Grindr founder Joel Simkhai discusses the initial startup costs and financing for legal and administrative expenses before launching Grindr.
Opinion
Simkhai: Grindr avoided VC to not answer to straight corporate investors
“And I felt that if I would take venture backing
I would essentially become a monkey to them, and that I would need to essentially work for them.
And a lot of them were, you know, straight men who I felt like didn't understand my business, and you know, I didn'…”
Insight
Simkhai: Users will pay for dating apps because matchmaking was always paid
“I remember people always telling me, you know, hey, Joel nobody pays for apps. Apps are all free. And no one's gonna ever pay for an app, and I said, I'm actually not an app. I'm a, essentially, a dating business, and people have been paying for dating for cen…”
Assertion Supported
Simkhai: Egyptian authorities actively use Grindr to track and arrest gay men
“It's not alleged. It happens.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simkhai: Grindr's customer acquisition cost was essentially zero
“Our marketing spend was essentially zero, so our cost to acquire new users was essentially zero. I mean, that's what allowed us to grow. You know, if I had to spend money acquiring users, we would not have been able to achieve what we achieved.”
Insight
Simkhai: Local network density is the core moat for location-based apps
“And, you know, for a location-based service, when you're meeting people, it's really, you know, all about, you want people nearby. And if someone's not nearby, that's not a great experience. And so we had the, you know, first mover's advantage. We had the netw…”
Insight
Simkhai: Startup valuations and headcount are vanity metrics
“And I think one of the ways that founders get caught up in validation is with Valuations.
Valuations, headcount.
And to me, those were vanity metrics.
Those were not metrics that were important.
The only metric that was really important to me was my daily acti…”