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Tinder’s parent company, the IAC-owned Match Group, is going public tomorrow. As the most attractive and valuable part of the company, it makes sense that Tinder’s CEO, Sean Rad, is talking to media outlets to drum up excitement for the IPO.
This morning, a fresh Tinder PR disaster dropped in the form of an interview with journalist Charlotte Edwardes in the London Evening Standard. In it, Rad talks about the number of women he’s slept with (“Is 20 low?”), confuses the word sapiosexual for sodomy and condemns fame-hungry journalists.
It makes sense that Rad would say some really, really stupid things in an interview. Rad was the dude who mishandled a sexual misconduct scandal (and the resulting lawsuit) that led to the exit of co-founder and CMO Justin Mateen last year. Rad stepped down as CEO last November, but got a second chance at the top job after his successor, former Microsoft exec Chris Payne, was canned in the wake of a memorable Twitter meltdown.
The interview is very long and there are many different great parts. Below is perhaps the best selection from it (here’s another one: “I do not condone penis pictures — that is just not who I am”). I’m sure it will inspire a lot of confidence in investors looking to buy Match Group stock tomorrow:
He’s desperate to impress on me how gallant he is, citing the fact that a “supermodel, someone really, really famous” has been “begging” him for sex “and I’ve been like, no.” She’s “taunted” him, he says, and “called me a prude.”
“She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen but it doesn’t mean that I want to rip her clothes off and have sex with her. Attraction is nuanced. I’ve been attracted to women who are …” he pauses “… well, who my friends might think are ugly. I don’t care if someone is a model. Really. It sounds clichéd and almost totally unbelievable for a guy to say this, but it’s true. I need an intellectual challenge.”
He continues: “Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” His face creases with the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?”
Rosette [Pambakian, Tinder’s VP of communications and branding] shrieks: “That’s it! We’re going to be fired!” and Rad looks confused. “What? Why?”
I tell him it means something else and he thumbs his phone for a definition. “What? No, not that. That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.”
When he recovers he explains that Tinder is launching an education and workplace add-on that will help users identify their intellectual equals.
You can read the full interview here.
Update: A spokesperson from the London Evening Standard emailed “to make clear we haven’t made corrections to our piece: Because as far as we can see it is fair and accurate.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
