Breaking up is hard to do, as Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is currently finding out.
Wolfe Herd, who founded the service after a nasty split with her former employer Match, announced that she was stepping down late last year. In the same announcement it was revealed her role would be taken over by former Microsoft employee and Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, proving once again that in the tech world being a CEO isn’t a real job as you can do it for multiple companies (cough, Elon, cough). The change is set to take place this month, with Wolfe Herd moving into an executive chair role, as per the BBC.
The app was founded in direct response to Tinder, where Wolfe Herd had also worked in its early days. So, if you’ve ever fallen into a deep depression and questioned your self-worth because of the way dating apps reinforce the belief that real life people are simply products you can pick and choose between, she’s the person you want to send your complaints to.
Her departure followed the exit of former Bumble president Tariq Shaukat, who had stepped down just a few months prior. Not exactly a great year for the C-suite team at the company.
In recent years, Bumble had been trying to branch out from being a dating-only platform into a women-led social network. This was attempted by introducing elements like Bumble BFF (for friendship, often used as a dating service anyway), and sections for professional networking. Because who doesn’t want to hire their next marketing manager from a dating app?
Of course, the platform still has a pretty large user base, so what’s gone on that led to this point? Read on to find out what happened to Bumble, and what the future might hold for the platform.
Who is Whitney Wolfe Herd?
Whiteney Wolfe Herd rose to prominence in the business community as the VP of marketing for Tinder. She had joined the company in its development stage, and was instrumental in building it from the ground up. Prior to that, she had sold bamboo bags to raise money for regions that the BP oil spill had affected. She is currently married to an oil and gas tycoon, and we presume she is aware of the irony.
After allegedly coming up with the name for Tinder, she soon found the working environment untenable. In 2014 she left and filed a sexual harrassment lawsuit. Considering she was working with a bunch of tech bros who were obsessed with dating, we feel like the lawsuit probably had a lot of merit. This assumption is buoyed by the fact she received a huge payout and stock options in the company.
Wolfe Herd then went on to found Bumble, backed by Russian money in the form of Andrey Andreev, who owned the dating social network Badoo. The company grew rapidly, and had over 20 million users by 2017.
Bumble continued to expand, and soon was the parent company of a number of other similar apps. Wolfe Herd maintained control of the ever growing business, growing its worth to $13 billion dollars in 2021. When the company went public, she became the world’s youngest female billionaire, proving that capitalism doesn’t discriminate, and as long as you’re kind of evil and have the right background, you, too, can amass more wealth than anyone knows what to do with and help to plunder the world of its resources. What a #GirlBoss.
What happened to Bumble?
After going public, the app raised 2 billion from investors. But, as is usually the case with tech companies that claim to be revolutionary, it’s actually just been a money hole. It’s not quite on Uber’s level of almost never making a profit, but it really hasn’t managed to continually grow in a way that deserves that much investment. The stock price reflects this, having dropped by nearly 80%, from $75 per share to just under $13 by the time Wolfe Herd stepped down.
It’s pretty hard to change the direction of a well known app, even if you keep the initial content and ideas that made it so popular. Facebook has tried and failed, and outside of China’s WeChat, it appears to be pretty impossible. Bumble is yet another example of the failures of centralizing functions in that way.
Bumble also failed to make inroads in other markets in the way Tinder (under the Match umbrella) has. While Bumble remains popular in Western countries, outside, it’s practically unknown. This might be to do with different views on gender equality, or maybe because people just don’t like it.
It’s also likely that the app is suffering from the same problems its competitors are: Burnout from users, a whole load of scammers, and not enough protections for users who face online abuse from those they match with. Considering Bumble was all about reimagining the dating app world from a woman’s perspective, you would think that would be where they focus their energies, but apparently not.
At least the app was useful for one thing, though: finding insurrectionists.
What’s next for Bumble?
Honestly? It’s hard to say. The company has enough of a user base to keep treading water. They might try to expand their non-dating services, or do a huge marketing push in emerging markets and attempt and usurp the Tinder giant. They may also do what most companies do when finance ghouls get involved: gut themselves, have massive lay offs, and give investors a big cheque to reward their failure to make a smart decision.
New CEO Jones told the WSJ that she wanted to integrate more AI features into the app, which isn’t actually saying anything of substance, but is the sort of thing tech investors love to hear, as it makes them feel like they’re on the cutting edge of something. It also sounds kind of hellish, but maybe that’s just us.
Basically, if you’re looking for love, maybe take up a hobby?