Match Group CFO talks managing multiple brands in the love department

Money can’t buy you love, as former New Edition member Ralph Tresvant (somewhat) famously sang. But as the CFO of Match Group, Steve Bailey spends his days figuring out where love could use a little investment.

The company owns Match.com, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid and many other dating apps. Last year, it brought on a new CEO, Spencer Rascoff, cofounder of Zillow. The company is working on revitalizing Tinder for Gen Z and prioritizing outcomes (i.e., meaningful offline connections) for a world that’s burned out on dating apps.

Bailey gave CFO Brew a look at his thought process as the CFO during this time of transition.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

You stepped into this role after the appointment of a new CEO. How did you approach that as a new CFO?

It certainly made it more interesting and exciting to have a new CEO come in. What it did was require more of my time toward building a relationship with a new CEO. Because every CEO operates differently. They have different expectations for what they want out of a CFO and the CFO role.

You were at Match Group for 13 years before taking the CFO role. Were there any specific blind spots you’ve had to keep an eye on, having worked at this company for so long?

I was an FP&A person through and through. That’s what I did…I knew that inside and out. I could do it [with] one arm tied behind my back. You have to broaden out your skill set very quickly in the CFO job. So of course, I had some experience with accounting and tax and IR and treasury, but you gotta level up very fast. So that was one realization pretty quickly.

What are the complexities of being the CFO of a company with a lot of different brands with different reputations?

There’s some clear benefits, and then also some challenges, too. A portfolio of brands is so much more powerful than a single brand, for a number of reasons. One, we can share technology. We’ve got a shared service model where we don’t have to duplicate efforts across all these brands. We can share knowledge…So that’s a huge benefit and a real strategic advantage of our company compared to our competitors.

It makes things a little bit more complex, too. I think the complexity, as it pertains to my job, is one of resource allocation and capital allocation. I spent a lot of time thinking, we’ve got $600 million of marketing spend. We’ve got a revenue target. We’ve got margins we want to hit as a company, as Match Group as a whole. What is the best allocation of those resources?...It takes a lot of communication and expectation setting so that brand leaders in one particular brand or business unit understand the context under which we’ve made those allocation decisions.

So how do you make those decisions?

The framework I use and [CEO] Spencer [Rascoff] uses too is, what is going to create the most value for Match Group? What is going to drive Match Group’s stock price the highest in three years?

It’s a long term outlook, and that’s a bit of a shift. We’re not so worried about what’s going to lead to a higher stock price next quarter, but what’s going to drive a higher stock price in three years from now. And we try to base all our decisions around that.

So it may mean actually a little less revenue or a little less EBITDA for the next couple quarters, because we’re planting the seeds for a new investment or a new bet that we think are going to pay off three years down the road.

If you weren’t a CFO, what would you be?

I tell my daughter, “be a product manager.” Now that I’ve been in tech for so long, I think that is the most fun role in the company. You’ve got to be analytical, but you also have to be creative. And it’s just so fun to build products that consumers, your friends, your family, might use.