Tinder CEO will depart in July, Match Group CEO would step in to lead the team
Tinder CEO Faye Iosotaluno will step down in July, Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff would step in to lead the team.
Iosotaluno was CEO since January 2024 and has been with Match Group for almost 8 years.
In 2024, Tinder generated approximately $1.94 billion in direct revenue, accounting for over 55% of Match Group’s total revenue of $3.5 billion (page 39).
Match has been facing considerable activists pressure in recent years over its underperformance, leading to management changes including the appointment of Rascoff as CEO in February.
Hinge’s CEO said the subsidiary operates largely independently from Match Group
In an interview with Nilay Patel of the Verge’s Decoder podcast, Hinge CEO said they remain an independent company.
“Up until recently, and still today, the company operates pretty independently,” he said. We’re in New York. We pretty much have our own space. We have our own product teams, our own engineering teams, our own marketing teams that operate very independently. We share learnings across the platform. We use shared services like accounting and legal and things like that.
He said that they will likely launch an alternative payment system (other than that of Apple) at the end of the year, which would result in reduced prices, higher margins or more investment.
He thinks the new payment system rates should be reduced to between 5% to 10% from 15% to 30%.
Match Group hires new Tinder CTO to replace Tom Jacques who left last year
Match Group hired Vinay Kuruvila as the new CTO, replacing Tom Jacques who left in June 2024.
Before his appointment, Vinay served as CTO at BrightWheel, an early education platform that combines SaaS, payments, and a consumer-like daily experience, for four years.
Vinay has almost 15 years experience as a product engineer.
Match Group still doesn’t have a CTO after Will Wu who was considered the brain behind Match Group’s AI revolution left in April.
Will Rascoff permanently lead Tinder or will they recruit an CEO? Have there been any new insights regarding that question on the conference call, the earnings release or in news?
Did they give any more color on the new CTO? What is your assessment of him? Do you think his background is strong enough when it comes to AI? Why was he selected?
I haven’t found any reports saying they plan to hire a new Tinder CEO. In the earnings call, Rascoff only said “I’m running Tinder personally.”
The new CTO is for Tinder and not Match Group as earlier reported. The earnings call didn’t carry more information on the CTO. The name of the new Tinder CTO came from Bloomberg and it doesn’t include their source.
Vinay Kuruvila mentions AI background in his Linkedin profile but hasn’t shipped any recommender engine as core product in his past career. His career revolves around predictive LTV, fraud detection systems and the use of machine language to analyze photos. So I would rate him as above average.
I=5 Tinder is now flatter, faster, and leaner, three senior executives told Business Insider
Cleo Long, Tinder’s senior director for global product marketing said Tinder now ships code weekly compared to a twice-monthly schedule in the past.
Hillary Paine, Tinder’s VP of product and who previously worked with CEO Spencer Rascoff at Zillow said Tinder’s new “smaller, more structured pods” are similar to what they had at Zillow.
“They’re all physically sitting next to each other in the office,” she said. “There are whiteboards, they’ve got their devices out, and they’re riffing quickly on things.”
Stephanie Danzi, Tinder’s SVP of global marketing, said budget planning is now more fluid.
“I’ve never been able to transfer my Q4 dollars to Q2 with a launch,” Danzi said. "He was like, ‘This is ridiculous.’’
Paine said Rascoff has been working on improving relationship between Hinge and Tinder.
Assessment
The comments may not be conclusive given the executives wouldn’t want to jeopardies their jobs. I would have preferred comments from anonymous executives.