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Spoontoplayattheopeningofitsnewheadquarters.
Someemployeeswereinvited;otherssawpartyphotoson
Instagramandwonderedwhythey’dbeenleftout.Wolfe
Herdisadamantthatshehasneverknowinglytreated
employeesunfairly.“It’snotlikewe’relike,‘You’reour
favorite,yougettogotoLollapalooza,’” shesaid.Thatparty
hadbeenprimarilyformedia,andit justwasn’tpossibleto
inviteallofBumble’sthen-40employeestotheopeningof
thecompany’s offices. “We have a fire code issue, OK?”
Today, Bumble has about 140 employees. It’s expanded its
office space and scaled back the birthday presents and is 51%
white, which makes it significantly diverse. Visitors to its head-
quarters can select their preferred gender pronouns. Company
lunches have vegan options. “We do Woke Wednesdays,” said
Caitlin Sullivan, who until recently was Bumble’s associate
director of people and culture, referring to an internal program
where outside speakers talk about social issues. “We had some-
one talk about the bamboo ceiling, which is about Asian people
just having a really hard time moving up within corporations.”
When Wolfe Herd learned that former employees were
talking to me, she asked that I fly to Texas so she could
address their allegations in person. She appeared shocked
by what she heard, and that people were afraid to come for-
ward by name. “I would never suggest anyone get in trouble
for speaking their truth,” she said. Of course, she added, if
they did say something, “technically, somebody at the com-
pany could sue. That is according to the law. Not according
to my wishes.” She alternated between asking me if she was
a bad CEO and saying she felt employees’ criticism of Bumble
was unfair. “It’s almost like, because we’re a company with a
mission that is trying to not just pump a product, but pump a
product that raises eyebrows and turns the tables, we’re kind
of being held to unrealistic standards,” she said.
After all, she added, Bumble really was trying to make its
app better for women. It offered users safety tips, such as
the recommendation that people FaceTime before meeting
in person. Its partnership with the Anti-Defamation League
was a response to the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Va. “The day after Charlottesville, they called
our local office and said, ‘We have to do something,’ ” said
Renee Lafair, ADL’s Austin regional director. The ADL provided
“key words and phrases” that Bumble could ban to curb white
supremacy. The company told users that if they saw them in a
profile, “please use the ‘block and report’ feature in our app
so our moderation team can ban the user.” (Most dating apps
have similar bans on hate speech.)
When I asked if the policy had successfully reduced hate
speech on Bumble, I received confusing answers. Cecily Gold,
Bumble’s director of community experience, said that by being
proactive, the company was “creating communities wherepeople know what they’re getting into from the beginning.”
She added that this led to lower harassment than on other
dating apps but couldn’t tell me how much lower because
“I don’t have the stats.” Later a publicist said that reports of
harassment had gone up—proof, according to Bumble, that
“block and report” was working. Later still, he said that since
August reports of rude or inappropriate behavior had gone
down 30%. The company also shared 8 app reviews and 11 tes-
timonials from Bumble users about how the app had helped
them (“Amanda has been empowered to devote her time and
energy to seeking treatment for her rare cancer”), as well as
a brief synopsis of Blackstone’s due-diligence findings, which
said Bumble users “believed” it was better than the competi-
tion at such things as “catering to women’s overall needs” and
“offering the broadest set of female-friendly features.”
The only internal research on safety Bumble could pro-
vide was Carbino’s 2018 SurveyMonkey poll. In Carbino’s poll,
she surveyed more than 4,500 people—65% were men, and
more than 80% were white. She found that 80% of women
said Bumble users were more “respectful,” and 77% said they
felt safer meeting someone on Bumble than on another app.
“While this does not directly establish that Bumble is safer than
other similar dating apps, it does go directly to the user’s per-
ception of Bumble as being safer, which is what I tested for,”
Carbino said. Bumble didn’t provide any specific information
about how its individual policies had affected user behavior.B
umble is now 5 years old, and its future has never
looked so muddled. When Wolfe Herd and I first
talked last January, she discussed moving the
brand offline. She liked skin-care products. Would
women want to put Bumble on their face? “When a woman is
taking her makeup off before bed, let’s remind her that confi-
dence is key,” she said. Would women watch Bumble-funded
movies? Listen to Bumble-produced podcasts? The company
has opened pop-up cafes in San Francisco and other cities and
was planning a permanent coffee shop and bistro in New York.
“We want you to go to our actual, physical coffee shop,” she
said. “Maybe we’ll have marriage planning services down the
road. Maybe we’ll have Bumble day care!”
“Forget about the lotion,” Wolfe Herd told me several
months later in August, when I was in Austin for the bill sign-
ing. Day care was tabled, too. She had a new vision: “Don’t
think of it as Bumble vs. Tinder. Think of it as Bumble vs.
Facebook.” She explained that in addition to finding peo-
ple dates, Bumble could crowdsource advice. “Pregnancy,
a breakup, chronic pain, where to go for the best live music,
where to learn how to cook, anything that is supplementary
to life,” she said. That sounded a little like Facebook. But it
was also just stuff people Googled. “It kind of comes back to