Fuld transskription af Grindr CEO George Arison Talks Earnings, 2027 Outlook

a paying user. With Edge, we're giving you a lot more information about other users that we deduce based on people's behaviors in the app. So it's an AI tier where we use AI to understand the users a lot better and then share that information with you as a subscriber to Edge, as well as recommend people that you should be potentially meeting based on the things that we know about you and the things that we know about those other people. So it's a pretty different experience from what Grindr's ever done historically. The retention on people who have tested their way into Edge and subscribed during our test periods has been a lot higher than for the current paying tiers that we have so far. And the demand, obviously, as you said, is very high. We've been really sucked by the pre-registration numbers. Obviously, we don't expect all of them to convert, but The fact that people are interested in this is really great. We're going to price it at $ 120, which is 3x the price that we've charged people before for our most expensive tier so far. So it's a pretty significant premium. 00:03:35 Speaker 2: Why did you settle at $ 120? Because last time we spoke, you hadn't settled on that price. And there were rumors this thing could be $ 500 a month, which I thought was a lot of money. Some people got in touch with me and said, that's not a lot of money. Others got in touch and said, that's crazy money. I think the people who said $ 500 was crazy will still say $ 120 a month is crazy. 00:03:54 Speaker 3: We tested a variety of prices. We actually never tested $ 500. We tested $ 500 in Canada, and people perceived that as being a U.S. price. So it was kind of close to $ 375 in the U.S. was the highest price that we tested. The reason we settled on $ 120 is because we want to create a lot of demand for the product in year one and get a lot of people to try it out. And then over time, we think we have a lot of pricing power. We could have priced it at more and still have had a very strong year next year and the year after. But we believe creating a lot more interest in it initially and getting people to try it out will be really beneficial. And that's why we picked 120. It was after a lot of testing and a lot of work. This is not the most expensive tier we're ever going to build. We're going to build a tier on top of that that's going to be even more expensive. And so part of the price test that we did this year, last year, has been around what are the different limits of how far can you go in price when you offer different things. And the takeaway is this is a really good price to start now. We have a lot of pricing power over the next couple quarters or a couple years in this tier. And then there's opportunity for even higher price tier above that. 00:04:57 Speaker 1: How much higher? I'm just curious about where you think this could go. 00:05:01 Speaker 3: I think for something that we're envisioning, which is kind of the VIP offering, that is a combination of

in-app and off-app features, meaning events and things like that for people to come together, the price will be substantially higher than what we're talking about now. This is 3x cheaper. more than what we are charging so far on for anything else. And I would expect the next year that we create will also be like three or four X higher than edge. 00:05:25 Speaker 1: So then we would go about five or $ 600 a month easily. 00:05:29 Speaker 3: Yes, for sure. 00:05:30 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:05:31 Speaker 3: Interesting. 00:05:32 Speaker 1: Hey, I am also curious, as you guys expand what you are offering on the platform, you know, who are the users most interested? Talk to me a little bit about, if you would, about demographics. Older, younger users, localized to specific regions. How do they compare to kind of the average Grindr user or what's been up to this point kind of on the platform? 00:05:52 Speaker 3: Yeah. Grindr is a very young platform from the perspective of people who are on it. About 46% of Grindr's user base in the U.S. and over 50% worldwide is between 18 and 29 in age. So this whole Gen Z doesn't want to use products like Grindr is not the case with us. They very much do want to use us. there is a ton of opportunity for us to bring older users back into the platform. So I think where we might be suffering is actually people who are 35 and older. They probably used Grindr a lot in the past but are using Grindr less today. But we need to get them more reengaged. And a bunch of things that we're building are targeted at them, including things like Edge. My expectation would be that most Edge subscribers are going to be on the older side, meaning 35 and older versus under 35. 00:06:41 Speaker 2: You know, I'm glad you said the older users. I mean, in preparation for this interview, I spoke to some of my friends in the community to ask them about their experience on Grindr. And they are older than 35. They live here in New York City. And they told me, they reported, I'm just reading from my text here, encountering bots, hustlers, OnlyFans creators on the platform. And this sense that it was a better platform in the past than it's become. What do you say to them? 00:07:10 Speaker 3: I think... All social networks have challenges with bots, and we do as well. We also spend a ton of time, money, and effort on ensuring that bots are removed from the product as quickly as possible. It's actually been a really big investment effort for us over the last 18 months. We've built a lot of technology to identify bad actors quickly and remove them, and I think that all metrics that we track show that things are a lot better now than they have ever been, honestly, on that front, in terms of us being able to identify bad actors and remove them. We are very open to people being on the platform for whatever reason that they want to be, whether it's friendships, meeting for long-term relationships, or other things. And so we're not going to tell an OnlyFans creator they cannot be on the platform. Obviously, we do not want them to be advertising OnlyFans on the platform. We want them to be there for the same things that other people are, which is building relationships. 00:07:59 Speaker 1: George, so appreciate it. We like the relationship we're having with you. Thank you. Come back soon. George Arison, CEO of Grindr.