Ex-Facebook Exec, Venture Capitalists Lose Appeal Over Secretive Tinder Sale

GLOBE AND MAIL - An Ontario judge has dismissed appeals by a former Facebook executive and two Toronto venture capitalists to overturn a 2019 decision that found they owed more ~$15M in damages and lost profit to the investors' former business partners after the sale of a company that held an interest in Tinder. Justice William Hourigan took the original Superior Court of Justice decision further, ordering that the appellants pay the entire $29.5M profit from the sale, plus costs and interest, to the venture capitalists who successfully beat the appeal. In 2012, Extreme Venture Partners sold a software company called Xtreme Labs to Chamath Palihapitiya, a Silicon Valley investor and former Facebook executive, valuing the company at $18M. At the time, Xtreme Labs had a 13% stake in another company called Hatch Labs - which had developed a dating app called Tinder. Court filings show that two principals of Extreme Venture Partners, Amar Varma and Sundeep Madra, kept an interest in Xtreme Labs after the 2012 sale. Mr. Varma, Mr. Madra and Mr. Palihapitiya later sold Hatch Labs to an American company in 2014 for $29.5M.