Silicon Valley woke up to the news of the dating app Bumble making its public debut.  Bumble is a dating app which caters to women and is led by a woman named Whitney Wolfe Herd.  As soon as Bumble made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NSE,)  shares of the dating app soared by as much as 67%.  This led to the net worth ofWolfe Herd, the Chief Executive Officer of Bumble, to be valued at $1.5 billion, thereby making her a self made billionaire at just the age of 31.  Bumble plans to use the $2.2 billion proceeds from the IPO to pay off debt, fund international growth, and pursue acquisitions.

However, the story of Wolfe Herd and Bumble is one of mettle, grit and inspiration.  The journey of the unicorn is nothing short of a story.  Keep reading to find out how Wolfe Herd founded a company to rival Tinder.

Journey

Wolfe Herd began her journey as a co founder of Tinder, the world’s biggest dating app.  Whitney Wolfe Herd was Vice President of Marketing, at Tinder when she began her journey.  However,  Wolfe Herd alleged she was subjected to sexual harassment by her colleagues at Tinder and that she was stripped of her co founder tag because having a girl with that tag makes the company seems like a joke.  Wolfe Herd walked out of Tinder and filed a lawsuit against Match Group, the parent company of Tinder.  The lawsuit was settled out of the court for $ 1 million.

It was her experiences at Tinder which led Wolfe Herd to start Bumble, a dating app which lets women make the first move.  Women can swipe across profiles of men and choose to begin a conversation after a match.  At no point in this process could a man make the first move thereby putting women in firm control about the conversation as well as offering them a safety net.  

After taking some time off following the nasty lawsuit with Tinder, Wolfe Herd received an email from a Russian named Andrey Andreev, who is based in London and founded Badoo, another dating app which was the world’s largest dating app at that time (2014.)  Andreev was impressed with Wolfe Herd’s commitment at Tinder and said he would help her with her new startup and ended up investing $ 10 million in her idea.  Andrey Andreev would own 79% stake while Wolfe Herd owns 20% and the title of CEO and at the same time be able to tap into the infrastructure and resources of Badoo.  Herd and Andreev brought in former Tinder executives Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, to design the new app’s back end and user interface.  Both Mick and  Gulczynski share the remaining 1% stake between themselves.

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During a cocktail event, Andrey and Wolfe Herd were discussing a scenario where women could make the first move and get the phone number of a guy after a match.  However, the match would disappear after 24 hours if neither of the parties made a move.  This became the core of Bumble and the secret sauce for its success.

By January 2015, about a month after launch, Bumble had about 100,000 downloads.  By the end of 2017, two years after launching, Bumble had amassed more than 22 million users.  This growth was noticed by Tinder which then made a buyout offer for $ 450 million.  Wolfe Herd rejected the offer immediately.  By July 2020, Bumble announced it had reached 100 million users.  Today, Bumble is available in 150 countries and is expanding into new areas like business networking.  In 2019, revenue jumped more than 35% and it turned a profit of $ 68.6 million.  More than 10% of Bumble’s users pay $9.99 for a monthly subscription to access perks like extra time to decide whether a suitor merits a message.  At Tinder, just about 5% of users pay for a similar service.

Today Bumble is the second largest dating app in the world and only continues to grow with its closest competitor being Tinder.