Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Marini: The $600M Grindr buyout used $200M equity, $200M debt, $200M earn-out

Rick Marini · How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B · Oct 13, 2025 · at 13:41

Investor Rick Marini breaks down the exact financing structure used to acquire Grindr across equity, debt, and deferred earn-out liabilities.

0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 there was another two hundred million that was due basically an earn out upon the exit, right? So really with Grindr only two hundred million of equity went into the deal.”

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

Assertion Not checkable as stated
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 …”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 1:08:09 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Assertion Supported
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…”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 8:23 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Assertion Supported
Marini: Grindr's $2B IPO generated a 9x return on $200M equity
“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…”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 15:03 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Disclosure
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…”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 35:44 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Disclosure
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 …”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 36:12 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Assertion Partly supported
Marini: Grindr revenue doubled from $100M to $200M before its $2B IPO
“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.”
Rick Marini Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 40:36 How two straight guys bought Grindr and made $2B
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.