Whitney Wolfe Herd (born July 1, 1989)[1] is an American entrepreneur. She is the founder, executive chair, and CEO of publicly traded Bumble, an online dating platform, launched in 2014. She was a co-founder of Tinder and was previously its Vice President of Marketing.[2][3]
Herd has been recognized as part of Forbes’ 30 Under 30, the Time100 list, Bloomberg’s 50 Most Influential ranking, and InStyle’s “50 Women Who Are Changing the World” list.[4][5][6][7][8] In February 2021, Herd became the world's youngest female billionaire when she took Bumble public.[9] She is the youngest woman to have taken a company public in the United States, at age 31.[10]
Early life and education
Wolfe Herd was born as Whitney Wolfe in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Kelly Wolfe, who was Catholic, and Michael Wolfe, a wealthy property developer, who was Jewish.[11][12]
While in college and at the age of 20, she partnered with celebrity stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp to launch the non-profit organization called "Help Us Project" to sell bamboo tote bags to benefit areas affected by the BP oil spill. The bags received national press after celebrities, such as Rachel Zoe and Nicole Richie, were photographed with them.[15][16] Soon after, she introduced a second business with Aufdenkamp called "Tender Heart", a clothing line dedicated to raising awareness around human trafficking and fair trade.[15]
After graduating, Wolfe Herd traveled to Southeast Asia where she worked with orphanages.[17][18]
Career
Early career
In 2012, at age 22, Wolfe Herd joined the startup Cardify, a project led by Sean Rad through Hatch Labs IAC incubator. The project was later abandoned, but Wolfe Herd joined the development team for the dating app Tinder (previously known as MatchBox) with Rad and Chris Gulczynski.[19][20][21]
Wolfe Herd became vice president of marketing for Tinder.[14][18] She was reportedly behind the name of the app, taking inspiration from the flame logo and the idea of tinder, which is easily combustible material used to start a fire.[22] She has also been credited with fueling its popularity on college campuses and growing its user base.[23][24]
Wolfe Herd resigned from Tinder in April 2014 due to growing tensions with other company executives. On June 30, 2014, she filed a lawsuit against Tinder for sexual harassment;[25][26] the case was settled in September 2014.[14][27]
Having received online harassment, Wolfe Herd started sketching out a female-only social network centered around compliments which was to be called Merci.[28] Even though she didn't want to go back to the dating industry initially, in the following months she cooperated with Badoo founder Andrey Andreev on assembling a team and developing a new female-friendly dating app. She planned to name the app Moxie, but this name was already taken.[29]
Bumble Inc. (2014–present)
In December 2014, Wolfe Herd moved to Austin, Texas, and founded Bumble, a women-focused dating app in response to what she had seen as wrong.[26][18][30] By December 2015, the app had reached over 15 million conversations and 80 million matches.[26][31][13][14]
Herd in 2016
Wolfe Herd was named one of Business Insider's 30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech in 2014.[32] In 2016, she was named as one of Elle's Women in Tech.[33] She was named to Forbes 30 under 30 in 2017 and 2018.[34][5]
In December 2017, she was listed in a TechCrunch feature on 42 women succeeding in tech that year.[35]
In April 2019, Wolfe released the first print issue of Bumble Mag in partnership with Hearst.[36]
In November 2019, Bumble's parent company MagicLab was sold to the private equity firm The Blackstone Group, with co-founder Andreev relinquishing his entire stake in both Bumble and its sister company, Badoo. Wolfe Herd became CEO of the newly acquired MagicLab, valued at $3 billion with an estimated 75 million users, and received an ownership stake of approximately 19% of the company.[37]
In 2020, Bumble replaced MagicLab as the parent company of both Bumble and Badoo. As of 2020, Bumble had over 100 million users worldwide.[38][39]
In February 2021, Bumble topped $13 billion in valuation after listing shares on the Nasdaq exchange.[40] Her 18-month-old son was on her hip as she rang the Nasdaq bell.[41]
Wolfe Herd became the world's youngest female billionaire after taking Bumble public.[42]
As of May 2023, Forbes estimates her net worth at approximately $510 million.[43]
In November 2023, Wolfe Herd announced she would enter the role of executive chair in January 2024, with Lidiane Jones stepping into the position of CEO of Bumble.[43][44][45]
In May 2024, Wolfe Herd suggested at the Bloomberg Tech Summit that single people might use AI dating concierges as stand-ins for themselves when contacting potential partners online.[46]
The Bumble app has over 2.8 million paying users. As of June 2024, Bumble was the most downloaded dating application in the United States with 735,000 downloads.[4][47]
In January 2025, Bumble announced that Wolfe Herd would return as CEO in mid-March, replacing Jones, who was stepping down for personal reasons.[48]
Personal life
In December 2013, she met oil and gas heir Michael Herd on an Aspen skiing trip.[49] They married in 2017 at Positano, Italy.[49][50] They have two sons, born in 2019 and 2022.[51][52] The family lives in Austin, Texas.[50]
In 2022, Forbes listed Wolfe Herd at number 33 of the top 100 "America's richest self-made women," up from number 39 in 2020.[53][54]
In March 2019, Wolfe Herd testified before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence committee about the prevalence of unsolicited explicit photos sent to female users on dating applications.[59]
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