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The key to successful private equity is partnering with existing teams. When we acquired Grindr, we brought in experts like Sam Yagan, who had extensive experience in the dating industry, to strengthen our team.

Despite Grindr's controversial nature, the app was an incredible business opportunity due to its profitability and strong market position. The company was growing rapidly, and users loved the product.

The Committee for Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) forced the sale of Grindr due to concerns that data collected by the app could be misused by its Chinese owners, potentially for blackmailing purposes.

Grindr had several challenges: a public privacy issue with user data, complications with Chinese ownership, and a PR problem. Despite these, we saw potential due to the strong customer love for the product.

We bought Grindr for about $600 million, which was under market value due to a lack of competition in the process. The company was doing less than $50 million in EBITDA at the time, translating to a 12-13x EBITDA multiple, while public companies were trading at around 20x.

Jeff Bonforte reflects on the success of Grindr: 'We took Grindr from $100 million of revenue to $200 million in two and a half years by upgrading talent, tech, and launching new products. Applying the Tinder playbook was key to our strategy.'

Raising $600 million for Grindr involved $200 million in equity, $200 million in debt from Fortress, and another $200 million due upon exit. The process of raising such large sums is similar regardless of the amount.

COVID-19 hit during the acquisition process, causing user numbers to drop by 20-30% as Grindr is a location-based app. This added to the stress and complexity of the acquisition.

Grindr was created by Joel Simkhai, a gay man who wanted to create an app for finding other gay men using GPS, similar to how Uber works. This innovation allowed Grindr to take off and eventually be sold to a Chinese company, Kunlun.

When we took Grindr public for $2 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, we created a 9x return on the $200 million of equity, generating about $1.6 billion in value.