Tinder Revenue & Expenses Estimates

Gabe Really nice concept =) Btw, how did you get that number (paid subscriptions)?

almost 3 years

Emmanuel @Gabe Thank you Gabe ! The breakdown for this number can be found in its "submodel" (you can click on "show submodel" next to it and then click on each variable name to see the comments and sources I've added.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel This variable is pretty hard to estimate. Tinder has done several marketing campaigns. A list of some major ones with a few examples can be found in the link below. However I'm not sure how much they spend in advertising, perhaps sponsoring celebrities, perhaps paid acquisition in some countries etc. I gave a rough estimate but it's very uncertain.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel In this old (2014) article in the NY times, Tinder was said to approach 50 million users. It is unclear how reliable this figure is and if this is the number of downloads or active users. While the number of downloads might be now a lot higher than that, not everyone that downloaded it uses a dating app every month for several years. So I'm keeping the 50 million number for active users for caluculation of advertising revenue.

almost 3 years

User #4 This seems high from a perspective of "once a user converts from a paid=>unpaid, do they ever re-up?" Zoosk churns 50% of users YoY that pay ANYTHING, not for a subscription. I imagine the average user pays for 1-3 months, doesn't realize any value, and then doesn't pay again.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Based on a comment on HackerNews and another feedback I've received, it seems that Tinder is comparable to other top grossing apps such as Candy Crush and Pokemon Go who are grossing more than $1million/day. To make sens of that, I'm taking te assumption that they always have more than 3 million subscribers at any time, regardless of churn (new customers replacing those who cancel at a higher rate). Hence it's as if one subscriber paid for 12 months in a year.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Based on a comment on HackerNews and another feedback I've received, it seems that Tinder is comparable to other top grossing apps such as Candy Crush and Pokemon Go who are grossing more than $1million/day. To make sens of that, I'm taking te assumption that they always have more than 3 million subscribers at any time, regardless of churn (new customers replacing those who cancel at a higher rate). Hence it's as if one subscriber paid for 12 months in a year.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel @User #4 Thanks for your comment ! For the sake of modelling, I think that the number of new customers that Tinder gets is higher than the ones who are churning, so we can assume the total number of subscribers is growing, at least a little. Another thing to keep in mind is that many people seem to find value in Tinder, in that way it might work more for people using it than Zoosk (that relied a lot on advertising for acquiring users, not the vast organic and popular success that is Tinder)

almost 3 years

Emmanuel About the salaries, I would say that they compare more to companies like Snapchat or Facebook trying to hire the best engineers, mobile UX designers, data analysts etc and that can drive up the average salary a lot, especially in California where the competition for talent is fierce. I've made some more research and found this website, Paysa, to give estimates of average salaries for companies, they say $118K at Tinder.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel In this article from Recode, Sean Rad said that Tinder "has roughly 200 employees, with plans to double in size over the next 12 to 18 months". We can estimate about 500 employees now

almost 3 years

Emmanuel A brief description of Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold can be found on their website.

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Another more detailed description of their various paid in-app purchases and subscriptions on this link with a list of the different prices. 5 is just an estimate for the average spent per paid user

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Updated to an average of $10, after some feedback that several "power users" might be spending a lot more than the average subscription with other in-app purchase. Also because Tinder is in the top grossing app on the app store (generally Top 5) and the other companies there make higher revenue that what I had previously estimated

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Increased again the ARPU based on this estimate from ThinkGaming using app store grossing rankings as reference

almost 3 years

Emmanuel Number of 3 million subscribers taken from this reuters link about Match Group. Adjusted with some growth after a few more months since the article

almost 3 years