Whitney Wolfe Herd is only 30, but has already had a remarkable career. She is the cofounder of hookup app Tinder and founder and CEO of dating app Bumble, and she recently became CEO of Bumble’s parent company MagicLab. But though her rise has been rapid, it hasn’t always been easy.
Taking a job out of college at incubator Hatch Labs, Wolfe Herd became part of the team that launched Tinder. Two years later, she left the company and sued it for sexual harassment, reportedly receiving a million-dollar settlement. In 2015, under the auspices of tech firm MagicLab and its founder Andrey Andreev, Wolfe Herd started Bumble, a dating app that allows only women to make the first outreach. Bumble soon became one of the world’s most successful dating apps.
But in August 2019, Forbes published an article alleging a racist and misogynistic work environment at MagicLab. The revelations were deeply problematic for a company that owned a female-centric dating app, and in November Andreev sold his ownership stake in the company, which was valued at $3 billion, to Blackstone. Wolfe Herd took his place as CEO while retaining her reported 19 percent ownership in MagicLab.
Now Wolfe Herd hopes to make the world of app-based dating a safer, friendlier one for women. Austin, Texas-based Bumble already prohibits nudity and images of guns, pornography and drugs, and Wolfe Herd has led a push in the Texas state legislature to enact a law that would make it a misdemeanor to send an unsolicited nude or sexual photograph electronically. Wolfe Herd, who was pregnant with her first child last year, has also introduced family-friendly policies at Bumble, including four months of parental leave.
