can do a lot more with the third-party ads as well. Um, so I think ads can be a much bigger business. What we've said publicly is we wanted to be growing at the same pace to stay at that kind of 15% or ba-ballpark part of our, our revenue story. You know, if we do really well, maybe it gets better.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings38:17

       Okay, so we comp you, instead of to dating apps, we comp you to, uh, social networks, as you said that-

    7. GAGeorge Arison38:22

       Or c-combo, both dating apps and social networks. I'll take that too.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings38:25

       (laughs) What does that mean for how perception is changed? It's just an increase in revenue multiple? What does that actually mean for the s-

    9. GAGeorge Arison38:32

       Uh, it, it, it would be an increase in the EBITDA multiple, right? We are, we are valued over EBITDA, and, you know, the reality is that Facebook's EBITDA multiple is much higher than, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, dating products' even EBITDA multiple. And so, I don't know. I, I'm not a stock analyst. That's up to analysts to kinda figure out. But I think just thinking of this business as purely a comp to Tinder or a comp to Bumble is not the right a- approach. Just 'cause users also don't use us that way. I mean, people are in the product way longer. They do way more in the app. They stay with the app over time for much longer time periods. Even when they are in a relationship, they still stay in the app 'cause it's this s- social network for them. So, just, just thinking of us as Tinder doesn't

14. 39:11 – 42:04

    Will Young People Keep Dating Online?

    1. GAGeorge Arison39:11

       make any sense.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings39:12

       What happens with Tinder and Bumble? I'm just interested to hear your thoughts.

    3. GAGeorge Arison39:15

       I don't buy at all the notion that young people don't wanna date off, uh, of, of online channels. Like, they do everything else online, like they don't wanna date online? That doesn't make any sense. They want different experiences in the products that, that, uh, uh... than what is offered today, but that's different from they wanna do things online. Uh, and so, I think ultimately, they'll figure things out, or new online dating products will arise that will meet users' needs. Um, I don't know if, uh, Bumble and Tinder will be able to figure that out. You know, clearly Hinge is doing a lot of things really well and is growing super nicely and, and, uh, both in revenue and in user traction. So, there is a way to build online dating products for straight people that, that work. Um, so I don't know what Tinder specifically and Bumble will do, but I'm very bullish about the online dating opportunity as a whole. I think it'll continue to do very well.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings40:08

       Can I ask a weird one? What have you done in your Grindr tenure that you wish you had not done?

    5. GAGeorge Arison40:13

       When I came in, I didn't fully appreciate how different building trust with people who were already there would be versus ones that I had hired. So, this was like a big aha moment for me, that I'm, "Hey..." 'Cause I never had any trust issues. Like, I've had plenty of issues, and people have lots of things to say about George should do differently, but like, my employees trusting George was never an issue. But then I realized, though, obviously, because if you're a founder of a company, no one's gonna join that company unless they trust you. So, then, like, implicit part of their, like, decision-making process to come to work for a company that's led by a founder is that they trust the founder. And I didn't appreciate how difficult or, and different, I'm gonna say different more than difficult, it would be to build trust with employees who are already present and there. Uh, and so I wish I had done more in explaining to them what my approach to, um, to things would be. Uh, a- and I started to do that, you know, about a few months in. But I didn't do as much of that in, in the very beginning. Now, some of this was driven by just kind of the time I showed up in. I showed up in October, and we were going public in November. So there was like a really big focus, say, "We gotta get the, the DS- de-SPAC process completed and, and go public." We also didn't have a lot of other people on the team. Like, it was me, um, chief product officer and the CFO, kind of were like the leadership, and then everything else needed to be built out. And so there was like a lot of, you know, building the plane while we were flying it. Um, but I heard from people, "Hey, like, we need to hear more from George in terms of what's his vision for where he wants to take the business." And, and I had a very strong vision, and I thought I talked a- about it, but not anywhere near enough, um, it turned out. And so, that's one thing I would have done differently in the first, you know, 60, 90 days if I had to redo that again.

15. 42:04 – 43:53

    If Failure Wasn’t an Option

    1. GAGeorge Arison42:04

    2. HSHarry Stebbings42:04

       Can I ask, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail in doing it?

    3. GAGeorge Arison42:09

       Have two more kids.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings42:10

       Why would you worry about failing in doing that?

    5. GAGeorge Arison42:13

       Well, I, um... You know, uh, kids are really important to me. So like, I'm a very unusual gay guy in that sense. Like, I always knew I wanted children. Um, frankly, coming out was partly difficult because I'm like, "Wow, what's that gonna mean to my ability to have kids?" Because when I was going through this whole coming out process, like, surrogacy was not a thing yet. Gay men having children was not that common, uh, a- at all. Um, and so, uh, having kids was a, a very big deal to me, and, you know, what my husband and I agreed on is...... if we're past 45, we're not gonna have more children, because w- we just felt like, "You're too old." A- and, u- and, you know, after having two kids and given how much we, time we spent on our children and, and how important they are to us, like, you know, I, like... I'm probably the only Russell 3000 CEO that, like, regularly shows up at school, um, is at, like, almost every dinner with my children. Like, 6:00 to 7:00 PM is, like, massively sacred. And yes, sometimes I'm not there, but like, 90% of the time I'm, I'm there. Um, and so they're really critical to me. Uh, I don't know if I could do that with two more kids, 'cause kids are a lot of work and, and I just don't know if I have more in me to be able to give as much time to my... two kids I already have to more children than I would wanna have and be as good at the job I do. I don't know if there's enough of me, uh, for that. And, and so that's kinda what I mean by, um, could I, um, you know, could I do it all? Um, but if I was younger, right? If I was 35, I could wait for another five years, have my kids be 10 and then have more kids. But that's not an option. So that's kinda what I mean by like, I could, I could fail.

16. 43:53 – 47:10

    Is It Possible to Excel as a CEO, Father, and Husband?

    1. GAGeorge Arison43:53

    2. HSHarry Stebbings43:53

       Is it possible to be a really good CEO, a really good father, and a really good husband?

    3. GAGeorge Arison43:59

       I try to be a really good husband. I'm- and my husband tries to be really good to me. But we definitely are focused on each other a lot less today because so much of our energy goes to our children. But that's, again, a choice that we made, right? Like part of us being a couple is just that we wanted to be really good parents and we wanted kids. And frankly, I would exclude a lot of people as potential partners because they didn't wanna have children. Like, it was a very early conversation topic on any date I ever went on, because if you didn't wanna have kids, we might have everything else going for us, but it was gonna go nowhere. Um, so you definitely give up a lot, uh, if you wanna be a really good dad. Um, and, uh, uh, and, uh, I probably am not as good of a husband today as I was before we had children.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings44:46

       Did having children change how you think about the style with which you lead?

    5. GAGeorge Arison44:52

       I think what I would say is the opposite. The way I think about my employees and what I learn from them really shapes, um, things about how I approach my kids. But things I learn about being a dad also d- do shape how I think about my employees, because, you know, so much of our behavior patterns are formed when we are young and we don't really appreciate that. And so I sometimes notice, um, things about my team members in their behavior patterns. And then before I would have never thought about it this way, but I'm like, "Oh, they must have literally picked this up when they were young." Because I'm noticing my kids pick certain things up now when they're really young, or I read about how XYZ behavior by parents results in this type of behavior in children. And I'm like, "Oh, this is probably what's happening with my employees as well." So that I've definitely kinda learned on and I have a totally new appreciation for helping my team members understand their behavior patterns and, and where they came from and, and how we can work around those, right? Because again, I don't believe you can change everything about yourself. You can change some things, but not all. But you need to build structures around each person, uh, to make them be successful.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings46:06

       Going back to the business, and I thought, when you're throwing off as much cash as you are, George...

    7. GAGeorge Arison46:11

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings46:11

       ... what do you do with it? Do you do like dividends? Is it buybacks? Is it acquisitions? What does one do when you have this free cash flow machine that you do?

    9. GAGeorge Arison46:20

       Yeah. So one thing I can say is very clearly, we're not gonna hoard cash for acquisitions. If there are acquisitions that are interesting at some point that we wanna do, we'll, we'll deal with that at that point. But I don't think it's the right thing to do to kinda just h- hoard cash and, and, and just hope that something happens. We really believe there's a huge organic opportunity here. And, and that's what we are really focused on. We're gonna kinda look at what is the right approach to get cash to our shareholders at the time when we are doing it. We're not quite there yet. We have debt. We're paying down that debt. We wanna get down to 1.5 to 2X, uh, EBITDA on, on the debt. W- we'll get there soon, but not yet. Uh, and then we'll kind of, you know, at a board level, make a decision on what is the right approach. Um, but in general, you know, we've never kept a lot of cash on our balance sheet, and I don't think we're gonna, uh, you know, just choose to keep a lot of cash for, for

17. 47:10 – 53:54

    Grindr’s Story: From One Founder to Public Company

    1. GAGeorge Arison47:10

       no reason.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings47:10

       Can I finish with a bit of a storytime-

    3. GAGeorge Arison47:13

       Of course.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings47:13

       ... which is, the business has this unbelievable kind of story. Uh, it's gone public. It was owned by a Chinese company, I think it was.

    5. GAGeorge Arison47:22

       Yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings47:22

       Like, I- I used to love storytime at school, you know, and it's like, "Hey kids, sit around."

    7. GAGeorge Arison47:27

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings47:27

       Can we just do a bit of that? Which is like, it was bootstrapped by one person who built it, to being owned by Chi- What happened?

    9. GAGeorge Arison47:36

       So by the way, Joel Simkhai, who founded Grindr, like what an incredible story, right? Like this guy is not an engineer, has this idea, built this company into something massive and a global brand. Um, so huge kudos to him and I'm like so, you know, honored to be like... be, be handed this business to, to run, um, and, and, and so appreciative. Um, so he wanted to, you know, create liquidity for himself after having, building the... build this business, ran a process, I think had a bunch of offers, but the big... best offer came from a company called Kunlun, which is a Chinese conglomerate. And he took that offer. Offer was in two parts. They bought 49% first and then had the right to buy majority later. And then as soon as they were able to exercise that right, they exercised it. Uh, and then they fired him. Um, and so he was out of the business. But right away when they had 50% c- plus control, CFIUS, which is the US government committee that manages international investments, came and said, "Whoa, you never cleared this transaction with CFIUS and we don't believe it's okay for a Chinese company to own a company with this much very important data." And they were 100% right. Like...You know, kudos to the U. S. Government for doing what they did, it was a- a great move. Um, and so they forced the divestiture, uh, and was, like, the first civvies-forced divestiture, uh, and definitely the most prominent one, um, that had ever happened. So, Kunlun knew that they couldn't own Grindr for the long haul. Um, unfortunately, significantly disinvested in Grindr during that period of time, um, in terms of product investments, business investments, and in 2020, ran a process to sell, um, Grindr. Um, there were a bunch of bidders, uh, but the winning bid came from these three individuals that, um, put- came together into an organization called San Vicente. They are not... They're kind of oftentimes described as, like, a private equity, and there's some private equity there, but they were not really kind of, you know, private equity people. Um, and, um, and they bought Grindr from- from Kunlun in the middle of COVID. Signed the term sheet before COVID lockdowns happened and closed the transaction in June 2020, um, which is, like, pretty remarkable, uh, when you think about it. And even more crazy, the entire engineering team, which was, at this point, was in Taiwan, quit when the transaction happened.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings49:53

        Why?

    11. GAGeorge Arison49:53

        I- I have no idea. Um, and Grindr's, um, code base on the back end was all a monolith at this point. So, like, one mistake could shut down the whole product, so it was a very precarious period. Super impressive, uh, that these guys then said, "Okay, we're gonna really focus on Grindr for the long term." Uh, brought in a temporary management which hired, like, lots of engineers, and a lot of work was done to increase the stability of the product, uh, make the code base a lot better, uh, dramatically invest in kind of this technical debt improvements that need to be done. Uh, and then they went looking for long-term management and, um, you know, public company management, and that's how they recruited me, uh, and then- and then we went public. So, um, the- the individuals who bought Grindr from, um, Chinese own- ownership really saved this company in- in a pretty big way, and was a really remarkable, um, film. Uh, I think in, you know, one of your questions you were kind of asking, like, was it a distressed asset when they bought it? No, not at all, 'cause the product was still actually growing. User base was growing, um, revenue was growing. There was, like, very little investment happening in the company, but it was not a distress at all. It was actually a very successful business. Uh, it just was made into an even more successful business over the last, you know, four years.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings51:09

        To what extent does product quality actually matter with Grindr? And I don't mean that rudely, but when you under-invest in product-

    13. GAGeorge Arison51:16

        Yeah.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings51:17

        ... when you've got a team in Taiwan, when it... Like, you've got an audience that has a very visceral problem, it's a home for them, great, but it doesn't need to be amazing.

    15. GAGeorge Arison51:27

        It's been a known thing in the gay community that, like, Grindr has, you know, challenges as- as a product. Um, I want us to be a world-class product, right? I want people to open up Grindr, open up Uber, compare the two, and be like, "Yep, Grindr is as good of a product as- as Uber is from the UX and the UI experience perspective, from visibility standpoint, and- and from technology place- standpoint." Uh, I think our community deserves nothing less. We have this incredible relationship with our users, um, and we really appreciate it. Um, they are people who really care about quality. Why shouldn't the product that they so rely on be as good as humanly possible? So, that's the product that I want us to be. Are we there yet? No, but we will be. Um, we've done a lot of work over the last four years, both before I showed up here and since then, on making the quality of this product a lot better, and will continue to do that. We just said publicly that we ran a big bug ba- bug bash in September, bashed over three-fourths of all the known bugs, which I'm, like, really happy about. But there's still a lot more work to do, a- and we'll continue to do that. Do I think it'll impact our bottom line in the near term? I don't think so. But over the long term, I think it will, because I think people... You know, we want more people to subscribe to the product, and the better the UI and the UX and the user experiences, the more inclination I think people will have to subscribe to the product and- and become subscribing customers. And so I don't expect that to materialize in- in a year, but over the long term, having a really awesome experience I think does benefit.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings52:58

        It'd be a cool feature, wouldn't it? If you know in Uber when you call a- a car-

    17. GAGeorge Arison53:02

        Yeah.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings53:02

        ... it shows you where the car is. It'd be a cool one on a, like, location density if you saw where the other person was, like, moving in the map.

    19. GAGeorge Arison53:08

        Yeah, I think a lot... I think if they were okay with that, then ƒ2C 100%.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings53:11

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. (laughs)

    21. GAGeorge Arison53:12

        You know, sort of.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings53:13

        Privacy dependent, of course.

    23. GAGeorge Arison53:15

        Yeah, yeah.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings53:15

        Um, what an amazing story, huh? Like-

    25. GAGeorge Arison53:18

        Yeah, it is a really incredible story.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings53:19

        Final one before the quick-fire, what would it take for Grindr to be a 30 billion dollar company?

    27. GAGeorge Arison53:24

        Hopefully, us being really good at execution, a- and we will be, and building out these new use cases, the, what we call neighborhood expansion use cases, like healthcare and wellness, like travel. I think there are others that we're thinking about. I think networking and jobs is another really big opportunity, um, for us as well, kind of building those out and becoming successful, uh, in them. Uh, you know, and then it's just math, right? Like, if we continue growing our revenue and maintain really good EBITDA, market cap will kinda

18. 53:54 – 1:00:58

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. GAGeorge Arison53:54

       take care of itself.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings53:54

       George, I- I've absolutely loved this. I'd love to do a quick-fire with you. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts.

    3. GAGeorge Arison54:00

       Yeah.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings54:00

       Is that okay?

    5. GAGeorge Arison54:01

       Uh, will do my best.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings54:02

       The heaviest things in life are not iron or gold, but unmade decisions. What unmade decision weighs on you most, George?

    7. GAGeorge Arison54:10

       I make decisions all the time, like, that's my entire job, right? And I do that at home all the time too, so I actually don't have a lot of decisions I've not made, because guess what? If you don't make a decision, that's still making a decision. One of my, um, team members said, "Yeah, sometimes, like, I'll ask you three questions and you'll answer only two. Uh, and- and I've learned that that means that you're, like, thinking about something." I'm like, "Yeah, but I also realize that you need an answer, and when I don't give you that answer, that's basically telling you no." Most unmade decisions are nos and so I don't really have that many that I can, kind of, like, speak to.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings54:41

       I get you. It reminds me of actually kind of a statement that those who know they can and those who know they can't are both probably right. (laughs)

    9. GAGeorge Arison54:47

       Yeah, makes sense.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings54:49

        What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    11. GAGeorge Arison54:52

        So, I believe that AI is gonna be m- more at an infrastructural-level layer as a solution, rather than at a, at a product level, if, if that makes any sense. Like, I think application layer companies and s- products ultimately are gonna be overtaken by an infrastructure solution, because there's gonna be a universal AI that does a lot of things for you. Um, but in terms of how you think about the product, and that - I'm not changing my mind on that; I think I've had that point of view for a while - but how we get there is going to require small pieces of AI to come into our lives at various points in our product experiences, all of our products that we use. Because we are not gonna quite get to that ultimate goal for quite some time, and I think I've kind of adopted how quickly I believe we'll be getting there, and that building these, like, small experiences makes more sense than trying to kind of s- have one big AI that does a lot of things all at once, uh, for a user.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings55:46

        Got you. So just so I understand, uh, you don't think that infrastructure models, basically your OpenAIs, your Anthropics, will subsume the application layer?

    13. GAGeorge Arison55:56

        Long term, I don't think you're gonna need an Asana with AI. You're gonna just have an AI, like, uh, TBD how you engage with it, that's gonna tell every o- many other AIs what to do, right? So, like, you're gonna have a lot of agents that are specific, and there's gonna be one agent that's kind of telling all the other agents what to do, and you're gonna be talking to that one agent. But that's gonna take a while to get there, so my initial perspective was, oh, like, we'll be able to get to, like, that one agent quickly, and, like, and let's go work on that. But actually, I think you're gonna need these, like, smaller agents first that are more narrow in their nature before we can go to the one big agent. So, as an example of kinda how to think about this from Grindr perspective, we're gonna have more success building a feature, like, s- that summarizes your chat history with somebody and gives you a really nice kind of summary. Okay, like, you've talked to this guy for six months, and here are all the things you learned about him that are helpful for you to have as a summary, versus, you know, a, a bot that is able to talk to a person for you, right? It's gonna take a lot more time to get the latter done versus the former, and, and there's a lot of benefit to kinda launching these smaller features, um, that will be benefiting users with AI, um, while we work on kind of the more transformative AI features, um, that will take longer.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings57:15

        What's your favorite consumer brand, and why?

    15. GAGeorge Arison57:18

        You know, I kinda, like, stick to things I (laughs) I, I, I like and, and do- and, and don't change, and then I discover something I like, and I will stick to that for a long time. So, I discovered Vuori about three and a half years ago. Actually, I didn't discover. My husband discovered Vuori about, um, three and a half years ago. Now, all my pants, except for one pair of jeans, are Vuori. Uh, even, like, when I wear suits, I have, like, black Vuori pants that I wear because they're so much better. And the reason is 'cause they're so comfortable on your hips and your w- waist. 'Cause all these other pants are not as comfortable there, 'cause they're not as stretchy, and these guys are, and I, like, really love that.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings57:54

        You can be CEO of any other company for a day. Which company do you choose?

    17. GAGeorge Arison57:58

        I believe that impossible things are possible. Uh, and I, I really, really believe it. Like, it's like my core mission. Or no, c- core, like, value statement in, in, in life is, um, do impossible things. Um, it's a thing I've taught my kids from the very beginning, and so when, like, my s- son, who loves LEGOs - you know, he, like, he built this LEGO behind me even though he's only five, and that's, like, an 18, 18-year-old LEGO. He, like, he does them, and sometimes, like, "Oh, can't do this. Can you help me?" I'm like, "No, man. What's our motto?" And he's like, "E- n- n- noth- nothing is impossible," and then kinda go do it. So, um, so whenever I think... Like, when I think about that question, like, okay, like, if I say this, like, what's the company I actually would wanna go after and be a CEO of? And, and, um, uh, and I don't know, so I'm gonna answer the one that's actually impossible, which is I would probably be wanna be president of the United States for a day. And that's actually impossible 'cause I was not born in the United States.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings58:46

        (inhales) Well, hey, it's a good answer, though (laughs) . Uh, final one: what question are you not often or ever asked that you think you should be asked?

    19. GAGeorge Arison58:57

        It's surprising to me how little people talk to me about my upbringing in the Soviet Union. Uh, I, I learned this when I was, uh, first starting, uh, to raise money for, for companies, kind of talking to VCs. I saw this bifurcation. VCs... This is, you know, 10-plus years ago, and so VCs who were, like, older and kinda were young adults in the 1980s had a very different thought about my background versus VCs who were younger. Because, uh, younger VCs never lived in a world where there was a real tyranny that they were, like, confronted with. There are real tyrannies in the world. China's a complete and utter tyranny, ob- obviously, um, but we don't think of it that way because it pretends to have free market economics, which it really doesn't, but people think it does. Um, and, uh, and, and... But people who are kind of... or who are older and who, like, saw the Soviet Union and remember it realize what real tyranny is like. And so they have, I think, a different appreciation for people who, like, grew up in that environment, uh, and both, like, what it means to have left that environment and be in a free place now and what it takes to do that, but also just, like, how it shapes your brain and, and... well, the choices that you make. So, that's the piece where, like, it's a really big part of who I am and how I make decisions, but a lot of people, I think, don't fully get and don't ask me as many questions as they probably should.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:18

        What specifically about it do you think they should know?

    21. GAGeorge Arison1:00:21

        I think when you grow up in fear of a risk of what you might say really hurts you, you have a very different perception for how important freedoms are. And like, I come from... to everything from like, okay, we gotta be pr- protective of freedom, um, point of view versus, like, not, right? And that's not instinctually, I think, how everyone else thinks.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:43

        George, I have so enjoyed this. Uh, I think you can tell from my kind of wavering around the schedule that we had prepared. Uh, thank you so much for being such a fantastic guest, and I've just loved having you on the show.

    23. GAGeorge Arison1:00:54

        No, thanks for, uh, having me, and I, I had a lot of fun, too. This is a really good conversation.

Episode duration: 1:01:08