Building a name in a competitive world
Each of us in this world has a raison d’être to live for. However, 31-year-old Whitney Wolfe Herd was humbly unaware that the creation of the popular dating app —Bumble—in 2014 would be a tour de force. The app’s launch has etched her name indelibly in the landscape of business and technology.
Whitney Wolfe Herd has now become the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. She has come on par with numerous male stalwarts of the IT world like Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk.
As the founder and CEO of Bumble, Wolfe Herd has the much-needed zeal and tenacity to succeed. She has managed to take her company to the top of the New York Stock Exchange. After the trading debut of her dating app Bumble, the market witnessed the value for shares soaring up 67 percent, reaching $72.
Consequently, her stake in the company increased to $1.5 billion. That’s a feat that has made her the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.
Let’s not forget, she is also the youngest female CEO to start an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States of America. The IPO put her in an extraordinary league of present-day female billionaires. It’s true that women comprise about half of the world’s population. But self-made females are fewer than 5 percent of the global 500 biggest fortunes.
Whitney Wolfe Herd has an 11.6-percent stake in Bumble Inc. It is the parent company of not only Bumble but also another dating app called Badoo, which she co-founded in 2014 with Andrey Andreev, a Russian billionaire. Badoo and Bumble ranked second and third amongst the top dating apps, with over 3.9 million and circa 1.7 million downloads per month, respectively (Source).
Her early life
Whitney Wolfe Herd hailed from Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father, Michael Wolfe, was a wealthy Jewish property developer, and her mother, Kelly Wolfe, was Catholic. She attended Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City. Her family went on a long sabbatical in Paris when she was in fourth grade.
Wolfe Herd went to Southern Methodist University. She pursued a major in international studies and became a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. At the age of 20, while in college, she demonstrated her empathy and emotional intelligence through a business venture. She started selling bamboo tote bags to aid areas impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She even partnered with Patrick Aufdenkamp, the celebrity stylist, to launch “Help Us Project,” a non-profit organization. The tote bags garnered national press coverage, especially after celebrities after being flaunted by noted celebrities like Nicole Richie and Rachel Zoe.
Soon after, Wolfe Herd launched her second business, “Tender Heart,” with Aufdenkamp. It was a fashion line to create a buzz around fair trade and societal ills like human trafficking. After graduating from college, she traveled to various parts of Southeast Asia to volunteer in different orphanages.
In 2020, Wolfe Herd was listed at number 39 amongst Forbes’ top 100 “America’s richest self-made women.” She is one of 328 women who made Forbes’ 2021 list of the world’s billionaires. The various organizations that she has worked for and the causes that she has fought for show her unwavering spirit to create a positive impact on the world.
Her career success
Wolfe Herd initially was part of a company called Hatch Labs before joining Tinder’s development team. In 2012, she became one of the founders of Tinder. In 2019, the dating app was estimated at over USD$10 billion. But she left Tinder in 2014 after allegedly experiencing sexual harassment. She claimed that her boss harassed her and took away her title as a co-founder of the app. She sued the company and recovered a substantial sum as a fine and a part of the increasing share value.
Perhaps it was the scandal that changed Herd’s direction in life. She set out to create Bumble, her new brainchild of a dating app, in which women, not men, are the first to initiate a conversation. The app idea turned out to be a huge success, as seen from the millions of downloads that it garnered within a few days of its launch. Currently, perhaps the most serious rival that Tinder has in the online dating realm is Bumble, especially when it comes to targeting below 35-year-old users. Several people didn’t trust the idea because of the novel fact that women would be in charge of the conversation. Many disregarded the premise and even opposed its adoption.
A focus on women
However, Bumble categorically is about women and how they can be in control of their dating life. It’s interesting to note that Bumble’s SEC filings show that 73 percent of its board and 54 percent of its management team are made up of women. In today’s largely male-dominated business world, where women are vying for equality on multiple levels, Bumble makes a world of difference. It’s undoubtedly a great app for women on the heterosexual dating scene who have received unwanted messages from random men and be more in control of their interactions.
Besides nurturing a women-driven management team in Bumble Inc., Wolfe Herd has highlighted a female empowerment message since the inception of the Austin-based company. The dating app succeeds in standing out by allowing women to “make the first move,” which is a slogan of the company.
A cause-minded approach
There’s little doubt that Wolfe Herd is keen on carving out a different course for herself in today’s business world. Her approach looks different from that of founders of other tech companies. However, safety and integrity are factors that her app never compromises. Bumble recently tracked more than 880,000 cases that violated its guidelines. Like many other platforms, the app also depends on artificial intelligence (AI) to scan and report hate speech.
Bumble is running a campaign to raise her voice against body-shaming and derogatory remarks about physical appearance. Tennis star Serena Williams and actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas joined hands as an investor of the dating app.
In December 2013, Wolfe Herd met Michael Herd, an oil tycoon, during an Aspen skiing trip. The couple tied the know in 2017, and announced the birth of their first child, Bobby Lee Herd, in December 2019. She’s truly a woman who stands up for herself and other women and goes against the grain to fight for noble causes.