\t\t\t\tA group of Tinder founders and executives has filed a lawsuit against parent company Match Group and its controlling shareholder IAC.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs in the suit include Tinder co-founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen \u2014 Badeen still works at Tinder, as do plaintiffs James Kim (the company\u2019s vice president of finance) and Rosette Pambakian (its vice president of marketing and communications).<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve reached out to IAC for comment, as well as Pambakian, who\u2019s served as our main contact at Tinder. We\u2019ll update the post if we hear back.<\/p>\n
The suit alleges that IAC and Match Group manipulated financial data in order to create \u201ca fake lowball valuation\u201d (to quote the plaintiffs\u2019 press release), then stripped Rad, Mateen, Badeen and others of their stock options. It points to the removal of Rad as CEO, as well as other management changes, as moves designed \u201cto allow Defendants to control the valuation of Tinder and deprive Tinder optionholders of their right to participate in the company\u2019s future success.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit also alleges that Greg Blatt, the Match CEO who became CEO of Tinder, groped and sexually harassed Pambakian at the company\u2019s 2016 holiday party, supposedly leading the company to \u201cwhitewash\u201d his actions long enough for him to complete the valuation of Tinder and its merger with Match Group, and then to announce his departure.<\/p>\n
In response, the plaintiffs are asking for \u201ccompensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, but not less than $2,000,000,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were always concerned about IAC\u2019s reputation for ignoring their contractual commitments and acting like the rules don\u2019t apply to them,\u201d Rad said in the release. \u201cBut we never imagined the lengths they would go to cheat all the people who built Tinder. The Tinder team \u2014 especially the plaintiffs who are currently senior leaders at the company \u2014 have shown tremendous strength in exposing IAC\/Match\u2019s systematic violation of employees\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Update: We\u2019ve just received the following joint statement from IAC and Match Group.<\/p>\n
The allegations in the complaint are meritless, and IAC and Match Group intend to vigorously defend against them.<\/p>\n
Since Tinder\u2019s inception, Match Group has paid out in excess of a billion dollars in equity compensation to Tinder\u2019s founders and employees. With respect to the matters alleged in the complaint, the facts are simple: Match Group and the plaintiffs went through a rigorous, contractually \u2013 defined valuation process involving two independent global investment banks, and Mr. Rad and his merry band of plaintiffs did not like the outcome. Mr. Rad (who was dismissed from the Company a year ago) and Mr. Mateen (who has not been with the Company in years) may not like the fact that Tinder has experienced enormous success following their respective departures, but sour grapes alone do not a lawsuit make. Mr. Rad has a rich history of outlandish public statements, and this lawsuit contains just another series of them. We look forward to defending our position in court.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group of Tinder founders and executives has filed a lawsuit against parent company Match Group and its controlling shareholder IAC. The plaintiffs in the suit include Tinder co-founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen \u2014 Badeen still works at Tinder, as do plaintiffs James Kim (the company\u2019s vice president of finance) and Rosette […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biz.jaffreyalam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}