+ BUMBLE IN NUMBERS

Founded: 2014

Employees (2022): 950

Position in the market (US): 2nd

Market share in the US (2022): 19%

Monthly active users: 12.3m

Paid users: 1.35m

Turnover (2020): $360.5m

Average revenue per use: $27.75

Going Public

In February 2021, Bumble ‘went public’, and raised $2.2 billion through its Initial public o er (IPO), and the company had a valuation of over $7 billion. Bumble was listed on the Nasdaq exchange, with shares initially valued at $43 but increasing to $76 on its opening day, valuing the company at more than $13 billion.

Wolfe Herd’s personal value was estimated by Forbes at $1.5bn, making her the youngest self-made female billionaire in American corporate history at the age of 31. However, it was reported on the day of the IPO, Whitney Wolfe Herd retired to her hotel room, and burst into tears. Not so much at the realisation of her assets and wealth, more at the vindication she had felt for her part in the growth of something so powerful. But Wolfe Herd was also annoyed at the way her story was being told.

Relentless Misogyny

Her success at Bumble, billed as the dating app where women “make the rst move,” had cast her as a vengeanceseeking woman; angry at the way past relationships hadn’t worked out. Bumble itself has been labelled, ‘the feminist Tinder’. Much of the coverage focused on her experience years ago as a co-founder at the dating app Tinder. She had succeeded out of the ashes of her own humiliation - a company vice-president who’d had to resign in order to maintain her integrity and dignity.

2022

• Forbes listed Wolfe Herd at number 33 of the top 100 “America’s richest self-made women,” up from number 39 in 2020

On the day she was supposed to be talking about her empire, Wolfe Herd found herself describing the men she had endured before building it. Her history of toxic relationships, all whirling around the corporate misogyny of tech – is the principle reason why Bumble was founded, and exists today.

Wolfe Herd had designed the app so only women could send the rst message when users match on the platform. In an online dating landscape where women, and particularly women of colour, are routinely bullied and harassed, Wolfe Herd set out to build the closest thing to a safe space for online romance.

“Honestly, my ambition comes from abusive relationships,” Wolfe Herd told Time Magazine the night before the IPO. “I never had this healthy male relationship until I created it. I engineered an ecosystem of healthy male relationships in my life.”

Wolfe Herd is only 34 now, and her company continues to expand organically and through acquisitions. ere is still plenty more to be heard (pun intended) from her.