Why the C.E.O. Behind Match.com and Tinder Took a Stand on the Texas Abortion Law
The site’s founder, Sean Rad, and the C.E.O. at Match, Sean Rad, also announced that Match had signed onto a “no-kill” pledge.
I’m reading Sean Rad’s new book, Match.com, and I keep thinking that the author knows what he’s talking about when it comes to life and the way it changes and grows and sometimes leaves you.
In his new book, Rad tells how an encounter he had with a guy named David who was selling drugs in the projects of Houston changed things forever. Rad was sitting on a bus bench in Houston and when David walked by, he noticed something strange. The guy had made an anti-abortion button with two words written on the back. It said “You’ve chosen death. Live life as a man.”
Rad was deeply confused. He had never known anybody like that before. He asked what he was doing. David explained that he would be making anti-abortion buttons and that they would be sold on the streets of Houston. Rad offered to buy them for him.
Once the buttons were made, Rad thought the idea was brilliant. That’s when the whole thing started. Rad convinced David to set up a business in which he would give anti-abortion buttons away to people who would then take them off the streets and give them to their friends and family.
Rad says in his book he was willing to make the idea into a real business and even help David grow it. He told Rad the business was called “Match.” That’s how Rad and David decided to name Rad’s new venture, the company that today is Match.com. Match.com was then only four months old when David put the anti-abortion buttons out in the street.
Rad knew then that people like him could make a difference. After all, he had been a salesman for three years. He had never heard of anti-abortion buttons until he started selling them. He sold all 1,500 of them right there on the streets of Houston. He made sure all the buttons were in pairs as the anti-abortion movement started to gain support.
What Rad started wasn’t exactly a business. He told me he