Tinder CEO Sean Rad: 'Yes, I Sext on Snapchat'

Sean Rad is handsome, charismatic, and eats Sour Patch Kids. The 29-year-old Tinder founder and CEO also is "one of the most divisive figures in tech today," writes Nellie Bowles in a lengthy profile in the California Sunday Magazine. Bowles talked to supporters, detractors, and Rad himself to paint a vivid and complex picture of the man who oversees a dating app that claims to make 26 million matches a day. Highlights:

• Some of Tinder's founding members say Rad made false promises and pushed them out of the business. One calls Rad "a nemesis" and says "crying and screaming and yelling was a daily occurrence" at the office.

• "Yes, I sext on Snapchat," Rad tells Bowles. "I don’t send; I only receive. I’m not crazy."
• On being removed as Tinder's CEO for about six months after sending nasty texts to a former colleague, Rad says: "It was almost a rite of passage."
• Rad has been living with his parents in their Bel Air, Calif., home. "It's fine but annoying," he says. "My mom says I can’t leave the house without giving her a kiss."
• A self-described romantic, Rad speaks often of marrying someday. "I want to do my wedding one day at Huntington Gardens," he says.
• Of Tinder's growth, Product VP Jonathan Badeen says: "We’re getting to the point where we have a social responsibility to the world because we have this power to influence it." Rad adds that one day, "it'll be like, 'Tinder, of course, that's how everybody meets."

Read the whole profile here. (More Sean Rad stories.)