Tinder Owner Paid Millions to Lure Ex-Twitter General Counsel

Match Group Inc. chief legal officer Sean Edgett received a total compensation package valued at nearly $6.1 million after joining the dating application company late last year.

Dallas-based Match, owner of brands like Match.com, Tinder, PlentyOfFish, OkCupid, and Hinge, recruited Edgett, a former Twitter Inc. general counsel, following the departure of its chief business affairs and legal officer Jared Sine, who was named chief strategy and legal officer for GoDaddy Inc.

The bulk of Edgett’s 2024 remuneration came from about $5.9 million in stock awards, according to an April 17 proxy filing by Match. He is the top lawyer and corporate secretary for the company, which this year installed a new CEO in Spencer Rascoff. Some investors have accused Match of misleading them about the number of subscribers using its dating apps.

Edgett spent more than a year as the lead in-house lawyer for startup Upside Foods Inc. after he was fired by Elon Musk almost immediately after the billionaire completed his $44 billion takeover of the social media platform now called X.

Edgett joined Twitter in 2012; like Sine, he was once an associate at Latham & Watkins. During his decade at Twitter, Edgett crafted a law department leadership succession plan that was ultimately scuttled by Musk in the aftermath of his acquisition of the company.

Edgett wasn’t the only former member of “Tweagle”—the nickname for Twitter’s former legal group—to land a legal chief role last year. Katherine Lee Martin, a former head of Americas litigation and regulatory at Twitter, joined Hertz Global Holdings Inc. as chief counsel in 2023; she was named the car rental giant’s general counsel in July. She earned more than $3 million in total compensation following that promotion, according to a Hertz proxy filing this month.

Other Legal Changes

Gary Swidler, a former associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz who stepped down this month as president of Match, earned more than $7.8 million in 2024. Match’s proxy also shows that Jeanette Teckman, a veteran company lawyer who stepped in as interim legal chief after Sine’s exit a year ago, received almost $1.8 million prior to her employment being terminated on Nov. 8.

Teckman, who worked closely with Sine on a variety of legal issues at Match, has now reunited with him at GoDaddy, where she is deputy general counsel for compliance and risk, a GoDaddy spokesperson said.

Sine received a stock-heavy package to make the jump to GoDaddy. The Tempe, Arizona-based company, which specializes in web hosting and internet domain name registration, disclosed this month in a proxy filing that Sine received more than $13.2 million in total compensation last year, most of it in stock awards.

GoDaddy described in its rationale for Sine’s pay package that it needed to give him $10 million in stock and an annual base salary of $500,000 to “secure his employment” and offset compensation he would forfeit at Match.

Match’s online dating rival Bumble Inc., meanwhile, has named its third legal leader in a year. The company disclosed in a proxy statement last week that Deirdre Runnette—a former top lawyer at Flexe Inc. and Zulily Inc.—was hired this month to succeed Elizabeth Monteleone, who took over last year following the departure of former Bumble legal and compliance chief Laura Franco.