Toronto venture capitalists await judge’s decision in lawsuit over Tinder stake

A woman walks past a billboard advertisement for the dating app Tinder on February 18, 2019, in Berlin, Germany. Tinder has emerged as one of the most popular dating apps.It’s a Bay Street court case that revolves around a single question: Did three men swipe a fortune from the partners of a Toronto venture-capital fund?

The plaintiffs are Extreme Venture Partners Fund and three of its founders, Ravinder Sharma, Imran Bashir and Ken Teslia. They say that their former business partners in the fund, Amar Varma and Sundeep Madra, conspired with Chamath Palihapitiya, a high-profile Silicon Valley investor, to purchase Xtreme Labs and its interest in Tinder at a much lower price than either the company or the app were worth.

“We say there was no concealment and it’s just seller’s remorse. They [the plaintiffs] just regret the decision they made to sell early on,” Ira Nishisato, a lawyer for Mr. Varma and Mr. Madra, said in an interview last week. He said his clients did not have “prior knowledge of this Tinder app” or know that it was going to become “wildly successful.”

“Tough business, we understand. My clients are the winners of Bay Street. They play this game, but they play it with honour, they play it with respect. And that is the essence of our grievance,” Mr. Kim said, suggesting the defendants played by the rules of Silicon Valley, which “must be a mean place.”

The plaintiffs say the relationship with Mr. Varma and Mr. Madra"was tainted from the very beginning” because of a dispute as they formed the original Extreme Venture Partners fund in 2007. E-mails quoted in court filings reveal disputes over fair compensation and angry complaints from both sides about being treated unfairly.

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