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>> Look, it's June Pride Month here in New

York and around the world. And Grinder

is the world's largest network for LGBTQ

people. The app is now evolving into

what it's calling a global neighborhood,

integrating AI, or as the CEO calls it,

gay. That's right. And looking into

expanding its product line beyond just

the dating app. Well, that includes live

events like a pop-up concert with

Madonna took place Thursday night in

Time Square. In the past year, Grinder's

revenue is up 38% while its share price

has dropped by half. For Seeuite

Saturday, we spoke to CEO George Erison

about the future of the company.

>> I can't control what the stock does. The

stock's going to do its own thing. And I

think that over the long term, the

market is pretty efficient. Over the

short term, it's not. um sometimes uh

and I think Grinder does have some

complexity for people to understand but

we do have an incredible business. I

mean the company's grown 25 plus% every

year over the last four years since I've

been around even longer. It's been

growing at that pace or higher. Um IBIDA

has also been getting better. We did

more IBIDA last year than we did revenue

in 2022 which I think that's the number

I really like. Uh and it's going to

continue going up and I don't see

anything that in the next 3 4 years is

going to slow us down. like we have a

very strong plan and execution is really

really strong. The team um you know is

doing everything that needs to be done

to make the business work really well.

So I think my job from the investor

perspectives to keep meeting with people

and telling them our story and I think

over time it'll take care of itself. you

know, we had um some challenging things

happen last fall when one of our

shareholders had um issues with his

pledge shares and that led to, you know,

a squeeze on on on him and and resulted

with share price coming down quite a

bit. So, I think there's some recovery

that needs to happen from that and and

that does take time. I mean, it's only

been 3/4. Um, so we'll we'll keep kind

of plugging along and uh what I do tell

the team is to not focus on the share

price because that'll be distracting. We

should focus on execution and ultimately

the market is pretty hushed.

>> You did a survey last year and you found

that one in three gay relationships

started on Grinder and that's been kind

of an evolution because I think when

when I first started learning about it,

it was thought of as a hookup app but

now several actually most of my friends

who've gotten married uh in that

community met on Grinder. What does that

do to your business model and and how is

the dynamics of what people are using

the app for changed?

>> Yeah, the the actual number is 50%. So,

it's even higher. So, yeah, it's it's

pretty um it's pretty incredible.

>> Every wedding I've been to, it's how did

you make Grinder?

>> I mean, for me, one of the most cool

kind of moments when I was just getting

started, actually wasn't CEO yet, but I

was doing the road show for us going

public and um we met with this one

investor and he's like, "Let me show you

this picture." and he pulls out his

picture from his brother's wedding where

brother and his husband had met on

Grinder and they had this like little

Grinder logo where you could take a

photo in for every guest. Yeah. At the

wedding. So he pulls this out and I'm

like this is going to probably go well

cuz I don't have to like explain to him

what we do. Um I I think look in the gay

world in gay culture things are pretty

fluid, right? So casual dates or hookups

um leading to long-term relationship is

actually very common. Internally, we

tend to joke that if, you know, a gay

couple hooks up three times and then

doesn't go on a date, probably will

never go on a date. Whereas a straight

couple, if it doesn't go on three dates

prior to a hookup, that relationship

probably won't.

>> That's right. Rule. It's just a

different date rule. Yeah.

>> So, it's so it's um you know, that's

just how the culture is. Um but the

reality is that a lot more gay men today

want to be in long-term relationships

than was the case say when I was in my

20s. Um and uh you know Andrew Sullivan

who was probably one of the primary

architects of the case for gay marriage

over the years you know he would make

this argument that if uh we allow gay

marriage then gay men will move more in

the direction of what straight people do

which is getting married and having

stable long-term relationships. And I

think that's very much happening because

if you survey men under 35, you know,

over half of them say that they want to

be in a long-term relationship and a

quarter of them say they want to have

children. Um, so I I have kids. I've

always wanted kids. But when I would say

that I wanted kids in my 20s, I was

literally like the oddest ball out. Why

in 100? So

changing dramatically in part because of

the recognition of marriage. Uh, and

that's really positive and obviously

Grinder is in an awesome place to help

with that because that is where people

meet and we have the critical mass of

people to meet each other.

>> We want to ask you about AI and um I

understand you you now use something

you've coined gay eye uh through the

app.

>> I see what you did there.

>> All right. Tell us what it is uh how it

works and if it's been worth the

investment because one of the things

we're looking at especially right now is

the ROI on these AI investments and

whether or not they're the juice is

worth the squeeze for some of these

things.

>> Yeah. I I um so we we've been way ahead

of the curve on AI. I had built an AI

company in 2018, not on Gen AI cuz Gen

AI models were not out back then. But

having done that and that company's done

very well and uh was very good for

everybody involved. Um I knew that AI

was going to be huge for grinder because

we have so much data uh and that creates

unique opportunities. So we both have

invested a ton into building AI products

for users and those are going really

well. We are um you know have a lot of

them are already out in the product and

the feedback from users is very

positive. We're building a new AI tier

which is a more premium tier um that is

powered with GI um that it will is

already in beta with a bunch of users

and will be live towards

>> what does it do to just really hyper

tailor

>> it gives you a lot more information

about people you're talking to and

creates transparency for both parties

about why that connection might make

sense then we've also done a ton of

investment in how we work and Grinder is

really like I actually call it

terraforming not transforming because

the change is so massive of our

engineering team um you know started

adopting AI coding much earlier than

most people and today 80% of the code

that's written at grinder is not written

by humans and the it's all AI generated

and and engineer's job is fundamentally

changing it's no longer writing code

it's actually architecting the code and

managing synthetics that are writing the

code so every engineer is becoming an

engineering manager in effect

organizations are going to become

flatter as a result overall all um and

you know in March when we were planning

for Q2 NH team came to the planning

meeting and said that they don't have

enough work and we need more projects.

I've been building software for 20 years

and I've never had anything like that

happen to me and don't get me wrong like

our team works extremely hard. We are a

very hardcore culture. We're not like

SpaceX but in the layer of where do you

fall in the hardcore? We're very much

closer to SpaceX than we are to an

average company. So these are not people

who are not working super hard, but we

still had like more capacity because of

what AI is doing to how productive we

are. I I don't care how much money we

spend on tokens honestly because every

dollar that's spent on tokens is is way

more output than you'd ever expect. I

think companies that are worried about

the spending are actually not well

managed. Um because then probably people

are running around doing things that

don't need to.

But I don't want to give numbers out

because these were confidential numbers

that were shared with me. But one of the

very large tech companies that recently

was in the press a lot being worried

about um you know token spend. I did a

rough I I heard what the total number of

their concern was and by on an orders of

magnitude basis like they were say at

20k per engineer and we are roughly

running like 50k per engineer in token

usage but I'm happy if that became 100

because I know for a fact already that

what we're getting on the other side is

way more valuable than that. So,

>> let me ask you lastly just about

politics and I'll confess we were both

in Washington for the White House

correspondence association dinner and

>> alas neither of us uh got the invite to

the party that you threw

>> well in the in the runup to that

>> we're not bitter about it

>> but it was a popular party and I think

popular because there were so many

people there from both sides of the

aisle attracted a broad broad swath of

people um how do you view engagement

with politics with Washington the job of

any CEO in this day and age is to to

make that part of the role you have to

engage with regulators and with

lawmakers

>> so about 6 months into me starting my

job I get this note from um the person

who was leading Grinder for Equality,

which is our public service arm, um

telling me that this horrible situation

is developing in Egypt where Egyptian

police is arresting gay men and then

using their phones to honey trap our gay

men. And I'm like, okay, who in DC do we

call? Cuz like, no, America has a lot of

influence around what happens. We didn't

have a single person to contact cuz we

had zero relationships in Washington,

which I thought was kind of totally

unacceptable. And then secondly, it felt

to me like a lot of the groups that

should be advocating on behalf of K

rights and and do um were becoming very

partisan. And I am of the opinion that

you cannot accomplish stuff in DC, no

matter who's in power, unless you're

bipartisan because it takes 60 votes to

get anything done in the Senate. But

also for things to stick around, you

need both sides to be bought into it.

And I felt like we were uniquely

positioned to be able to do that because

we are a business and we can talk to

both sides of the aisle. And that's what

we've been striving to do. And so far,

we've been very, very happy. There are

specific things we care about.

Decriminalization of homosexuality in

certain countries where it's illegal,

marriage equality, access to fertility

treatment for gay couples in the US at

the same in the same way that it's

available to others. Um, and then access

to uh STD preventative and treatment

medications and services which like

matters to all our users. This is not a

issue that's like 6040 on grinder. And

most of these issues are like 9010 or

100 and zero and uh and we can make

massive headways on those if we bring

people together to advocate for them.

>> Do you think given your background

you're in a good position to try to talk

about these issues to a more

conservativeleaning government? I mean

you know you grew up in what was then

the USSR is now Georgia. That's not a

place that's very friendly um towards

alternative lifestyles. Does that give

you a way to talk about this to people

who may have a knee-jerk no, but when

you talk to them about the human rights

aspects of it and how it can benefit

society as a whole, they're they're more

able to have that conversation.

>> It certainly helps me better appreciate

the challenges that our users face in

countries like that. I mean, one of my

first board meetings at Grinder, we were

discussing whether to enable Grinder in

Iran or not. Uh, and this was like

something we had shut down because of US

sanctions and we're getting messages

from local activists and users saying,

"We would prefer for you to be on and

take the risk of being caught by the

government that we're using Grinder to

not having a way to connect with each

other cuz there's no other way to do

that."

>> That's because the risk of having that

on your phone is really substantial,

which is massive. So, I'm like, yeah,

not a normal board discussion of like

what you're going to be dealing with. I

remember going to see the Secretary of

Labor about a year ago or nine months

ago and we were talking about, hey, we

want to make sure that if we do things

on IVF, we should that should be

extendable to gay couples because gay

couples are not actually receiving the

treatment themselves. It's usually a

surrogate that's receiving treatment,

then like you should be able to transfer

that service on. And her response to me

back then was like, the president said

all families that includes gay families.

And like some people might not expect

that from this administration, but I'm

like there's no question about that. And

that's actually the kind of rule that

they issued on IVF uh and insurance, you

know, earlier um this uh Q2. So that was

a really good meeting on our end and a

very good outcome for everyone. Um and

so I think people are generally very

willing to listen. That's not to say

that there's obviously a huge number of

people um in in the Democratic party who

have been massive champions of of gay

rights and they have been great at

engagement with us and obviously it's

really imperative for us to be working

very closely with them and ensuring that

they have the right information to be

able to do the incredible work that they

do on behalf of all grand users.