BREAK the SILENCE/YouTube
Joel Simkhai, Founder and CEO.
Grindr sells a majority stake to a Chinese gaming company.
The popular gay dating app has announced that Beijing Kunlun Tech Company is buying 60% of the company, according to several news reports.
The company is valued at $155 million (£107 million), with the remaining 40 percent shared by Joel Simkhai, founder and CEO, and company employees who own shares.
Why sell? Carter McJunkin, COO of Grindr, told the New York Times that he was interested in growing the company. “We have users in every country in the world, but to reach the next phase of our business and grow faster, we needed a partner.”
In the future, the company will look to solve “more problems” for its users. “We’ve expanded to make it more of a lifestyle company,” McJunkin said.
Meanwhile, Beijing Kunlun appears to be looking to make more acquisitions as it expands its portfolio. In a statement, Chairman Yahui Zhou said: “We will continue to seek out and invest in high-quality technology companies led by top management around the world.”
Thanks to the hack of extramarital affairs dating site Ashley Madison, we were able to gain insight into Grindr’s finances last year. At one point, Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison’s parent company, considered investing in or acquiring Grindr (but decided against it due to its high price tag), and leaked emails from former CEO Noel Biderman included a presentation created by Grindr.
The company has grown significantly in recent years, with revenues increasing from $15.8 million (£11 million) in 2012 to $31.8 million (£22 million) in 2014. Estimated revenues in 2015 are $38.1 million (£26 million). (Slides created in June 2015)
The company forecast annual revenue of up to $77 million (£53 million) by the end of 2018 – more than double its 2014 revenue.
The largest target group by far is the USA with almost 1.3 million monthly active users (MAUs). This is followed by Great Britain (377,000), Brazil (248,000) and France (185,000). In total, the site has 10.5 million users worldwide, of which 3.8 million are monthly active users (MAUs). According to forecasts, MAUs will grow by more than 40% in 2015.
Most notably, Grindr claims that the average time its users spend on the app each day is higher than other social networks. It reports 54 minutes daily, compared to 42.1 minutes for Facebook, 34.2 minutes for Tumblr and 21.2 minutes for Instagram. For Tinder, a dating app with similar functionality that also has heterosexual users, that number is just 14.9 minutes daily. (The data comes from a report by eMarketer.)
Grindr has not yet accepted any external funding.
Grindr
Grindr’s financial data according to the slide presentation from June 2015.
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The post “Gay dating app Grindr has sold a majority stake to a Chinese gaming company” first appeared on Business Insider.
