Forbes suggested Rad was demoted due to a high-profile sexual harassment case filed against him by Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe. The lawsuit argued that Rad stripped Wolfe of her title as co-founder because she was a woman, and later fired her after her split with Justin Mateen – who was also at the helm of the company – escalated in the news.
IAC – the company that owns Tinder – said it wanted Rad to let go of the top position in order to focus on the product. “The board thought the best path was to bring in a CEO, thinking if we opened up the role it would attract better talent,” said Rad. “I strongly disagreed.” After four months of searching for a replacement, Payne was hired to bring more experience to the dating app. He was brought on to help Tinder make money as it entered a more established phase, and followed the company’s roll out of its first paid product – “Tinder Plus”. This version lets users pay a monthly fee to undo decisions to pass on a potential romantic match. In November, Rad claimed Tinder would look for “an Eric Schmidt-like person” to replace him as CEO. “Christopher brings invaluable experience running consumer technology businesses that operate at massive scale,” Rad said. Read more about CEOs:- Has Barclays missed a trick in firing CEO Antony Jenkins?
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