<story><title>Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/14/tinder-match-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The suit alleges that IAC and Match Group  manipulated financial data in order to create &amp;#x27;a fake lowball valuation&amp;#x27; (to quote the plaintiffs’ press release), then stripped Rad, Mateen, Badeen and others of their stock options&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait, they didn&amp;#x27;t exercise their options into the sale? Did the founders hire a team of squirrels as their bankers? This is M&amp;amp;A 101 when switching to majority control.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ah, Tinder was launched as an internal project at Match. Taking options in a majority-owned entity is...odd. There is no proper way to value a majority-owned entity without discounting for the majority ownership. Issuing options for the parent would have been a better offer and better ask.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>subdane</author><text>Tinder was incubated at Hatch Labs at IAC (not Match, but IAC owned Match) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;exclusive-iac-hatches-hatch-a-technology-sandbox-to-incubate-mobile-startups&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;techcrunch.com&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;31&amp;#x2F;exclusive-iac-hatches-hatc...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/14/tinder-match-lawsuit/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The suit alleges that IAC and Match Group  manipulated financial data in order to create &amp;#x27;a fake lowball valuation&amp;#x27; (to quote the plaintiffs’ press release), then stripped Rad, Mateen, Badeen and others of their stock options&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait, they didn&amp;#x27;t exercise their options into the sale? Did the founders hire a team of squirrels as their bankers? This is M&amp;amp;A 101 when switching to majority control.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Ah, Tinder was launched as an internal project at Match. Taking options in a majority-owned entity is...odd. There is no proper way to value a majority-owned entity without discounting for the majority ownership. Issuing options for the parent would have been a better offer and better ask.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jsnell</author><text>IIRC they were owned by Match from the start.</text></comment>