The Exchanges

Q success, but for a lot of people, taking risk is hard, and they never do, which is maybe why, you know, 60% of people hate their jobs and yet never leave them. How did you get comfortable with risk, or how do you think about risk, especially for young people who maybe haven't had a chance to take it yet, and would you tell them to go take active risk?

A Well, first of all, the younger you are, the easier it is to take risk, right, and use that to your advantage. I started my first company when I was 17. Um, and I was in college, and, or sorry, I was just entering college. And, um, I think I had this mindset that like, okay, like I have this thing, college, right? And like, I could do that well, and as long as I'm doing that well, my parents will be okay, so let me go take as much risk as I can take outside of school, and let me go try different things. And I had, I didn't have kids, I didn't, you know, I didn't have to, I was, I was working and paying some of my own bills at the time, but I had, you know, my parents were supporting me, And I use that, um, as an excuse to take more risk. Um, and I think the older you get, the harder it is to take risk. Um, and it like, risk is like a muscle, right? It's like the, the, the, the younger you try new things and the younger, um, the earlier you, you sort of train your mindset to know that, that like, I'm going to do something and if it works, great. And if it doesn't work, That's still ok too, because I'm going to learn from that and I'm going to leverage that into the next thing. So if you have that mindset, there's no such thing as failure. You, you, you can have moments where something didn't work, but if you, if you get back up and you use that to your advantage, then you're nev…

AI assessment note: “the younger you are, the easier it is to take risk, right”

Q it is, in a world in which we have so much, so many options, men and women aren't talking to each other in that way anymore. Now you had a, you had a belief that Tinder was the right way to do it, as opposed to the way that, let's just use two examples, Hinge and Bumble are doing it. I thought that was really interesting. Can you explain why?

A Well, first of all, Tinder's still the biggest, by far. Everyone else copied Tinder, so. I don't think they're different. They're different around the margins, but let's, let's examine what made Tinder work. Um, without Tinder, if there's someone I want to meet, um, I would have to walk up to them, put myself out there. I might get rejected. That might really suck for the person who has to reject me. Um, but Tinder created this magical environment where, like, I could tell the matchmaker, the phone is like the matchmaker. I go, I'm really interested in that person. But I'm not really, you know, if they're interested in me, then the matchmaker can say, hey, Sean and so-and-so, you both like each other, you should start talking. And that was like the innovation we called the double opt-in.

AI assessment note: “I don't think they're different. They're different around the margins”

Q and they have no idea what it would look like to build a multi-billion dollar business. What do you think it takes to just hit profitability? If you were gonna look back and say, God, alright, if I was gonna do it again, or if you were doing it today, How do you get to that first 76 K? Cause I think even these days that feels out of reach.

A Well, look, you have to be willing. If you're starting a business, you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot, a lot of comfort. And the only reason to do that is cause like you really love what you're doing. You have to love it. It has to be from the heart or else you're going to give up. Um, and when it's from the heart, you're willing to take a lot of pain for that, that, that bigger, uh, Mission. Um, so I think that helps you power through, and, um, you know, I think you, to, you don't sort of start out a business thinking I'm going to build a billion dollar business. Probably too much pressure. Like if someone came and told me when I was building Tinder, hey, you got to build a business that is going to transform the world, a billion dollar business. I don't even know if I would have built Tinder, because I didn't have the foresight to say that this would do that. What I was more focused on is building a product that I love, um, that I want to use, that my friends want to use, um, and trusting that, um, If I create value in people's lives, they will pay me for it, and, and, and we build a business that way, and eventually, you know, sort of the early days felt like a knife fight, like every user we had to beg to kind of come into the platform, and eventually, the better you get at what you're doing, the more momentum you get, it starts to take a mind of its own. It, it, you…

AI assessment note: “focused on is building a product that I love... trusting that... If I create value”

Q he's real with you guys. About what it takes to win and what it takes to be in the game. So without further ado, Sean Radd. So you went from six or eight years ago being everywhere on the internet. I was looking up all of these interviews of Sean to, I couldn't find another one in the last five years besides one other. What have you been up to?

A Sailed into the sunset and I disappeared. Um, no, I've been doing a lot. I just, I just, I think I, I hit a moment in my life where I felt like, um, it's maybe easier to be creative and create things without a lot of noise, and, ah, you know, when I was starting out, I was nowhere. No one knew who I was, and that, that I think was, um, so freeing, and I had my, my, you know, five minutes Uh, of, of attention, and part of me just didn't like it. I, I, it wasn't, it wasn't about that. Um, I guess it's, it's, it's fun to share my story and inspire others. That feels really good. Um, but once I left Tinder, I was no longer representing a bigger company. I could kind of just go back to being me, normal guy.

AI assessment note: “I've been doing a lot. I just, I think I, I hit a moment”

Q What kind of mechanisms did you have to ask questions to your users? In the beginning, were you like picking up the phone and giving them a phone call? Were you shooting out texts?

A Well, so first of all, I think this is also very important when you're, when you're building a business, we were the users, right? So we were building for ourselves at first. And you know, a lot of people talk about this concept of product market fit, which is like, There's a market and you have to like build the right product that the market wants. Um, and that's like a moment in time. Well, for me, it was always like first step is product team fit. Do we want to use this product? And you got to be honest about that. And if we didn't want to use it and it wasn't good enough, back to the drawing board. Um, so now we want to use it. Great. So the next is like product friends fit to the sort of closer customers around us. Let's try it with them. Do they want to use it? Okay. We, now we cross that bear. Now we go wider and we go wider and we go wider. So it's like you're stress testing the product at every single point. Um, and I think that is, even if you're running a massive company, Right. And you have a new innovation or new idea. That is the natural course evolution of success. It's like you can't jump to the end point. Don't put the cart before the horse. Build it. Test it. Build it. Test it. Iterate. Test. Iterate. Test. Um, that doesn't mean you don't have a vision. You have to have a vision. You have to have a sense of where you want to go, but you can't be too married to…

AI assessment note: “we were the users, right? So we were building for ourselves at first.”

Q And, like, how many friends did you have coming up, did you watch, never make it?

A I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm the only one of all my friends who's done something of this scale, and it doesn't mean I'm happier. You know, it, it, it, you know, I've done, I've done something of this scale, but I also took on way more pain. Um, so, there's no right answer. I mean, it's, it's, it's like, look, I, at the same time, I think we want to all be ambitious. Yeah. But ambition doesn't mean take, take, take, make a lot of money, right? I think when you cultivate this attitude of, I want to create value. I want to give value to my community. I want to, I want to do something I love and share it. And yeah, I want to make money for it, but like, and the money matters because I want to like put that back into doing more of what I love. Yeah. That like circuitry, that flow, that's the magic. But like when you have this attitude of like, I want to make more money and like accumulate wealth and then go buy a yacht and like everyone's going to come kiss the ring and do all this shit or like buy the Ferrari and whatever, you're going to end up pretty miserable. I know, you know, I know I didn't grow up with money, um, I know a lot of people with a lot of money and there's absolutely no correlation with money buying you happiness. Yeah. I think at a certain point, you know, money will buy you happiness because it gives you freedom, but then there's total diminishing returns. So chasing t…

AI assessment note: “I'm the only one of all my friends who's done something of this scale”