Thursday, July 3, 2014

The Myth of Creation: Tinder's Startup Story Made Up?

It's been a bad week over at Los Angeles-based Tinder, as one of the mobile dating/hookup app's co-founders, Justin Mateen, was sued by former executive Whitney Wolfe over sexual harassment--and for cutting her out of the list of founders at the company. However, Businessweek reports that the startup story behind Tinder is actually all a myth, conveniently created after Tinder was created inside IAC. The report claims that CEO Sean Rad and Mateen were "off in their own world" in manufacturing the startup creation myth of Tinder. Both of them--plus IAC--are now being sued by Wolfe, who released a long list of what look to be abusive and degrading texts from Mateen in the lawsuit. Mateen was suspended by IAC this week after the lawsuit was filed, and Rad sent an internal email admitting that Mateen's texts and emails were "unacceptable" -- while also saying Wolfe's lawsuit is "full of factual inaccuracies and omissions."

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