Tech

Actually, Tinder Is Not Worth $5 Billion

By Alyson Shontell
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tinder
A profile on Tinder's app.  Tinder/Vimeo

For a brief moment following a Bloomberg report, the Internet thought hot dating app Tinder was worth $5 billion.

That's off by a lot, an IAC executive tells Forbes, and sources tell Business Insider.

OKCupid co-founder Sam Yagan, who works for IAC, tells Forbes' Jeff Bercovici: "I can confirm on the record that we did a transaction with Chamath, but this valuation is nowhere near the truth."

Two LA startup executives who aren't directly tied to Tinder, tell Business Insider that IAC purchased a chunk of Tinder from former Facebooker and investor Chamath Palihapitiya for $50 million at an estimated $500 million valuation. Bloomberg initially reported the sale price at $500 million for a $5 billion Tinder valuation. 

Chamath Palihapitiya just debunked the Bloomberg report in a tweet, too:

Screen Shot 2014 04 11 at 3.29.18 PM
Twitter


IAC already owned a majority stake in the app it helped incubate before the deal. Tinder is a dating app that works a lot like Hot or Not. In January, Tinder was creating 10 million matches for its users per day. 

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Alyson Shontell Business Insider
Alyson Shontell
Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.
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