Grindr

“We took Grindr public, and we'll talk about how we got there, but we took it public for two billion on the New York Stock Exchange two and a half years after we bought the company. And as I mentioned, as part of the deal structure that earned out, the first tw…”

“We were being sued at that point by 13 attorney generals in the U.S. Over privacy and data leakage, something the company had not done, but it was everyone believed the company had done.”

“And in two and a half years, we took Grindr from a hundred million of revenue to two hundred million of revenue when we took it public.”

“So we bought it for about six hundred million. It was doing less than fifty million, about forty five million of EBITDA when we bought the company, so, you know, call that kind of 12, 13 X EBITDA, and the market was probably trading at more like 20, the public…”

“It came down to three buyers in the end that put in, you know, legitimate bids, and we were lucky enough to partner with the other PE firm and buy it.”

“And this was one of the only cases ever where CFIUS had actually retroactively unwound a deal. CFIUS had denied deals with foreign buyers, but they had never, what they're trying to do with TikTok today over the years is TikTok would be the second one after Gr…”

“By the time Rick and I left, 70% of the hires from the, in the company were minority hires, basically. We were hiring people from the LGBTQ community, or we were hiring people that were in, in the DEI, which is not something people like to talk about anymore, …”

“Joel sold it for, I wanna say, two hundred and sixty million. So it was a great sale and he owned 90% of the company.”

“So the deal structure, the 600, there was about 200 of equity that went in. And, you know, some of that was our personal money, but most of it was outside money that we raised. There was two hundred million of debt. So Fortress was our debt provider. And then …”

“They give the company one year. You have one year to sell to a U.S. Ownership group. And if you do not, the government will take control of the business.”