“He’s got his pulse on the zeitgeist. You always realize that you’re 10 minutes less cool than he is.”
John Riccitiello
Former CEO of Electronic Arts
.…on how Match Group CEO Bernard Kim is leveraging his background in mobile gaming to “level up” dating apps, via the Wall Street Journal.
When Dallas-based Match Group snagged Bernard Kim as its new CEO in 2022, he was president of mobile game maker Zynga, where he was credited with boosting Zynga’s market cap on the way to its $12.7 billion acquisition by Take-Two Interactive. Since then, he’s been trying to “level up” Match’s dating apps by getting users to pay extra for services so they’ll “win” in the game of love, according to a new profile in the Wall Street Journal.
“When the gods came together and wanted to create the ultimate gamer, they created Bernard,” Barry Cottle, CEO of Scientific Games Interactive, told the WSJ.
With Match Group now valued at more than $9 billion, the stakes of this game are high—including a recent 6.6% investment in the company by activist hedge fund Starboard Value, the WSJ reported.
You can read all about Kim’s gamer DNA—and why he believes finding “the one” is “an immeasurable reward”—in the WSJ story here.
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