20VC: Tinder's Sean Rad on Why Humility Is The Key Trait For Founders To Have, Why Today's Incumbents Are Stronger Than Any Before Them & How Leaders Need To Scale With The Scaling Of Their Company
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2017
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sean Rad is the Founder & Chairman @ Tinder, the world's most popular app for connecting with new and interesting people around you. Every single day there are 26m matches made on Tinder. Alongside his role with Tinder, Sean is the Chairman of Swipe Ventures, the investment vehicle that will continue to grow Tinder's reach through acquisitions, investment opportunities and development of new business. Prior to Tinder, Sean was the Founder and President of both Adly and Orgoo.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Sean made his way into the world of startups and changed the way people connect with Tinder?
2.) How has Sean seen his startup evaluation process evolve since his time angel investing to now, investing institutionally with Swipe Ventures?
3.) What are the character traits that Sean most looks for when evaluating startup founders? Why is humility key to success as a founder? How can this be balanced with passion and vision?
4.) How has Sean seen his leadership and mentality evolve with the growth of Tinder?What have been the major inflection points in his learning as CEO?
5.) Why does Sean believe that today's incumbents are different than any we have seen before? How does their mentality to startup competition differ from incumbents before them?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Sean’s Fave Book: The Nurture Assumption
Sean’s Fave Blog: TechCrunch
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sean on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the 20-minute VC with your nerdy British host, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings on |
| 0:04.9 | Snapchat, all ads get a personal message from me, and it would be great to see you there. |
| 0:08.7 | Now, for the show today and Founders Friday, naturally, I've used all the products featured on the show by founders, but some I've used more than others. |
| 0:15.7 | Today, I'll let you decide which camp this product falls in. So, joining me on the show today, I'm thrilled to welcome |
| 0:20.9 | Sean Rad. Sean is the founder and chairman at Tinder, the world's most popular app for connecting |
| 0:25.8 | with new and interesting people around you. Every single day, there are more than 26 million |
| 0:30.3 | matches made on Tinder. Alongside his role with Tinder, Sean is the chairman of Swipe Ventures, |
| 0:34.7 | the investment vehicle that will continue to grow Tinder's reach |
| 0:37.5 | through acquisitions, investment opportunities and development of new business. Prior to Tinder, |
| 0:42.3 | Sean was the founder and president of both Adley and Orgu. I also want to give a big hand to Mark |
| 0:47.0 | Sue Sturr at upfront for the intro to Sean today, without which this episode would not have been |
| 0:51.1 | possible. But before we head into the episode today, a lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so many calls and interviews, but what do you use? My response? Zoom. The number |
| 1:00.0 | one video and web conferencing service providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an |
| 1:05.2 | array of activities, including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration enabled conference rooms, and business |
| 1:11.6 | I am, just to name a few. And it's the easiest solution to use, buy and scale, and for sure, |
| 1:16.5 | the most straightforward pricing. But hey, don't take my word for it. Their partnership with |
| 1:20.7 | Sequoia in their latest 100 million funding around says it all. Zoom really is a must |
| 1:24.6 | checkout for your business. I cannot emphasize that enough, and you can find |
| 1:27.7 | them at Zoom.us. Speaking of video, though, to power your company there with Zoom, you must check |
| 1:32.8 | out VoodDit. Vood It is a free video recording tool that makes it easy for organizations |
| 1:37.4 | to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. Vood it enables sales, professionals, |
| 1:42.7 | executive leaders, and customer support teams |
... |
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