Lover’s tiff: Tinder’s $2bn claim against Match gets day in court
The relationship between Tinder and owner Match has turned toxic with the dating app’s founders and former employees claiming they were swindled.
The case will be heard in a New York courtroom with the trial, which began with a 2018 state court lawsuit filed by Tinder co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, kicking off today.
Tinder is accusing Match and its controlling investor IAC of undervaluing the company at $3bn when it was actually worth closer to $13bn in order to cheat company employees out of billions of dollars in stock options.
Launched in 2012, the app made famous by its “swipe left, swipe right” dating technology was already registering over 1bn swipes a day two years later.
Tinder claims that Match, which owns Match.com, PlentyOfFish and OkCupid, acted in concert with others to deliberately falsify the data upon which the banks relied to complete a 2017 valuation. The company was given the same valuation as it had received two years earlier in 2015.
Internal emails sent by Greg Blatt, former Tinder chief executive and IAC executive, included in the discovery files show that he said the popular dating app was worth nearly $12bn in 2016, a year before he judged the company to be worth just $3bn.
The legal filing put forward by the plaintiffs also alleges that Gregg Blatt “groped and sexually harassed” an employee during a 2016 party.
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