ByJessica Tan,
Senior Contributor.
In
the summer of 2019, George Raymond Zage III, founder and CEO of Singapore-based Tiga Investments, got an urgent call from an investor pal in Los Angeles, James Lu. Grindr, the popular dating app for the LGBTQ community, was being put on the block by its Chinese owner, gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech, because of U.S. security concerns—specifically, its access to potentially compromising data on Americans. Lu wanted to know if Zage would be willing to help raise a fund to buy it. The clock was ticking with the deadline for the forced sale set for June 2020.
After Lu, a former NASA software engineer and cofounder of a tech buyout firm, dropped some key stats on the then-decade-old global app, Zage made a snap decision. “No, I’m not going to help you raise a fund,” he told Lu. “We’re going to go do this deal.” A couple of details had piqued his interest, Zage recalls in an exclusive interview with Forbes Asia in late August. Grindr’s Ebitda numbers (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) were low despite very good user engagement and there was a clear view on how to improve the product to goose the bottom line.
