Whitney Wolfe Herd Focuses on the Human Story as Bumble Goes from Strength to Strength
Following a $2.2 billion IPO in February, Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble and the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire spoke on Monday at the Forbes Under 30 Summit.
Talking to Forbes 30 Under 30 editor Alexandra Wilson, Wolfe Herd made it clear that she won’t be checking the ticker too often.
“I’m not obsessed with the stock,” she said, “I’m obsessed with the customer, the team, the innovation we’re planning for the future.”
Wolfe Herd pointed out that running the business day-to-day had changed slightly due to new concerns with legalities but that most of the energy was going into planning for Bumble’s future in the coming decades.
Bumble, innovative from the start was conceived by Wolfe Herd, as a disrupter to the dating app industry and it was always focused on levelling the playing field for women interested in meeting men for romance.
It’s the romance and the dating success stories rather than the price of stocks which drive Wolfe Herd in her mission to make Bumble the best dating app out there.
Speaking about what keeps her going, she said, “It was a business born out of my story, out of my personal struggles and you have to be able to validate that.”
Way before Bumble’s inception, Wolfe Herd was famously embroiled in a sexual harassment lawsuit in which she successfully sued her cofounders at Tinder for a campaign of abuse which was led by Justin Mateen with whom she had had a relationship and which also involved Sean Rad, then CEO of Tinder who was cited as not only doing nothing to support her during the abuse but of supporting a “frat-like” culture at Tinder at the time.
Sean Rad since then has made repeated PR gaffes and he eventually lost his position as CEO at Tinder.
Moving on from those days, Wolfe Herd spoke with pleasure about the many personal stories shared with her regarding the relationships which have flourished on Bumble.
“I meet dogs named Bumble because their parents have met on Bumble and I get notes from nurses saying just delivered my eighth Bumble baby this week!”
Wolfe Herd is focusing on the human side of her business and if that’s part of what has made the app such an enormous success, then perhaps other dating apps should follow suit.
During a time when more and more people have been isolated due to the pandemic, the focus should be on bringing people together in the most positive ways possible