Tinder execs claim parent IAC ‘robbed’ them of stock options

Founders of the wildly popular Tinder dating app are suing their parent company, billionaire Barry Diller’s IAC Group, claiming executives “dramatically undervalued” the app to cut them out of valuable stock options.

The new, $2 billion Manhattan Supreme Court suit alleges that IAC execs lowballed the valuation to avoid paying the Tinder founders and original employees who wanted to cash in their stock in the company.

Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen co-founded Tinder in 2012. It quickly became one of the most lucrative apps on the market.

Shortly after the valuation, IAC “secretly merged Tinder out of corporate existence” by combining it with the company’s Match Group, the suit claims.

“This merger was a pretext to extinguish the Tinder employees’ stock options,” the suit says.

The suit also claims Rad was replaced as CEO by a Diller “lackey” named Greg Blatt, who allegedly “groped and sexually harassed” the app’s vice president of marketing at the 2016 company holiday party in Los Angeles.

The VP, Rosette Pambakian, Rad and others reported Blatt to IAC bosses, who “whitewashed Blatt’s misconduct,” the suit says.

IAC kept Blatt on board until they “manufactured a fake Tinder valuation of $3 billion” in July 2017, the suit says.

He was then allowed to retire with a “lucrative golden parachute and a glowing farewell message from Diller praising Blatt’s ‘integrity,’” according to court papers.

The plaintiffs — including the cofounders, Pambakian and other original employees —claim a recent announcement by IAC that Tinder’s projected 2018 revenue is $800 million proves that the 2017 valuation of $3 billion was made-up.

IAC called the allegations meritless and said it will “vigorously defend against them,” adding that its Match Group subsidiary has paid out more than a billion dollars in equity compensation to Tinder’s founders and employees.

“Match Group and the plaintiffs went through a rigorous, contractually defined valuation process involving two independent global investment banks,” IAC said.

IAC also accused Rad of having “a rich history of outlandish public statements.”

Those have included Rad telling a British newspaper in 2016 that a supermodel was “begging” him for sex. In another incident, Rad sent a text that called Diller a “d–k” and included his initials, “BD,” in the shape of a penis.

Rad was demoted as Tinder’s CEO after the penis prank, only to reclaim the job in August 2015 after a five-month hiatus.

He stepped down again in September 2017, replaced by Blatt.

Blatt did not return messages seeking comment.

Orin Snyder, who represents the Tinder plaintiffs, called the case “open and shut.”

“The evidence is overwhelming that when it came time to pay the Tinder employees what they rightfully earned, the defendants lied, bullied, and violated their contractual duties, stealing billions of dollars,” he said.