Grindr is known, above all, for facilitating hookups between gay, bisexual, and transgender men. But CEO George Arison sees room for the app to be more vocal in advocating for LGBTQ rights at a time many corporations, which have supported pride events in years past, have shied away from defending those rights as their companies come under attack.
Arison, a tech industry veteran and gay father of two who became Grindr's CEO soon after it went public in November, is troubled by what he sees as double-speak by many corporations' purported support for the LGBTQ community. "Companies might say a lot of wonderful things about their brand being pro-LGBTQ, but they don't put the dollars where they should," the CEO says.
That support could mean ramping up advertising spending with gay-oriented companies and nonprofits. More generally, it could mean speaking up against the many attempts to roll back hard-won LGBTQ representation by groups threatening to boycott certain brands like Target and Bud Light.
Separately, Arison, born in Soviet Georgia, sees a role for Grindr in pushing for LGBTQ rights abroad because of the app's innate community-building aspect, and not just among people seeking sex or dating opportunities. The app is used in 190 countries, he says, including many where merely being gay is a crime. "This is the only way for people there to have some semblance of freedom," says Arison.
As for the business, Arison, an entrepreneur who launched the taxi-payment app Curb, sees untapped potential in Grindr. Though it took in $195 million last year, up 34% over 2021, it remains a small company compared to peers: Its annual revenue is about one-fifth that of Bumble. So Arison sees a lot of upsides left if Grindr does more to attract advertisers, emphasize dating, and improve the site's basic functions.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: Grindr has been around for years and has grown fast with a pretty locked-in clientele. What potential do you see in the company as a new CEO?
I've always wanted children. So a few years ago, my husband and I went into surrogacy, and now we have two children. I promised him after many years of intense work that I would take a year off to spend time with the kids. But the investors approached me last year, and the more I learned about Grindr, the more I became super excited. Grindr today is pretty much the same product as years ago. So if we could innovate and add more functionality and features, we could improve the user experience and monetize it more. A lot of the tech that underpins the site was built in the early 2010s.
You announced some changes recently for features, such as enabling more targeted advertising and perhaps even an Airbnb-style service. What's the thinking there?
I'm not saying you'll be able to book a hotel or stay with somebody via the app, but we can lead the user to a curated, high-quality set of choices in a given location. We would partner with an Airbnb or an Expedia and wouldn't do it ourselves. Something like that (advertising accommodation options) is great for the user because one common complaint is that ads on our site are irrelevant, and we need more targeted ads.
What about gay women? Could they not be a source of growth for Grindr?
It's something we've certainly thought about, reaching a broader spectrum within the LGBTQ world. But for now, we should stick to what we know well because there is so much opportunity. We have lots of gay and bisexual men in the U.S. and many potential users abroad, so there's a lot of growth opportunity. I'd rather go deeper into our current users and build more products for them than try to go after a user base that we just don't know.
What do you make of the occasional criticism that Grindr enables a hookup culture?
The hookup culture has been around for as long as I've been in the gay world since 2000. Hookups are going to happen regardless of whether Grindr is around.
There is a backlash to LGBTQ rights in the U.S., from boycott threats against Target to Florida's limitations on what schools can teach about homosexuality. Things are bleak abroad too. Is this a threat to Grindr's business?
First of all, anything that attacks our users is completely reprehensible. Grindr is in 190 countries, and in many of them, it's illegal to be gay. After we left some markets because of how dangerous it was to operate there, NGOs and local activists asked us to come back because they said it was the only way for many people to have some semblance of freedom. And we can help build community, which promotes rights. Marriage equality could pass in Thailand next year, and in two or three years, we could see India's Supreme Court allow gay marriage, so I'm an optimist.
Grindr has 12 million active monthly users, but only 788,000 actually pay. What is your growth plan?
The focus is on getting a higher percentage of our users to become paying customers because you can get a basic profile for free. And Grindr's basic product is extremely robust with a broad range of functionality. For instance, you can see 100 profiles for free or send 10 messages if you're not a paying customer.
So what would the incentives be to pay up?
There are three buckets. First, we've heard from many customers that they want a cheaper tier subscription but get fewer functions. We will also target people at the higher end willing to pay more for more functionality. There are things like more features and detailed profiles for dating options. That can mean something like a 'passport' service that adapts your search results to whatever city you're in. We'll be launching that by 2025.
What about more targeted ads? There seems to be hesitancy to advertise specifically on Grindr rather than using third-party ads.
Companies might say a lot of wonderful things about their brand being pro-LGBTQ, but they don't put their dollars where they should. It's a great opportunity for a lot of brands to reach an extremely valuable audience that Grindr has. They can prove what they believe in by advertising on Grindr.
What do you think of corporate America's support for gay rights in the current climate?
I've sometimes been unimpressed. We tried opening an account at a bank I won't name, but they rejected our business, mentioning reputational risk. Grindr is a fully legal company, so my thought was, 'What are you talking about?' The excuses don't make sense, and you clearly know there is some kind of discomfort around the gay aspect of Grindr.
So many large companies, including banks, do, however, support Pride marches. What would you like to see such companies do?
I'd like to see them put their dollars to work in some way like the carmakers have in earmarking a certain amount of their ad budgets for targeting the LQBTQ consumer base. We'd also love to see more representation. We have a board of directors that is majority LGBTQ. But if you look at Fortune 500 companies, openly LGBTQ board members are almost nonexistent. And there is no pipeline of LGBTQ CEOs at all. It'd be great if companies did more things in this regard.
Get to know Arison:
- Arison arrived in the U.S. in 1992 to attend boarding school in Maine. He left in the U.S. in 2002 but returned in 2004 when he realized he could not pursue a political career in Georgia as an openly gay man.
- Arison founded Taxi Magic, now called Curb, seeing the market opportunity Uber would later successfully leverage.
- Before striking out on his own, he worked at consulting firm Boston Consulting Group for two years in 2005 to learn how business works.
