Wednesday December 17, crown jewel of the IAC portfolio TINDER hooked up with FounderPanel (special thanks to organizers Aaron Abram (above) and Jad Meouchy + lead sponsor Osurv) to hold a holiday party with lightning talks and even a recruitment drive.

Tinder was kind enough to host around 100 tech founders to discuss the philosophy and logistics behind the mobile dating platform’s elegant design.

Among the lightning speakers were CEO / Founder Sean Rad, Co-Founder / VP Product Jonathan Badeen, CTO Ryan Ogle, Android Engineer Paul Cafardo, Manager of Operations Patrick Albert, and Director of Engineering Culture William Kapke.

Tinder founder Sean Rad

2013’s Crunchies Award for Best New Startup — Tinder is hiring! See open positions here.

Colors! Lead Recruiter + Head Evangelist Alexandra Dworsky (r)

The West Hollywood-based space itself is cavernous and rather bare-bones (which is fine, allows them to focus on building product), but has a gorgeous view of the Hollywood Hills above the Sunset strip, as well as most of the entire city from downtown to the ocean

Everyone enjoying cookies, drinks, and conversation before the lightning presos

Mary Stuart Diebel & Kate Edwards of Three Day Rule — LA’s tech community is a real community, so it’s not unusual for folks from various companies drop by each other’s spaces

These guys need jobs! GA graduates Zach Golman, Ryan Kim, and Farhan Khan

We have a winner! Shirts & hoodies were given out towards evening’s end.

BONUS POINTS: if you’re looking to move to LA, here are some extra reasons why —

After this event, we ran downtown to catch Ryan Adams at the Wiltern:

Had potato pancakes and a huge bowl of food at Roy Choi’s latest joint POT:

And THEN followed that up with Oscars host / ‘Family Guy’ creator Seth Macfarlane doing karaoke at local hot spot The Brass Monkey!