Marini: Grindr's $2B IPO generated a 9x return on $200M equity
Rick Marini · How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B · Oct 13, 2025 · at 15:03
Rick Marini breaks down the economics of the Grindr acquisition and its subsequent New York Stock Exchange listing.
0:00 / 0:35exact quote · 35.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 two hundred million went back to the original owner or the owner that we bought it from. So that leaves you 1.8 with two hundred million of equity going in, because the debt just stayed on the business. So we basically created a nine X return on that two hundred million, right? So that's about 1.6 billion of value created, you know, when you subtract out the original capital.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rick Marini
Marini: Naval Ravikant predicted Bitcoin would reach $1M when trading under $1,000
“I remember early days, Bitcoin, you know, was trading under a thousand dollars, and I said to Naval, so how big does this get? And he said, I said, what's the price of Bitcoin? He said, a million. And I said, a million? It's only at like, you know, 800. And I …”
Marini: Investors bought Grindr for $600M at 12x to 13x EBITDA
“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…”
Marini: The $600M Grindr buyout used $200M equity, $200M debt, $200M earn-out
“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 …”
Marini: Partners bought JibJab for $20M using $15M debt and $5M equity
“The company was doing about five million of EBITDA and we bought it for twenty million. So four times EBITDA, which is a low multiple, but you know, Greg needed to sell it quickly and that's where we came out. And we were able to put fifteen million of debt on…”
Marini: JibJab repaid $15M acquisition debt in three years, funding a recapitalization
“And with JipJab, it was throwing off so much cash that we paid down the debt in about three years. And then we did a refi where we recapped the company and borrowed another Fifteen million and then ended up buying out kind of half the investors with that. And …”