Match Group CEO talks Tinder’s impact on dating scene at IGNITION 2018

Kirsten Acuna/INSIDER

• Match
  Group CEO Mandy
  Ginsberg was interviewed Monday at Business Insider’s
  IGNITION
  2018, where she discussed the changing scene of online
  dating and the tech industry’s “bro culture.”
• Companies under Match Group include Tinder,
  Hinge, and Plenty of Fish, online dating platforms that Ginsberg
  said are helping the company transform dating.
• Ginsberg has taken steps within her own company to ensure
  she’s treating women equally to men in the male-dominated tech
  industry.

Just a few days into Mandy Ginsberg’s new role as CEO of Match
Group, she already found herself embroiled in an ongoing bitter
legal fight with Bumble that had the companies fighting for
control of the online dating scene.

It’s been almost a year since Ginsberg took control of Match
Group’s collection of online dating platforms, but
the lawsuits are ongoing. At Business Insider’s IGNITION 2018
conference on Monday, Ginsberg said that the online dating
industry is “fiercely competitive,” but has been by Match
Group-owned Tinder.

“Tinder really was a category changer … people in their 20s
really never used dating apps until Tinder,” Ginsberg said on
stage. “We have to protect our innovations.”

Match Group
sued Bumble back in July for infringing on its patented
“swiping” motion that has become an essential and widespread
feature of dating apps. The two companies
are fierce rivals — Bumble’s co-founders were former Tinder
employees, and multiple lawsuits have been exchanged back and
forth.

Nevertheless, Match Group is the biggest player in the online
dating sector, and is expected to
bring in $1.7 billion this year thanks to its lineup of
dating apps that include Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish,
and Match.com. Tinder on its own has an estimated 50 million
users,
which bests Bumble’s 37 million customers.

Tinder has grown to include more than 300 employees working on
solely on the app, Ginsberg said Monday. Match Group as a whole
has more than 1,000 employees, a
large workforce in which Ginsberg has advocated gender equality
and representation. Ginsberg shared on Monday that
she recently ordered an audit of Match Group to ensure male
and female employees were being paid equally for the same work.

Read more:

Match Group’s CEO audited the company’s payroll to make sure she
was paying women equally and was surprised at the
results

“You have to think about how women are taken care of,” Ginsberg
said. “There’s a lot of work we have to do as a company and as an
industry to make sure people in underrepresented communities are
being represented.” 

Although the auditors found her employees were paid equally
across the gender binary, Ginsberg says the company “can still do
better.” With 40 percent female employees, Match Group’s gender
breakdown is significantly better than the norm across the tech
workforce, but not yet in line with the general population’s
gender breakdown.

While some company CEO’s may shy away from making significant
internal changes so quickly, Ginsberg says she’s not afraid of
Match Group becoming a “disrupter” in the industry. Changing the
“bro culture” in tech, Ginsberg said, could “change the whole
landscape.”