- Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd is the latest female founder to make a company public.
- After an affair with Tinder and a toxic relationship with a co-founder, she started again at 25.
- Wolfe Herd spent IPO days working on parenting duties.
- Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.
On Thursday afternoon, Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd joined a Zoom call like a working mom. Wearing a black baseball cap in a cluttered room with baby bottles, water glasses and soda cans on a coffee table, Wolfe Herd tells Insider she’s tired of a ‘crazy, crazy day’ and says it’s harder than having a to be a mother as a scholarship. “
But Wolfe Herd is not just a working mother. She is the youngest CEO to join the billionaires club, and at 31 she is the youngest female founder to make a company public.
And on Thursday, while Bumble’s shares rose 63% in the market debut, she unexpectedly remained a mother. That morning, Wolfe Herd brought her 14-month-old with her when she rang the NASDAQ opening bell from Bumble’s office in Austin, Texas. Between scheduled TV interviews and reporter calls, she encouraged her son to take his first steps. And that afternoon, she was 47 minutes late with this Insider interview because she did not want to miss bath time with her son, Bobby Lee “Bo” Herd II.
“Let me tell you, it was not easy,” Wolfe Herd told Insider. “It was really hard and there were a lot of challenges along the way, but our team’s commitment to our North star to try to put women in the driver’s seat really just kept us going.”
Wolfe Herd was born and bred in Salt Lake City, the daughter of a real estate developer and a housewife. She then visited Southern Methodist University in Texas, where she studied international relations. While in school, she started a small business selling bamboo bags to help those affected by the BP oil spill. Unlike other crowds that 19-year-olds started at the university, Wolfe Herd’s business started and became nationally known when celebrities Nicole Richie and Rachel Zoe were seen with her suitcase.
After college, she traveled through Southeast Asia to volunteer at orphanages before moving to Los Angeles to start a job at the Hatch Labs incubator. In 2012, she met a group of entrepreneurs who wanted to build a new dating app called Tinder. She signed up a co-founder and helped pioneer the modern dating app.
Initially, Wolfe Herd lived the dream of the entrepreneur. She was co-founder and director of marketing a hot start valued at about $ 750 million by Silicon Valley investors at the time. There was also a budding romance with her direct manager and co-founder Justin Mateen. While the couple had been on and off for about a year, Wolfe Herd told Insider’s Alyson Shontell the relationship ended for good when he became ‘verbally controlling and abusive’.
She was later expelled from the company and charged with Tinder and its parent company IAC for sexual harassment. Wolfe said in her suit that Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen sexually harassed her. According to her, Alyson Shontell suffered from the harassment most of the time she was employed at Tinder when Wolfe filed the case in 2014. She said Mateen’s actions after they broke up forced her to resign from Tinder. The case has since been settled, and Wolfe has earned more than $ 1 million and a stock in Tinder.
While Wolfe Herd acknowledges the dark chapter in her life, she is also ready to move on. “Bumble is not here because of Tinder. Bumble is here because of his right to be here,” Wolfe Herd told Insider. “I wish Tinder all the best, but this is the day I regain my own story.”
A few years later, at the age of 25, she started all over again, this time with a new dating app where women are empowered to take the first step. Wolfe Herd said in an interview with Insider in 2015 that the app was launched that her decision to first give power to women was inspired by the Sadie Hawkins dance. Since then, Bumble has expanded its product category to Bumble BFF and Bumble Bizz. Wolfe Herd’s company generated $ 489 million in 2019 thanks to more than 42 million users. A potential partnership with Peanut, the social network for moms, is also something she is also exploring.
“I think there’s a natural evolution that women find on their dates, which is motherhood, but that does not mean we have to build a direct competitor,” Wolfe Herd told Insider. “And maybe there’s a partnership down the road, who knows.”
With 21,537,552 shares of Bumble common stock, Wolfe Herd’s share, at Friday’s closing of the market, is worth about $ 1.6 billion, making her not only a custom billionaire, but also no. 22 on the short list of female founders who have successfully taken up a company. public. And while some executives are known to throw $ 10 million rags or offer extensive dinners at a fair, Wolfe Herd prefers a quiet evening at home with her family. After bathing her baby, she read him books and ate a sushi in a tracksuit with her husband.
She took some time to go to the audio-social app Clubhouse and write an inspiring memo to employees. Insider has a copy of the
Slap
message, where Wolfe Herd wrote: “The success of tomorrow is not promised, and it is our character and values that will hold us together through the up-and-down ahead.”