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 Sean Rad, the 29-year-old co-founder and CEO of Tinder, wants me to believe he’s a “romantic”, who is “ready to settle down” and have “lots of children”. In fact, the last woman he shared a bedroom with was his mother, Fariba, when he took her to Rome recently — although he nearly fled after seeing all her make-up in the bathroom (“I have OCD”) and only changed his mind because “I felt bad. I haven’t seen her in so long and wanted to be a good son”. 
 
 It’s not what I was expecting of the co-founder of a dating app now synonymous with casual sex and unwanted pictures of penises. Not to mention the fact that Rad was briefly stripped of his CEO-ship after a sexual harassment case that lost his best friend and co-founder Justin Mateen his job. Mateen sent Whitney Wolfe, a former girlfriend and Tinder’s vice-president of marketing, abusive texts — including one accusing her of flirting with “middle-aged Muslim pigs”. Wolfe settled for a reported $2 million and founded Bumble, a rival app. 
 
 In person Rad seems more geek than jock. He tells me he was thrilled that his audience at the recent Web Summit in Dublin was “bigger than Instagram’s” and full of “screaming” fans. “It was like a concert,” he says. “Tech, I guess, is more important than it was. It’s like the new rock.” 
 
 On Friday, Tinder’s parent company, The Match Group, is due to float on the New York stock exchange for more than $3 billion. Analysts believe the app, which launched in 2012, has around 80 million users worldwide and records 1.8 billion “swipes” a day. 
 
 It is reported that Rad owns more than 10 per cent of the company, so the float will make him richer and more eligible than he is already. So far he’s been too busy for extravagance (apart from his gold Audemars Piguet watch and $115,000 black Mercedes G-Class SUV) but says he wants to start an art collection with the help of PR Matthew Freud, with whom he had dinner last night. 
 
 Today we’re in The Beaumont hotel in Mayfair and Rad is struggling with the mechanics of a tea strainer (“Is this what you guys call high tea?”). Beside him is Rosette Pambakian, vice- president, communications and branding, a deadpan brunette whose glances are like well-aimed grenades. 
 
 Rosette has just given him “a lecture”, he says, “about how I need to be careful because people might want to be with me for the wrong reasons. Basically, the long and short of this speech was that I shouldn’t date, get married or do anything and just become a priest.” 
 
 He admits he’s “addicted” to Tinder — “every other week I fall in love with a new girl” — but right now is single. “I’m focused. It’s such a critical time for the company so unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time for any of that.” 
 
 Actually, Rad is not much of a playboy. He’s been in four relationships and “I loved them all”. (One was Alexa Dell, of the billionaire computing family, who he met on Tinder.) 
 
 He lost his virginity at the relatively ancient age of 17 — “it was a serious relationship, my first love” — and, unlike the profile of the average male user of his dating app, has slept with only a modest 20 women. “Am I allowed to tell her?” he checks with Rosette before disclosing this. 
 
 “Only if it’s a nice low number,” she replies, cooly. “Is 20 low?” 
 
 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 the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?” 
 
 Rosette 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 helps users identify their intellectual equals. 
 
 The war between Tinder’s view of itself and the media’s view of Tinder has been fierce. The app is accused of encouraging adultery (“actually, only 0.4 per cent of our users are married”), stoking an increase of sexually transmitted infections (“there’s no data to support this”) and causing the phallus photo phenomenon (“I do not condone penis pictures — that is just NOT who I am”). 
 
 He’s obsessed with journalists — “too many are not seeking truth but fame” — and baffled by critics because “you can’t deny Tinder is what the world wants”. His own “truth” is that Tinder is “wonderful” — “we’ve solved the biggest problem in humanity: that you’re put on this planet to meet people.” 
 
 In September Vanity Fair accused Tinder of heralding the “dawn of the dating apocalypse” in an article that interviewed twentysomethings in New York who used it solely for casual sex. 
 
 Rad is “defensive” and still “upset” about the article, muttering mysteriously that he has done his own “background research” on the writer Nancy Jo Sales, “and there’s some stuff about her as an individual that will make you think differently.” He won’t elaborate on the matter. 
 
 His argument for why the piece was “wrong” veers from “our research shows 80 per cent of users are looking for a long-term meaningful relationship” to “we believe in democracy. If society just wants to ‘hook up’, who am I to judge?” 
 
 He says he has a lot of theories about “hook-up culture”, including “that feminism has led to it because now women are more independent and pursuing their desires. And that leads to both parties being more sexually active. It’s not because of Tinder.” 
 
 The best apps for Londoners 12 show all The best apps for Londoners 1/12 Zip car ‘Join, reserve, unlock and drive’ — it really is that simple. The capital’s preferred car club’s app gives 24/7 access to cars and vans in your neighbourhood and lets you extend or cancel reservations on the go. Free 2/12 Uncover Sick of being stuck on waiting lists? You need Uncover, which redistributes cancelled reservations at some of the capital’s top restaurants, including The River Café and Nobu. Not for planning freaks, though — tables typically become free at 40 minutes’ notice. Free 3/12 Uber So popular it’s become a verb, this private driver service has revolutionised travel in the capital. It’s speedy and affordable, making it a welcome alternative to the night bus. Free 4/12 Santander Cycles Launched this summer, the official app for Boris’ fifth child can be used to search for nearby docking stations and check bike availability. There’s also a journey planner featuring easy, moderate and fast routes to satisfy all cycling tribes. Free 5/12 Plume Air Report This new app has been downloaded by 3,000 Londoners. Sensors gathering air pollution data submit updates every hour, resulting in a scale that ranges from ‘fresh’ to ‘extremely polluted’. Free 6/12 Nightcapp Here’s an app that will have booze hounds raising their glasses. NightCapp is a map that pinpoints more than 1,500 London watering holes that stay open past 11.30pm. It also shows users when a bar is about to close by highlighting it in orange. Better get moving. Free 7/12 Money Dashboard An award-winning budget planner, this helps you keep track of personal spending across multiple accounts, pay off credit cards and even makes suggestions on how to manage your finances better. Free 8/12 Her Promising to introduce women to ‘a lesbian that hasn’t slept with any of your friends’, this revamped dating app includes queer-themed news and blogs, upcoming event notices and an improved algorithm-matching system. Free 9/12 FoodMood This new startup, which reckons it’s ‘Tinder for food’, pledges to narrow down your choice of lunchbreak destinations. Hit ‘yum’ or ‘yuk’ on photos of dishes in your area. Juvenile, but strangely addictive. Free 10/12 Daily Yoga This offers more than 50 yoga sessions, as well as a database of 500 yoga poses. Suitable for all levels, programmes include yoga aimed at specific areas of the body and weight loss. Namaste to that. Free 11/12 Coffee Meets Bagel Billed as the ‘anti-Tinder’, this new kid on the block delivers just a single match to users once a day. Coffee Meets Bagel uses Facebook profile information to recommend suitors based on friends of friends. Neither coffee nor bagels are included. Free. 12/12 Bristlr Do you have a beard? Perhaps you’d like to stroke one on a regular basis? This can be arranged. Unlike other dating apps, Bristlr is unashamedly all about hooking up the hairy with the hairless. There’s even a beard-rating option for aficionados. Free 1/12 Zip car ‘Join, reserve, unlock and drive’ — it really is that simple. The capital’s preferred car club’s app gives 24/7 access to cars and vans in your neighbourhood and lets you extend or cancel reservations on the go. Free 2/12 Uncover Sick of being stuck on waiting lists? You need Uncover, which redistributes cancelled reservations at some of the capital’s top restaurants, including The River Café and Nobu. Not for planning freaks, though — tables typically become free at 40 minutes’ notice. Free 3/12 Uber So popular it’s become a verb, this private driver service has revolutionised travel in the capital. It’s speedy and affordable, making it a welcome alternative to the night bus. 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Free 8/12 Her Promising to introduce women to ‘a lesbian that hasn’t slept with any of your friends’, this revamped dating app includes queer-themed news and blogs, upcoming event notices and an improved algorithm-matching system. Free 9/12 FoodMood This new startup, which reckons it’s ‘Tinder for food’, pledges to narrow down your choice of lunchbreak destinations. Hit ‘yum’ or ‘yuk’ on photos of dishes in your area. Juvenile, but strangely addictive. Free 10/12 Daily Yoga This offers more than 50 yoga sessions, as well as a database of 500 yoga poses. Suitable for all levels, programmes include yoga aimed at specific areas of the body and weight loss. Namaste to that. Free 11/12 Coffee Meets Bagel Billed as the ‘anti-Tinder’, this new kid on the block delivers just a single match to users once a day. Coffee Meets Bagel uses Facebook profile information to recommend suitors based on friends of friends. Neither coffee nor bagels are included. Free. 12/12 Bristlr Do you have a beard? Perhaps you’d like to stroke one on a regular basis? This can be arranged. Unlike other dating apps, Bristlr is unashamedly all about hooking up the hairy with the hairless. There’s even a beard-rating option for aficionados. Free 
 
 At the same time he says the company is in the middle of compiling data on “Tinder marriages”, and claims a recent dip in the divorce rate “could be” connected to the rise in popularity of the app. “Now there is more choice, so people make the right decisions.” 
 
 When he’s not pumping out public- relations rhetoric Rad is disarmingly frank and rather charming. As a teenager he suffered from “deforming” acne that made him “awkward” around girls. He found it “hard to connect with people”, was “misunderstood” and thought “cold”. 
 
 He describes himself as “a sweet, naughty kid” who was “curious about everything. I liked breaking things down and putting them back together. We were the first family on the block to have an ISDN telephone line. I would dismantle the router and put it back together. It drove my dad crazy.” 
 
 Over the years he “learned” to have a similarly scientific approach to people. “I’m in my own little world sometimes. I can’t be fake so it’s hard for me to do smalltalk. I would either pour my heart out to people or be cold, but not in a mean way.” 
 
 As a CEO, he “needed to empathise. I realised that everyone could be fascinating once you peel back all the layers. I like asking questions and learning what makes them tick. But it drives people crazy.” 
 
 His parents are Iranian-born Jews who moved to Bel Air in the Seventies. They are both in the consumer electronics business set up by his grandfather, and Rad grew up “listening to complex business issues at the dinner table. I got a masters degree in it by the time I left home.” 
 
 The family is sprawling — he has 12 uncles and aunts and 41 first cousins — and he speaks to his mum everyday: “I have no choice.” 
 
 For a while she would call repeatedly until he answered, so Rad introduced a system whereby “one call means just checking up; two calls means it’s very important; three calls means somebody is dying. But now she’s learned to text, so I get like 20 texts a day instead.” His phone buzzes. “That’s probably her now.” 
 
 Until he was 17 Rad played guitar and wanted to be a rock star but then “fell into tech”. He dropped out of the University of Southern California after two years to set up Orgoo, an email service that failed, and then Adly, a marketing company, which he sold. 
 
 He is fluent in his rehearsed responses about Tinder, such as it being like a restaurant — “You walk in, see a guy or a girl and you have this quick attraction” . He is less so about the minefield of potential consequences, including claims that Tinder has caused a rise in sex addiction and the inability of some to sustain long-term relationships. 
 
 He says these are sicknesses in society, not the fault of Tinder. “If someone is rude do you blame the restaurant where it happened, or civilisation as a whole? All we are is connecting people. And yeah, there are some disturbing people out there.” 
 
 Tinder employs sociologists, he says, voice rising, “and they’ll tell you, ‘Look at what’s happening in society. We’re living in a technical age, it’s creating transparency and equality and connecting us’. On top of that, women are more independent than ever. Tinder isn’t redefining romance. Progress is.” 
 
 Follow Charlotte Edwards on Twitter: @chedwardes ||||| Dated November 18, 2015 Filed Pursuant to Rule 433 Registration Statement No. 333-207472 Relating to Preliminary Prospectus Dated November 17, 2015 MATCH GROUP, INC. FREE WRITING PROSPECTUS Match Group, Inc. (referred to herein as us, we, our or the Company), has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) a preliminary prospectus dated November 17, 2015 (the Preliminary Prospectus), forming part of the Companys Registration Statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-207472) (the Registration Statement). On November 18, 2015, the Evening Standard (the Standard), an online and print news service, published an article based on an interview with Sean Rad, the Chief Executive Officer of Tinder, a subsidiary of the Company. The article is described in relevant part in the following paragraph and the full article is attached hereto. The article was not approved or condoned by, and the content of the article was not reviewed by, the Company or any of its affiliates. Mr. Rad is not a director or executive officer of the Company and was not authorized to make statements on behalf of the Company for purposes of the article. The article noted that Analysts believe the [Tinder] app, which launched in 2012, has around 80 million users worldwide and records 1.8 billion swipes a day. While these statements were not made by Mr. Rad, the Company notes that they are inaccurate and directs readers to the Preliminary Prospectus, which states that for the month of September 2015, Tinder had approximately 9.6 million daily active users, with Tinder users swiping through an average of more than 1.4 billion user profiles each day. Evening Standard routinely publishes articles and is unaffiliated with the Company and all other offering participants, and, as of the date of this free writing prospectus, none of the Company, any other offering participant and any of their respective affiliates have made any payment or given any consideration to Evening Standard in connection with the article described in this free writing prospectus. The statements by Mr. Rad were not intended to qualify any of the information, including the risk factors, set forth in the Registration Statement or the Preliminary Prospectus and are not endorsed or adopted by the Company. You should consider statements contained in this free writing prospectus, including those in the attached transcription, only after carefully evaluating all of the information in the Registration Statement and any final preliminary prospectus relating to the offering filed pursuant to SEC Rule 424(b) (the Final Preliminary Prospectus), including the risk factors described therein. 
 
 Forward-Looking Statements This filing may contain forward-looking statements that reflect expectations and projections about our future results, performance, prospects and opportunities. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and investors should exercise caution and not place undue reliance on them. Our actual results may differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements due to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including the risks and uncertainties discussed in the Risk Factors section of the Preliminary Prospectus and our other filings with the SEC. We do not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required to satisfy our obligations under federal securities law. The Company has filed a registration statement (including the Revised Preliminary Prospectus) with the SEC for the offering to which this communication relates. Before you invest, you should read the Revised Preliminary Prospectus in that registration statement and other documents the Company has filed with the SEC for more complete information about the Company and this offering. You may get these documents for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC Web site at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, a copy of the Revised Preliminary Prospectus may be obtained from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, Attention: Prospectus Department, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, or by telephone at (866) 803-9204, from Allen & Company LLC, Attention: Syndicate Department, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10022, or by telephone at (212) 339-2220 or from BofA Merrill Lynch, Attention: Prospectus Department, 222 Broadway, New York, NY 10038, or by telephone at (866) 500-5408. TO REVIEW OUR CURRENT REGISTRATION STATEMENT AND THE PRELIMINARY PROSPECTUS DATED NOVEMBER 17, 2015, CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK ON THE SEC WEB SITE AT WWW.SEC.GOV AS FOLLOWS (OR IF SUCH ADDRESS HAS CHANGED, BY REVIEWING OUR FILINGS FOR THE RELEVANT DATE ON THE SEC WEB SITE): http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1575189/000104746915008751/a2226650zs-1a.htm * * * * * * Tinder? Im an addict, says hook-up apps co-creator and CEO Sean Rad Sean Rads hook-up app has revolutionised the global dating scene. Here, the reinstated CEO talks about his search for an intellectual equal, giving supermodels the brush-off and why he still speaks to his mum every day 
 
 By: Charlotte Edwardes November 18, 2015 Sean Rad, the 29-year-old co-founder and CEO of Tinder, wants me to believe hes a romantic, who is ready to settle down and have lots of children. In fact, the last woman he shared a bedroom with was his mother, Fariba, when he took her to Rome recently  although he nearly fled after seeing all her make-up in the bathroom (I have OCD) and only changed his mind because I felt bad. I havent seen her in so long and wanted to be a good son. Its not what I was expecting of the co-founder of a dating app now synonymous with casual sex and unwanted pictures of penises. Not to mention the fact that Rad was briefly stripped of his CEO-ship after a sexual harassment case that lost his best friend and co-founder Justin Mateen his job. Mateen sent Whitney Wolfe, a former girlfriend and Tinders vice-president of marketing, abusive texts  including one accusing her of flirting with middle-aged Muslim pigs. Wolfe settled for a reported $2 million and founded Bumble, a rival app. In person Rad seems more geek than jock. He tells me he was thrilled that his audience at the recent Web Summit in Dublin was bigger than Instagrams and full of screaming fans. It was like a concert, he says. Tech, I guess, is more important than it was. Its like the new rock. On Friday, Tinders parent company, The Match Group, is due to float on the New York stock exchange for more than $3 billion. Analysts believe the app, which launched in 2012, has around 80 million users worldwide and records 1.8 billion swipes a day. It is reported that Rad owns more than 10 per cent of the company, so the float will make him richer and more eligible than he is already. So far hes been too busy for extravagance (apart from his gold Audemars Piguet watch and $115,000 black Mercedes G-Class SUV) but says he wants to start an art collection with the help of PR Matthew Freud, with whom he had dinner last night. Today were in The Beaumont hotel in Mayfair and Rad is struggling with the mechanics of a tea strainer (Is this what you guys call high tea?). Beside him is Rosette Pambakian, vice- president, communications and branding, a deadpan brunette whose glances are like well-aimed grenades. Rosette has just given him a lecture, he says, about how I need to be careful because people might want to be with me for the wrong reasons. Basically, the long and short of this speech was that I shouldnt date, get married or do anything and just become a priest. He admits hes addicted to Tinder  every other week I fall in love with a new girl  but right now is single. Im focused. Its such a critical time for the company so unfortunately I dont have a lot of time for any of that. Actually, Rad is not much of a playboy. Hes been in four relationships and I loved them all. (One was Alexa Dell, of the billionaire computing family, who he met on Tinder.) He lost his virginity at the relatively ancient age of 17  it was a serious relationship, my first love  and, unlike the profile of the average male user of his dating app, has slept with only a modest 20 women. Am I allowed to tell her? he checks with Rosette before disclosing this. Only if its a nice low number, she replies, cooly. Is 20 low? 
 
 Hes 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 Ive been like, no. Shes taunted him, he says, and called me a prude. Shes one of the most beautiful women Ive ever seen but it doesnt mean that I want to rip her clothes off and have sex with her. Attraction is nuanced. Ive been attracted to women who are ... he pauses ... well, who my friends might think are ugly. I dont care if someone is a model. Really. It sounds clichéd and almost totally unbelievable for a guy to say this, but its true. I need an intellectual challenge. He continues: Apparently theres a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. Whats the word? His face creases the effort of trying to remember. I want to say sodomy? Rosette shrieks: Thats it! Were 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. Thats definitely not me. Oh, my God. When he recovers he explains that Tinder is launching an education and workplace add-on that will helps users identify their intellectual equals. The war between Tinders view of itself and the medias view of Tinder has been fierce. The app is accused of encouraging adultery (actually, only 0.4 per cent of our users are married), stoking an increase of sexually transmitted infections (theres no data to support this) and causing the phallus photo phenomenon (I do not condone penis pictures  that is just NOT who I am). Hes obsessed with journalists  too many are not seeking truth but fame  and baffled by critics because you cant deny Tinder is what the world wants. His own truth is that Tinder is wonderful  weve solved the biggest problem in humanity: that youre put on this planet to meet people. In September Vanity Fair accused Tinder of heralding the dawn of the dating apocalypse in an article that interviewed twentysomethings in New York who used it solely for casual sex. Rad is defensive and still upset about the article, muttering mysteriously that he has done his own background research on the writer Nancy Jo Sales, and theres some stuff about her as an individual that will make you think differently. He wont elaborate on the matter. His argument for why the piece was wrong veers from our research shows 80 per cent of users are looking for a long-term meaningful relationship to we believe in democracy. If society just wants to hook up, who am I to judge? He says he has a lot of theories about hook-up culture, including that feminism has led to it because now women are more independent and pursuing their desires. And that leads to both parties being more sexually active. Its not because of Tinder. At the same time he says the company is in the middle of compiling data on Tinder marriages, and claims a recent dip in the divorce rate could be connected to the rise in popularity of the app. Now there is more choice, so people make the right decisions. When hes not pumping out public- relations rhetoric Rad is disarmingly frank and rather charming. As a teenager he suffered from deforming acne that made him awkward ||||| This morning, the Internet collectively pointed and laughed at Tinder CEO Sean Rad for giving a trainwreck of an interview to the London Evening Standard. In the article, Rad confused the definition of sodomy and stressed that he had only slept with 20 women. It did not make the CEO, who has a knack for drawing bad press, look very good. 
 
 Match Group, which owns Tinder and a slew of other dating sites and is set to go public tomorrow, doesn’t think Rad came across very well either. In an SEC filing, the company wanted to make it clear that Rad was not speaking on behalf of the company. And the statement particularly emphasized that the analyst numbers on Tinder’s users that were cited in the article were not kosher. 
 
 Here’s the key section of the filing: 
 
 The article was not approved or condoned by, and the content of the article was not reviewed by, the Company or any of its affiliates. Mr. Rad is not a director or executive officer of the Company and was not authorized to make statements on behalf of the Company for purposes of the article. The article noted that “Analysts believe the [Tinder] app, which launched in 2012, has around 80 million users worldwide and records 1.8 billion ‘swipes’ a day.” While these statements were not made by Mr. Rad, the Company notes that they are inaccurate and directs readers to the Preliminary Prospectus, which states that for the month of September 2015, Tinder had approximately 9.6 million daily active users, with Tinder users “swiping” through an average of more than 1.4 billion user profiles each day. 
 
 The release is solely concerned with distancing Rad from the user numbers the Evening Standard cited, which were attributed to analysts. The Match Group doesn’t appear to care about the indirect threats Rad made to Nancy Jo Sales, the author of a Vanity Fair article about Tinder from a few months ago (“There’s some stuff about her as an individual that will make you think differently”). 
 
 This isn’t the first time some last-minute press has clouded a company’s plans to go public. In 2004, Google was forced to revise its IPO filings because of an interview that Sergey Brin and Larry Page gave to Playboy. Traditionally, the time between when a company files its S-1 for an IPO (Match Group put in its S-1 last month) and when it actually goes public is called a “quiet period.” It’s unclear why Rad gave an interview in the days leading up to an IPO. 
 
 Match Group is owned by IAC. Spokespersons for IAC and Tinder could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 Update: The Match Group has announced that it will price its shares at $12 a pop, which sets the company’s value at around $2.9 billion. ||||| 
 
 Sean Rad, co-founder of Tinder, speaks at The Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, this month. (EPA/STR) 
 
 Match Group, the Dallas-based online dating company, goes public Thursday — in the business sense. But Wednesday, the top executive of their biggest brand went public in another way, sharing the details of his personal life in an interview with London’s Evening Standard. 
 
 At turns beguiling, confusing and comical, the article detailed a sit-down conversation with Tinder co-founder and CEO Sean Rad, 29, and Tinder vice president of communications Rosette Pambakian. The latter seemed to be present for the purposes of reining Rad in — “That’s it! We’re going to be fired,” she uttered at one point — but that mission proved largely fruitless. 
 
 The piece covers Rad’s close relationship with his mother (she calls him every day), his “addiction” to Tinder and even his confusion over sexual vocabulary. 
 
 While discussing his preference for “intellectual” girls whom his “friends might think ugly,” Rad told the Evening Standard, “Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” 
 
 He furrowed his brow. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?'” 
 
 What he actually meant was “sapiosexual”: one who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature. Sodomy, of course, means something different entirely. 
 
 A quick Google search alerted Rad to his mistake. “What? No, not that,” he said (we imagine with palpable horror). “That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.” 
 
 Perhaps more perplexing than Rad’s understanding of sexual terminology is the timing of the interview. Customarily, a business that is slated to go public embraces a “quiet period” between its initial filing and the day it becomes effective. 
 
 Though the restrictions on company executives during this time are vague, they very rarely make public statements in the lead-up to an initial public offering, let alone give uncensored interviews, to avoid any risk of influencing investors’ perception of the stock. 
 
 The last technology company to have their quiet period disrupted by loose-lipped leaders was none other than Google. In 2004, the founders of the then-still-young search engine gave an interview to Playboy in which they revealed that details about the state of Google were different from how they were presented in the initial filing. 
 
 As Google did at the time, Match Group made a new filing Wednesday night that addressed Rad’s interview. 
 
 “The article was not approved or condoned by, and the content of the article was not reviewed by, the Company or any of its affiliates,” the filing reads. “Mr. Rad is not a director or executive officer of the Company and was not authorized to make statements on behalf of the Company for purposes of the article.” 
 
 Tinder is owned by Match Group, which priced its IPO at $12 a share Wednesday, according to Reuters. It raised $400 million and is valued at around $4.2 billion, of which Tinder is considered to comprise a significant part. (Rad owns 10 percent of Tinder.) 
 
 The new filing made a point of noting an inaccuracy in the Evening Standard’s outline of Tinder’s numbers: “for the month of September 2015, Tinder had approximately 9.6 million daily active users, with Tinder users ‘swiping’ through an average of more than 1.4 billions user profiles each day.” The article actually cited analysts putting the app’s total usership numbers at 80 million. 
 
 If Rad’s conversation with the Evening Standard has a negative effect on how Match’s stock performs when it starts trading Thursday, it won’t be the first time he and Tinder have faced a public relations predicament. 
 
 
 
 (Courtesy of Tinder) 
 
 Last June, Tinder co-founder and former vice president of marketing Whitney Wolfe filed a sexual harassment and sex discrimination suit against Match that led to Rad’s temporary departure as CEO. Wolfe is the ex-girlfriend of another co-founder, Justin Mateen, who also happens to (still) be Rad’s best friend. 
 
 The complaint includes allegations that her co-founder title was inexplicably revoked and that after her relationship with Mateen ended, Mateen repeatedly harassed her about spending time with other men, at one point accusing her of “social climb”-ing with “middle aged Muslim pigs.” 
 
 The suit, which spurred a national conversation about women in tech, was settled within months. A spokesperson for IAC/InerActiveCorp, which owns Match Group, told TechCrunch that there was “no admission of wrongdoing.” 
 
 In an earlier statement, however, Tinder acknowledged that Mateen had sent “inappropriate” content to Wolfe while denying Wolfe’s allegations about Tinder management. 
 
 Though Mateen’s former position at Tinder as chief marketing officer remains suspended, Rad was reinstated as CEO after his replacement, Chris Payne, departed following a tumultuous five months. 
 
 There appear to be no hard feelings between the two childhood friends who both grew up in the same Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles and attended the University of Southern California, though Rad dropped out after two years. 
 
 “He’s like my twin,” Rad told Rolling Stone last October. 
 
 The Evening Standard’s Charlotte Edwards observed in the article that in person, Rad “seems more geek than jock” — and he’s certainly tried to present himself as a hopeless romantic who created Tinder for all the right reasons. 
 
 Rad likes to tell reporters that he struggled with acne as a teenager and was given his first phone because his parents felt bad for him. In his interview with Evening Standard, he claimed to be “addicted” to the app, which supposedly helps him “fall in love with a new girl” every other week. 
 
 Still, he played up the fact that he’s been in four relationships and “loved them all.” (One of them was with Alex Dell, scion of the multinational computer company and poster child for “Rich Kids of Instagram.”) Rad lost his virginity at age 17, in what he called “a serious relationship, my first love.” He told Edwards that he has slept with 20 women — which is either egregious or a “nice low number,” depending on whom you ask. 
 
 A photo posted by Alexa Dell (@alexakdell) on Aug 31, 2014 at 10:13am PDT 
 
 Rad (far left) appears in an Instagram posted by ex-girlfriend Alexa Dell. 
 
 To prove his integrity, Rad shared the anecdote of how he once resisted the charms of a “supermodel, someone really, really famous” who has been “begging” him for sex. 
 
 “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 wit her,” he said. “Attraction is nuanced.” 
 
 What isn’t so nuanced is Rad’s opinion of Vanity Fair reporter Nancy Jo Sales, who wrote a scathing piece holding Tinder responsible for the “Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse” in late August. 
 
 The article, which includes extensive interviews with a slew of millennials whose lives are dominated by apps of Tinder’s ilk, paints a bleak portrait of how Tinder has made hooking up so easy that men now don’t even go to the trouble of actually taking women on dates. 
 
 “They start out with ‘Send me nudes,'” a woman named Reese told Vanity Fair. “Or they say something like ‘I’m looking for something quick within the next 10 or 20 minutes—are you available?’ ‘O.K., you’re a mile away, tell me your location.’ It’s straight efficiency.” 
 
 Tinder swiftly responded to the piece with a lengthy string of tweets, addressing everything from Tinder marriages to users in China and North Korea. 
 
 Instead, your article took an incredibly biased view, which is disappointing. — Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015 
 
 But it’s not going to dissuade us from building something that is changing the world. #GenerationTinder — Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015 
 
 The article still appears to be a sore spot for Rad, who admitted to the Evening Standard that he remains “defensive” and “upset” about it. He further insinuated that he had gathered some incriminating information on Sales after doing “background research” that led him to conclude “there’s some stuff about her as an individual that will make you think differently.” 
 
 As for Vanity Fair’s main claim that Tinder advances an unhealthy hookup culture, Rad responded: “Feminism has led to [hookup culture] because now women are more independent and pursuing their desires. And that leads to both parties being more sexually active. It’s not because of Tinder.” 
 
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– There's candid, and then there's "painfully candid." Tinder CEO Sean Rad chose the latter route in an interview with the Evening Standard published Wednesday—a day before Tinder holder Match Group went public, reports the Washington Post. The result: The group has basically disowned him. Though joined by Tinder's communications VP—who cut him off at one point, noting "That's it! We're going to be fired"—the 29-year-old delivered some uncomfortable lines, including when trying to describe himself as sapiosexual, or someone who finds intelligence the most attractive quality. Rad accidentally threw out the word "sodomy," then had to Google what it meant. "What? No, not that. That's definitely not me. Oh, my God," he then clarified. Rad went on to say he doesn't approve of penis pictures and has slept with 20 women, per Re/code. That led him to brag that a "really, really famous" supermodel has been "begging" him for sex. "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," he said. It wasn't just Rad that seemed odd. The interview itself was surprising since most companies keep quiet ahead of an IPO. Match Group's statement on the interview, however, explains all: "Mr. Rad is not a director or executive officer of the Company," it states in a new filing. "The article was not approved or condoned by, and the content of the article was not reviewed by, the Company or any of its affiliates." Rad's comments aside, Reuters notes that Match Group's shares were up as much as 12.5% in their IPO Wednesday morning.