(Reuters) – Bumble Inc Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd’s stake in the female-focused dating app operator was worth nearly $ 2 billion as the stock rallied for a second straight day after a blockbuster debut on Thursday.
Bumble, backed by Blackstone Group Inc, was valued at $ 15.69 billion on Friday, with its stock price nearly doubling from its $ 43 per share stock price, underscoring investors’ insatiable appetite for tech stocks in a booming US stock market.
Wolfe Herd owns 21.5 million shares in Bumble, representing an 11.6% stake, regulatory filings showed.
With the blockbuster IPO, Wolfe Herd, 31, became the youngest female CEO to ever make a company public when she rang the bell from Bumble’s Austin-based offices with her one-year-old son by her side.
The woman-first approach has set Bumble apart in a competitive online dating market, Wolfe Herd told Reuters on Thursday.
Bumble users are more likely to pay for premium offers to have a deeper level of connection or a different approach to connection, said Wolfe Herd, who lists Incognito Mode as a popular feature for people to browse other people’s profile while anonymous. .
Wolfe Herd, a graduate of International Studies from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, launched the Bumble app in 2014.
Wolfe Herd is also a co-founder of rival app Tinder, which she later sued for claiming her co-founders subjected her to sexual harassment. Tinder parent company Match Group Inc, which has denied the allegations, paid about $ 1 million to settle the dispute.
Shares of Bumble were up 13.5% during afternoon trading on Friday, up a whopping 20.6% to $ 84.8 earlier in the session.
Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Anil D’Silva