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ADAM POPESCU
NYT Syndicate
In a study stacked with novels and nostalgia, a casual chat may have changed internet history.
"This is the room I had my first conversation about Tinder in," said Brian Norgard, a vice president at the company behind the dating app, showing off a great white shark's jaws draped on a surfboard."My dad gave that to me on an adventure to the Philippines."
Norgard's house in the Hollywood Hills is full of tributes to the past and past cultures: Native American artifacts; books on travel, gardening and dog-eared Hemingway paperbacks bought at estate sales; photographs of Frederick Douglass, Sitting Bull, Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, Walt Disney, Howard Hughes. And while elsewhere toys and Barbies reign, this study is decidedly his.
As head of product and revenue at Tinder, with a wife, a newborn and a young daughter at home, he said free time is at a premium. Even when he is having a direct conversation, his brown eyes appear to be multitasking. Since joining Tinder in 2015, Norgard, now 35, has helped shepherd the company from hookup site to major revenue player, focused on turning free customers into paying ones and introducing features like Super Like and Boost. Tinder has become a top grosser in Apple's App Store since Norgard linked up with it, with 1.5 million paying customers according to a third-quarter earnings report. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.
Q: Is this room your escape?
A: It's more a room to reflect and decompress. As we put technology into every aspect of our life, we want to come back to calm, safe, physical permanent things. Some people collect sneakers, vinyl; I just happen to be into books. My favourite place in the world is the Sea of Cortez, so I have a huge collection of books on Baja California. Then history, Steinbeck, you name it. I grew up surfing, spending time in the water, and my favourite shaper is Mike Hynson, and I surf this board all the time.
There's sand on it.
Yeah, I was out in Malibu a couple weeks ago. This is a functional surfboard; I don't just sit on the beach. There are elements of things I love from my childhood, my family, especially my father. (His parents are both public schoolteachers.) You scan your bookshelves, and you look at different periods of your life when you thought things were impactful, and I look at a book (like The Old Man and the Sea) and say,"that's a treasure." Once in a while, I'll bring a friend and talk. The first conversation I ever had about Tinder was down here. With Sean (Rad).
Before Rad helped found Tinder?
Well before. I remember Sean said to me,"I'm working on a variety of different ideas." He and I have been business partners and friends, and he said:"Imagine if there was a stack of people that you could just say yes or no. And if you said yes and she said yes, you could message her." Sometimes in the technology business, people think everything's been thought of, right? And I stepped back for a second, and I remember I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and said,"That sounds really good." And I remember distinctly saying,"You should pursue that, let's keep chopping away at that." Twelve years later, Tinder.
Tell me about the significance of these old photos.
A: I respect every one of them in different ways. Frederick Douglass probably the most. He was an incredible self-taught lifetime learner; that's a quality that drew me to him. I think he was one of the most photographed people in the world when that photo was taken. He understood the power of photography, and he got it early.
You have books on Hearst Castle.
A: Given that I work in technology, I love the permanence of things like architecture, or a handmade watch ” because it's the opposite. A lot of people are slowly starting to appreciate that.
