Sean Rad, the 29-year-old CEO of Tinder who now infamously didn't know the meaning of the word "sodomy", now tells Fast Company he has an "above average" desirability rating.
What's this?
Internally, it's called an "Elo" score — a skill level denomination taken from the incredibly sexy world of chess. Yep, Rad uses his own app for flirting and maybe even dating, and indeed his bio is "founder and CEO of Tinder—yes, the app you’re using."
As you might expect from that, we're dealing with the kind of founder and CEO characterized by words like "bold" and "controversial." Now Rad's been racking up more interviews to shine a light on how that's good for his company, somehow in keeping with its character, including one with California Sunday Magazine where he said of the earlier Evening Standard interview that “It didn’t make me proud... It’s humiliating." To Fast Company he politely asked, "Just please don't fuck me," with regard to their coverage. "Promise me, please, if there’s something [I said that] you think is going to destroy my life, just call me," he asked, "Give me an opportunity to clarify."
Rad clarifies of the Elo score, which no, the company doesn't have immediate plans to share with its users, that "It’s not just how many people swipe right on you... It’s very complicated. It took us two and a half months just to build the algorithm because a lot of factors go into it."
Tinder’s VP of product has another turn-on of an analogy — one from the the video game World of Warcraft. Jonathan Badeen says "I used to play a long time ago, and whenever you play somebody with a really high score, you end up gaining more points than if you played someone with a lower score... It’s a way of essentially matching people and ranking them more quickly and accurately based on who they are being matched up against."
Tor Solli-Nowlan, a data engineer for Tinder, tempers the meaning of the score further. "People are really polarized on even just a photographic level: Some people really favor facial hair, while some do not. Same thing with tattoos, photos with pets or children, excessive outdoors shots, or photos of you with a tiger."
Summing up the app, internal Elo score and all, to California Sunday, “We’re what rock ’n’ roll was,” Rad says. “Rock ’n’ roll was about freedom, and now Tinder’s about freedom. It’s about not having to live in conventional understanding of how relationships form, and it’s about pursuing your desire.”
Related: Tinder CEO Sean Rad: A Case Study In Why 29-Year-Old CEOs Shouldn't Run Their Mouths