DECEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 53BILLION-DOLLAR
BUMBLE
Three years after leaving Tinder amid a nasty
dispute, 30 Under 30 honoree Whitney Wolfe
Herd is beating her old colleagues at their
own game, off ering U.S. women a dating app
that’s designed for them—and entrepreneurs a
blueprint on how to succeed in a saturated fi eld.
3O 3O
W
hen Whitney Wolfe Herd started planning an October launch party for a new product at Bumble,
America’s fastest-growing dating-app company, she was deliberate in her choice of venue: the Manhattan
space that for 57 years hosted the Four Seasons restaurant, where regulars like Henry Kissinger, Vernon
Jordan, Edgar Bronfman and Stephen Schwarzman created the ultimate power lunch.
Th e space now has a new name, new management and a new menu. And, as Herd insists, a new per-
spective on business. “Th e power lunch is no longer just for men,” Herd announces to the mostly young,
mostly female crowd, before ceding the stage to the pop star Fergie. “We all deserve a seat at the table.”
Th at table surely now includes the 28-year-old Herd, who has changed the tenor of dating dynamics. By letting women
make the fi rst move, Bumble has amassed over 22 million registered users, to Tinder’s 46 million, and at more than 70%
year-over-year growth, to Tinder’s roughly 10%, it’s closing the gap quickly. Bumble began monetizing via in-app purchas-
es only in August 2016 and will cross $100 million in sales this year, a fi gure that—aided by the introduction of tailored, hy-
perlocal advertising—is projected to double in 2018. Herd turned down a $450 million buyout off er from the Match Group
earlier this year, according to sources with knowledge of the conversations. And these sources maintain that Match ap-
proached the company again this fall to discuss a valuation well over $1 billion. Th is 30 Under 30 honoree retains 20% of
Bumble, a stake that makes her a centimillionaire. (Match declined to comment.)
It’s a stunning comeback. As cofounder and vice president of marketing at Tinder, which has reinvented how people date and
mate, she was part of one of the great business success stories of the smartphone age. But then she found herself in one of the era’s
great public dramas. In June 2014, she sued Tinder for sexual harassment, alleging that her ex-boss and ex-boyfriend Justin Ma-
teen called her a “whore” and “gold digger” and bombarded her with threatening and derogatory text messages, which she attached
to her complaint. She also alleged that Tinder, owned by IAC and then by its Match Group spinoff , had wrongly stripped her of a
cofounder title. Th e company denied any wrongdoing, but Mateen was suspended and then resigned. Sean Rad, then the CEO ofBY CLARE O’CONNOR