Dating app company Bumble BMBL,
went public on Wednesday and saw its shares rise 64% on its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, before falling another 7% on Friday’s trading floor.
Here are 5 things you should know about Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who created the “women take the first step” dating app in 2014:
She is a former Tinder executive
In 2012, Wolfe Herd started working for Match Group MTCH,
dating app Tinder, known for swiping right and left. She says she invented the name “Tinder”.
She was vice president of marketing for Tinder during a period of high growth for the platform user among young people.
Wolfe Herd left the company in 2014 and later filed a lawsuit against Tinder for sexual harassment – she received more than $ 1 million plus shares as part of a settlement, according to reports.
Bumble IPO made her a billionaire on paper
Bumble’s reception in the market made Wolfe Herd’s 21.5 million shares worth more than $ 1 billion.
Of the 500 richest people in the world, less than 5% are women who have worked on their own, according to Bloomberg.
Wolfe Herd was seen with her baby in a video marking Bumble’s Nasdaq debut.
She became the youngest CEO to go public on a company
At 31, Wolfe Herd is the youngest female CEO to lead a company to an IPO, according to Business Insider.
Last year, 560 companies went public, and Bumble is only the third among them with a founder and the eighth with a CEO. In addition, more than 70% of Bumble’s board members are women, according to the SEC filing.
“Hopefully, this will not be a rare headline,” Wolfe Herd told Bloomberg about the fact that Bumble is a company led by women. “Hopefully this will be the norm. It is the right thing to do, it is a priority for us and it must be a priority for everyone else. “
She invested in another dating app called Chappy
In 2016, Bumble and Wolfe Herd invested in a dating app called Chappy. The app was designed for gay men in the UK
In 2020, the app was closed and a merger with Bumble announced.
She defended legislation that made digital sexual harassment a crime
Wolfe Herd, who studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and whose company is based in Austin, was the driving force behind Texas legislation, signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2019, which made sending obscene photos without permission a crime in the state.
The legislation made such acts a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $ 500. Wolfe Herd testified before the House of Texas Criminal Jurisprudence committee on the matter.
“It’s time for our laws to reflect the way we lead double lives, both physical and digital,” said Wolfe Herd. “You look at the government now, it just protects the physical world. But our young people are spending much more time in the digital world than in the physical world. “