Dating app company Bumble BMBL,
went public on Wednesday, seeing its share rise 64% during its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, before continuing at 7% during Friday’s trading session.
Here are 5 things you need to know about Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who created the dating app ‘women make the first move’ in 2014:
She is a former Tinder manager
In 2012 Wolfe Herd started working for the Match Group MTCH,
dating app Tinder, known for its left and right swipes. She says she came up with the name ‘Tinder’.
She served as vice president of marketing at Tinder during a period of massive user growth for the platform 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 stock as part of a settlement, according to reports.
Bumble IPO made her a billionaire on paper
Bumble’s market receipt has raised Wolfe Herd’s 21.5 million shares of more than $ 1 billion.
Of the 500 richest people in the world, less than 5% are self-made women, according to Bloomberg.
Wolfe Herd was seen with her baby in a video that marked Bumble’s debut on the Nasdaq.
She became the youngest female CEO to disclose a company
At the age of 31, Wolfe Herd is the youngest female CEO ever to lead a company to an IPO, according to Business Insider.
In the past year, 560 companies have gone public, and Bumble is only the third with a female founder and eighth with a female CEO. In addition, according to the SEC filing, more than 70% of the members on Bumble’s board are women.
“Hopefully this won’t be a rare headline,” Wolfe Herd told Bloomberg that Bumble is a women-run company. “Hopefully this will become the norm. It is the right thing to do, it is a priority for us and it should 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 is designed for gay men in the UK
In 2020, the app was shut down and a merger with Bumble was announced.
She championed legislation that made digital sexual harassment a crime
Wolfe Herd, who is a graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas and whose company is headquartered in Austin, was a driving force behind the Texas law signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2019 that provokes the unauthorized sending of obscene photos to a crime in the state made.
The legislation made such acts a Class C felony punishable by a fine of up to $ 500. Wolfe Herd testified before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on the subject.
“It is time for our laws to reflect in such a way that we live a double life, both physical and digital,” said Wolfe Herd. “Now look at the government, it only protects the physical world. But our young people spend a lot more time in the digital world than in the physical world. “