Dive Brief:
- Grindr — a dating app and social network for the LGBTQ+ community — appointed Vanna Krantz, former CFO of Disney Streaming Services, to its top financial seat, effective Sept. 26.
- The company also named George Arison as its new CEO, effective Oct. 19, as part of planned leadership changes before the company’s coming initial public offering (IPO). Arison is one of the few openly gay CEOs at a publicly traded U.S. company, according to the company statement.
- Grindr announced plans to go public via SPAC that involves merging with blank-check company Tiga Acquisition Corp in May 2022.
Dive Insight:
The deal with Tiga Acquisition Corp. put a valuation on the combined company of $2.1 billion, including debt, and will provide Grindr with an estimated $384 million.
SPACs, which saw a burst of activity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as they offered an increasingly popular route to go public, have since fallen out of favor since their 2021 zenith. Such deals hit a five-year low in July, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.
The company plans on using the cash from its upcoming SPAC deal to pay down debt and strengthen its balance sheet, Bloomberg reported.
The Los Angeles, Calif.-based company will enter this deal later this fall with Krantz in the top financial seat. Before Grindr, Krantz served as CFO of Passport Labs, Inc., a transportation software company for about a year. Before that, she was CFO for Masterclass from November 2020 to August 2021 as well as the financial head for the Disney+ streaming service from September 2017 to September 2020.
The appointment of Arison as CEO aligns with the company’s mission to create a leadership team that is also a part of the LGBTQ+ community, according to the release. The company described their mission of representation of their community as a “longstanding goal.”
“Grindr’s board and management have identified and been in discussions with a potential new Chief Executive Officer candidate who would bring a depth and breadth of experience across technology, finance, and management, including time spent in an executive leadership role at a public company,” said the company in the SPAC deal release.
Arison comes to Grindr after nine years at Shift Technologies, where he was the founder and also CEO. Shift allows for consumers to buy an automobile online, end to end. Before Shift, he was co-founder of Taxi Magic (now known as Curb, acquired by VeriFone) and served in an executive positions at Google, according to his LinkedIn profile.
